Phantom Ship (1935)

Mar 251935
 
one reel

Captain Benjamin Briggs (Arthur Margetson) takes the ship Mary Celeste on a sea voyage to England and has decided to bring along his new wife, Sarah (Shirley Grey). He should have spent more time gathering a proper crew as his current one includes a sadistic first mate (Edmund Willard), the mysterious Anton Lorenzen (Bela Lugosi) whose life had been destroyed by previously being shanghaied on this ship, and a sailor sent by Sarah’s previous lover. Soon people die or vanish, and it seems likely that a member of the crew is responsible. But which one?

The Mary Celeste was a real ghost ship, found abandoned and adrift a month after it had left port in New York. Its lifeboat was missing, but its cargo was still on board, as were the possessions of the sailors. No further clues have ever been found, which has lead to wild speculation in stories told in every medium. This particular version is a thriller, explaining the disappearance of the sailors due to a murderer. It also ignores facts, making up its own crew and changing the history of the captain.

Is this a horror film? Not really. But it does have some atmospheric moments. It also has Bela Lugosi in the cast, and is one of the first features from Hammer Films, twenty years before they became a horror company, so it is of interest to horror fans.

Docudrama, thriller, or horror, is it any good? Not much. The first half of the 62 minute film is mostly focused on the generic and almost undefined captain and his love triangle with  the barely-written girl and  another generic and almost undefined captain. I neither cared what happened to these people or knew who they were. Without Lugosi popping in briefly, you’d have a lullaby. Things improve greatly once the bodies start to appear and our perverse crew become more important, but then there’s a different problem.

The film’s original name was The Mystery of the Mary Celeste and it had an 80 minute runtime. It was cut with a hatchet for the US market with 18 minutes removed, and no one involved was concerned that the result made any sense. That butchered version was titled Phantom Ship, and in the years since, the British cut has been lost. So in the film we have, necessary characters never appear and two main ones simply vanish from the story. They aren’t murdered or jump ship. They just aren’t there. There’s also a gap in time. How much? We don’t know. What happened? We don’t know. There is an ending, but with so much missing, it doesn’t matter.

The Mystery of the Mary Celeste could never have been great. Major characters are too weak, the pacing is off, and the beginning is dull. But it likely was decent thanks to some excitement in the later half and the presence of Lugosi. However all we have is tatters, and except for someone doing research on Lugosi or the history of Hammer, there’s no reason to watch.

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The Clairvoyant (1935)

Mar 181935
 
three reels

Maximus (Claude Rains) performs a mind-reading act with the assistance of his wife, Rene (Fay Wray). They travel with an aging partner (Ben Field) and Maximus’s mother (Mary Clare). When a performance falls apart, he receives an actual prophecy. Predicting the future casts him into the limelight, which brings money but starts to pull his family apart. It’s soon clear that his power only works when he is around Christine (Jane Baxter), the daughter of a newspaper tycoon.

British films of the ‘30s seemed to be a year or two behind those of Hollywood with regard to technique. And this is a low-budget flick, making it even more primitive. That doesn’t make it bad, and a majority of the shots look good, but it’s simpler than it should be in ’35. A scene of a calamity in a mine is effective, and probably used up half the budget. The dialog is audible, so the sound is good enough, but that’s about all it manages.

The story is more drama and romance than horror, even with its supernatural elements. The power is promoted as being frightening, with both the mother and wife feeling it will destroy Maximus, and there’s even the suggestion that it comes from the Devil, though it never seems problematic in an objective way. Rather it is more an issue that it may break up relationships. Certainly it instigates changes in Maximus, but the focus is on how this could drive a wedge between him and Rene, mainly in the form of Christine. Making Rene insanely jealous before she has reason to be undercuts the weight of that (and come on, she’s Fay Wray, the hottest woman in any room she enters). I am pleased they didn’t make Christine an evil temptress—something I would have expected from a thirties melodrama.

While the drama and romance are engaging, the pull here is the cast. Clare, Wray, Field, and Baxter are superior to the material (in ascending order), but it’s Rains that takes it to a higher level. It’s rare to see him in the lead, and a crime he didn’t get the top spot more often. He was arguably the greatest character actor of all time and all his skills work as well in the lead spot. He was famous for his voice, and he puts it to good use, purring or commanding, or sometimes both. It’s a pleasure just to hear him speak. He can go from calm and reasonable to wild and insane in a few seconds and I believe it all. Rains makes Maximus sympathetic, genuine, gentle, and fierce—a multilayered performance for a multilayered character. The film in general is a 2-Star, and Rains’s performance is a 4-Star, so I’ll call it a 3-Star picture.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

Mar 161935
 
two reels

Hermia (Olivia de Havilland) loves Lysander (Dick Powell), but is required by her father to marry Demetrius (Ross Alexander), who had recently had an affair with Helena (Jean Muir). The Duke (Ian Hunter), who is preparing to wed the queen of the Amazons, sides with the father and the four youths escape into the wood. In those same woods, a group of peasants, including Bottom (James Cagney) and Flute (Joe E. Brown), practice the play they are to perform at the wedding feast. The forest is filled with fairies, whose king, Oberon (Victor Jory), is fighting with Queen Titania (Anita Louise) over a boy she has stolen. He sends Puck (Mickey Rooney) to solve the problems of the human couples, but instead ends up confusing things further for both humans and fairies.

I wanted to love this film. It was a lavish production of a play that I love. It is filled with Warner Bros. A-list actors and is the first film of de Havilland, who had played Hermia on the stage. The score is Mendelssohn’s, adapted and arranged by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the greatest film composer, and this was the film that brought him to Hollywood when director Max Reinhardt insisted that only an artist of his quality could adapt the music.

But it just doesn’t work. Many of the mistakes are the common ones. The fairies are played by children, and children can seldom act, with the exception in this case of Mickey Rooney who was 14 but looked 11 and acted so hard I’m surprised the sets didn’t collapse. The dialog is performed too slowly (so that we may properly RESPECT every word). And the film is overlong, not only for the reason stated, but due to the addition of long dance sequences and establishing shots that never end. For years it was only available in a severely cut fashion, which I have not seen since I was a child so have forgotten, but I have to wonder if it is better as some cuts are needed.

The cast may have included the major stars of WB (with some odd omissions, like Bette Davis who Reinhardt requested), but they are wrong for their parts. Powell and Alexander play Lysander and Demetrius exactly the same, as smug bastards. Mind you Dick Powell was wrong for every role he was ever given. Similarly I never discovered Brown’s charms. De Havilland is lovely, but had not yet discovered the difference between stage and screen acting (nor had Reinhardt who’d directed her on stage and had never before worked on a sound picture, nor would he again). Jory is strangely stiff while Louise is beautiful, but generic. Cagney overacts almost as much as Rooney, but somehow comes off the best of the lot.

The cinematography is impressive, winning the only write-in Oscar, but it is something to appreciate more than enjoy. Yes, they painted a lot of trees to get the astounding look, but the look doesn’t help the play.

The whole thing drags such that by intermission (there’s an intermission card), I wished it was done. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy, but I never laughed. It is a romance, but I felt nothing for the lovers. Shakespeare has been poorly treated on film and this should have been something great, but is instead part of the pack of failed adaptations. I suggest seeking out a stage version.

 

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The Ghost Goes West (1935)

Mar 141935
 
two reels

Murdoch Glourie (Robert Donat) of the clan Glourie dies a ignoble death and is cursed by his father to exist as a ghost until he can humiliate a member of the clan MacClaggan. Two hundred years later, Donald Glourie (also Robert Donat) is forced to sell Glourie castle to a crude American businessman (Eugene Pallette) who ships it stone by stone to Florida.

I saw The Canterville Ghost (1944) long before The Ghost Goes West and I can’t but think of this film as a weak version of the other. The ghost plot is the same, as is the comparison between the long history of our friends across the pond with American obnoxiousness. But where all that is funny and emotional in the Canterville Ghost, here it is placid. The jokes are OK, but didn’t raise a chuckle from me. The emotions are simply absent.

Of course, since The Ghost Goes West was first, it is the one that set the precedent. The latter film took as much from the earlier one as it did from Oscar Wilde’s play, so I have to give it credit for that. Otherwise, it’s hard to give it credit of any kind. It isn’t bad, just ho hum. Pallette is good, as always, but if you want to watch him, might I suggest The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Mark of Zorro or My Man Godfrey. I did enjoy the cameo by a youngish Elsa Lanchester because I always enjoy her.

There’s a romantic sub-plot that doesn’t go anywhere and should either have been dropped or greatly expanded. The girl confuses the ghost with the man, but that causes surprisingly few problems and any true romance is absent.

Director Rene Clair also made the much better genre film, I Married A Witch.

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Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Feb 281935
 
five reels

The Monster (Boris Karloff), having survived the fire at the mill, wanders the nearby forest, hunted by villagers, until he meets a blind hermit (O.P. Heggie), who treats him well and teaches him to speak. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) also survived the fire, but weakened, and is being nursed back to health, both physically and mentally, by Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson). His recovery is interrupted by Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), who has had his own successes in creating life, and pressures Henry into working with him on a Bride (Elsa Lanchester) for the Monster.

Is Bride of Frankenstein the greatest horror movie ever made? No other film has a better claim to the title. It takes what was good in Frankenstein, and improves most every element as director James Whale was given complete freedom and he spread his wings (well, freedom except for the censors). If the first existed in a German expressionistic fantasy, now we’re in a twisted fun-house of telephone pole forests, labyrinthine cemeteries, and echoing halls. It’s beautiful and captivating. If before Karloff gave an award-worthy, sympathetic, pantomime performance, here he give an award-worthy performance, with speech, and it will tear your heart out. The old cast was good; the new cast is better (even when we have a repeat actor, as in the case of Dwight Frye who is playing a different sadistic assistant). Valerie Hobson is an Elizabeth I can care about, though Thesiger is the best addition. He dominates scenes even when he’s with the monster. His wickedly humorous Doctor Pretorius slides the film into dark comedy. And of course, there’s Lanchester, as both the Bride, and as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly.

Bride of Frankenstein begins with a prologue intended to calm censors and churches, with Mary Shelley spending an evening indoors with her husband and Lord Byron. She claims that her tale is “a moral lesson and the punishments that befell a mortal man that dared to emulate God.” Lanchester says this with a glint in her eye that makes it clear she has other ideas: darker, sexier, and more fun. The censors insisted that her lines suggesting that they were sexually a threesome (or more) and that they cared nothing for traditional rules of marriage be chopped, but Lanchester manages to get the idea across.

Is the rest of the movie a moral lesson? Well, not that moral. The Monster is shown even more sympathetically than in the first film, being compared to Christ. As for punishment, Henry, who is addicted to acting as a god, goes on to a happy life. It is the Monster who suffers. It’s always those society brands as monsters who suffer, and they deserve better.

However, there’s absolutely a lesson in Bride of Frankenstein. There’s so much going on that there are a string of them. Books have been written on the different meanings that can be taken from the film, and to some extent, most of them are true. Is it a comment on male jealousy of the act of creation (call it vagina envy)? Sure. It is a gay metaphor? Sure. Is it a criticism of organized religion, and perhaps faith generally? Sure. It is an examination of social class? Sure. And much more.

It’s topped off with a memorable score by Franz Waxman’s, a stirring and emotional work that gives each major character their own musical theme.

Bride of Frankenstein is exhilarating, thoughtful, haunting, and funny. It welcomes us all into a new world of gods and monsters.

The other six films in the series are are Frankenstein (1931), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943), and House of Frankenstein (1944), and House of Dracula (1945).

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The Black Room (1935)

Feb 251935
 
three reels

In a semi-Germanic, semi-British, semi-French Barony somewhere in Europe, the Baroness gives birth to twins, a dark happening as the family prophecy states that the family will end when a younger twin kills the elder in The Black Room (it needs to be pointed out to the rather dim lieutenant that twins don’t pop out side by side, but that was is born first). The Baron notes that it is even more likely in this case as the younger, birthed only a minute later, not only has lost out on a title, but he will be bitter because he was born with his right arm paralyzed. Years later Gregor (Boris Karloff), the elder twin, rules the barony as a fiend. Multiple peasant women have vanished and everything is run down. He has summoned his younger brother, Anton (also Karloff) to help him rule, or so he says. Gregor’s only ally is Col Paul Hassel (Thurston Hall), who’d been the dim lieutenant at their birth. He despises Gregor, but doesn’t want an open revolt from the peasants. Gregor wants to marry Hassel’s daughter, Thea (Marian Marsh), who is loved by brash Lt. Lussan (Robert Allen), though as both Hassel and the daughter hate him, that’s not likely. Gregor has a plan that involves his brother that will get him out of his current problems, and get him the girl.

High born twins were constantly getting in trouble in early Hollywood, with one killing the other or taking his place or sticking him in an iron mask. As such, this story doesn’t have much in the way of surprises. It’s difference comes in tone. Usually we get melodramas shifted into action & adventure. This time it is a melodrama shifted into horror. Instead of leaping and swordplay, there’s secret passageways, shadows, curses, suggestions of revenge from beyond the grave, and a pit filled with the dead.

More than tone and story, the draw is Karloff. When he was given a chance he was an excellent actor and here he was given three distinct parts to play: each of two brothers and one brother imitating the other. And he makes each of them different. As Gregor he is indolent, sneering, and cruel. His voice is hard and his posture is relaxed. As Anton he’s a bit of a fop, though genial, with a soft pleasant voice, and a much more controlled baring. And when he’s one pretending to be the other, you can always see the real one, though it is completely believable that others wouldn’t.

The sets for the great stone castle are wonderful, but what’s better is Karloff stomping around him them. Everything—sets, people, objects, and animals—is just support for Karloff. It’s a magnificent portrayal of evil and a damn fine one of kindness. Why was this guy never nominated for an Oscar? Oh yeah, because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences wouldn’t know art if it bit’em. This was the same year he starred in The Bride of Frankenstein, so the year belonged to him.

Of course when one man so rules a picture, everyone else pales, partly due to comparison, and partly due to lack of time spent on and development of their characters. This is a 68 minute film, so there’s only a few minutes for anyone else. Marsh was excellent in Svengali, but she’s just another interchangeable damsel here. Allen wouldn’t be noticeable at all except Lt. Lussan is a bit of an ass. Lieutenants really shouldn’t burst into their senior’s study, nor should they make wild claims about the future of their Colonel’s daughter. Apparently military discipline was a bit lax. His behavior didn’t put me on his side. Luckily Karloff knows how to make you hate him, so while I’m not with Luccan or the Hassels, I’m against Karloff.

The intensity does wane in the final act. I wanted more dastardly deeds, but things just soften up. I’m not here to see Karloff calmly and reasonably pull off his plan; I’m here for the Grand Guignol. The horror aspect dries up and the melodrama takes over. Since it is so predictable, it needed that edge.

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

Captain Blood (1935)

Feb 241935
 
four reels

Captain Blood marked the beginning of the golden age of Swashbucklers (yes, every genre has an era known as its golden age; just go with it).  Before it, the complications in recording sound while filming the movement inherent in the genre made these films impractical.  Sure, a silent Douglas Fairbanks could leap off a mast, but sound swashbuckling heroes had to settle for a lot of talking and just a little fencing in a confined space.  Pseudo-Swashbucklers like The Scarlet Pimpernel or my own listed The Count of Monte Cristo contained more sitting than acts of daring-do.  With Captain Blood, that changed, though it is a slower paced movie than most people remember.

It was a film of firsts.  It was the first “talkie” based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini. It was the first film with a score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who is arguably the greatest composer to ever work in Hollywood.   It was Errol Flynn’s first starring role, a part he picked up only after Robert Donat backed out due to poor health.  It boasts both the first pairing of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (they would have seven more) as well as the first swordfight between Flynn and Basil Rathbone (they would meet three years later in one of the great filmed swordfights in the finale of  The Adventures of Robin Hood).  It was also the first Swashbuckler for director Michael Curtiz and his first film with Flynn and de Havilland.  There would be many more.

It was Curtiz who made Captain Blood more than a B pirate romp.  He rarely receives the credit he deserves because he worked in the studio system.  More independent directors are lauded over for expressing their personal artistic vision without considering their actual skill to direct.  No one could get a better performance from an actor, choose the proper actor for a role (and he did fight for  actors when he knew he was right), and create a better shot, than Michael Curtiz.  No director has ever been as versatile.  He is responsible for White Christmas, Life with Father, Mildred Pierce, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Santa Fe Trail, and The Adventures of Robin Hood.  Musicals, melodrama, Film Noir, Comedy, romance, Swashbucklers, he was an expert in every genre.  For Captain Blood, his most important contribution was working with Errol Flynn.  Flynn was uncertain of himself when the film began; he had yet to develop his easy manor with stylized dialog.  Curtiz gave him the confidence that would allow him to become a genre star, and then re-shot the scenes where Flynn had been less-assured.  Curtiz’s style filled the movie.  He was part of the German expressionist movement and he put that to use.  The look of the early scenes, in the rebel’s house and in the courtroom, could have been pulled out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  Rooms are overlarge with a lack of decoration.  Walls seem to tilt in unexpected angles.  It is odd to watch, and quite effective.  The strangest scene in the movie, and one of the best, has slaves pushing round a large wheel.  Why?  It doesn’t appear to do anything, at least nothing the audience can detect.  It is just a representation of enslavement and is reminiscent of the clocks from Metropolis.

The plot of Captain Blood plays out less like a single story and more like a series of episodes.  Part 1: good Dr. Blood goes to the medical aid of a rebel, is arrested, and sentenced to a life of slavery.  Part 2: Blood lives life as a slave at Port Royal, where he uses a whining governor and two clownish doctors to plot an escape, but ends up stealing a Spanish war ship.  Part 3: The slaves become rollicking pirates.  Part 4: Blood makes an alliance with Capt. Levasseur, an “evil” French pirate.  Part 5:  Romance and sexual tensions on the high seas as Blood and Arabella Bishop (Olivia de Havilland) mix their love with pride.  Part 6: Political changes turn the pirates into heroes.  The film changes tone dramatically with each part; some are in deadly earnest while others are nearer to comedy.

Captain Blood holds up as well as most golden age Swashbucklers to changing times, with a few exceptions, primarily involving bold text emblazoned on the screen.  I’m sure the viewer wasn’t supposed to laugh when the words “Blood
Blood
Blood” popped up, but it reads like a comic.  Even more amusing is terminology used to depict the pirates: we are told that the pirate city is “where easy money consorted with easy virtue” and that Captain Levasseur is a “hard fighting, hard-gaming French rascal.”  Consorted?  Easy Virtue?  A rascal?  I would love to hear an evening news cast describe a mass murderer as a rascal, perhaps one in search of easy virtue.

Is it a good film?  Yes.  But as I mentioned, it is a film of firsts and it feels like it.  Everything is there to make a great movie, but none if it quite manages it.  Flynn pulls off the cocky champion, but he would do it far better in The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Seahawk.  Korngold’s score is top notch by Hollywood standards, but with only a few weeks to prepare it, it does not reach the heights of those he wrote a few years later.  Rathbone’s antagonist pirate is entertaining for the small part he plays in the film, but is a shadow of his later villains.  Of course he’s not helped by having to use a comical French accent. The clowns and jokes that are a hallmark of Swashbucklers are all there, but the bumbling doctors and the churchman who recites Bible verses after each attack make me wince more than laugh.  These would also be done better in later films.  Plus the studio hadn’t quite got down the pacing of an adventure yarn or the skill to disguise obviously fake backdrops.  It is hard to beat the climatic sea battle, which is surprising as Curtiz had no full sized ships and only one deck set to work with.  He had a few small ship models and footage from the silent versions of Captain Blood and The Seahawk to reuse, and yet with some smoke and a huge cast of pirate extras, Curtiz makes it real.  Captain Blood is a good film, but is more important as the basis for the films to follow.

The Production Code

The filmmakers of the ‘30s and 40s were masters of sneaking in scenes or concepts that the censors would have blocked, had they recognized what was on the screen.  With Captain Blood, the object of such attention was androgynous Jeremy Pitt.  How should we take such lines as Col. Bishop asking what is between Pitt and Blood, or Pitt’s statement that he has been watching it go “in and out, in and out”?  Pitt’s whipping adds in a touch of B&D. It’s all implication, which is how it was done then, and makes the film just a little more fun.

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Maniac (1934)

Jul 241934
 
two reels

Dr. Meirschultz (Horace B. Carpenter) is a mad scientist. Make that a wacky scientist. He yells and leaps around and yells some more. He’s also working on serum for raising the dead. Helping him, due to a combination of debt and blackmail, is Don Maxwell (William Woods), a vaudeville performer with top makeup skills who is nearly as loony as his boss. When their first attempt to bring a corpse to life goes well, the good doctor makes the perfectly rational suggestion (well, he yells his suggestion) that Maxwell kill himself so they can resurrect him. Maxwell takes this poorly, and instead shoots the doctor, and the whole subplot of resurrecting the dead exits the picture. When a mental patient shows up at the door, Maxwell sees no alternative but to masquerade as the doctor and treat him (injecting water, “because that will do no harm”). There’s also something about his wife learning about inherited money and a neighbor who skins cats for fur. And then from time to time we are given a helpful written lesson on mental illness, because
 Why not?

Ah, pure sleaze! I don’t mean porn. Porn is wholesome by comparison, and also is more concerned with quality as pornographers want you to see the bits you’re gazing at. Sleeze-makers don’t care and Dwain Esper was the master of sleeze. A conman, he won some equipment so decided to make films that would be shown outside of normal distribution channels, where the production code and religious zealots couldn’t reach him. Often his movies masqueraded as informational, usually on some taboo subject. And it’s one of those that is his legacy: Reefer Madness. Well, if you know the subtlety and good taste in that film, then you know what you’re up for here. But as he is director as well as producer on Maniac, the filmmaking skill is even lower.

With a script written by his wife, Esper offers up whatever he could shove in front of his camera. Acting was of no concern, nor were sets. However, girls exercising in their underwear as well as the occasional peek-a-boo nipple were important. So was a man gurgling and spitting up foam, two women whacking each other with boards as they rip clothing, and our hero eating a cat’s eye. Of note, the last one was fake (something that needs to be specified in a film like this), however, there was a real backyard cat farm that skinned them for fur; It’s unclear if the location in the film is that actual place—I’d bet against it, but, this is Esper, so maybe.

Maxwell has visions throughout the film that look far more interesting and professional than anything else. That’s because they are stolen images from much better silent pictures (variously reported to be from Benjamin Christensen’s HĂ€xan, Fritz Lang’s Siegfried, and Guido Brignone’s Maciste in Hell; I didn’t consider it worthwhile to investigate it for myself).

As would become Esper’s frequent ploy, Maniac pretends to lecture on the important subject of mental illness. It does this by having intertitles pop up with textbook definitions of various mental issues, or just to tell us that fear is bad. These appear randomly, sometimes between scenes, and sometimes right in the middle of “the action.”

When Maniac didn’t sell a lot of tickets, Esper retitled it Sex Maniac, after which it did much better. Shocker. With any title, it has been called the worst film of all time, and like most films that acquire that designation, it is more often said to be so bad it is good. I can’t use the word “good” with anything connected to this film, but it is amusing.

 Horror, Mad Scientists, Poverty Row, Reviews Tagged with:

House of Mystery (1934)

Jun 121934
 
two reels
House of Mystery

Twenty years ago, obnoxious treasure-hunter John Prendergast (Clay Clement) insults and attacks a Hindu temple, and is cursed. He makes away with two million dollars in temple gold. In “current” day, his investors and their heirs find him, and want their cut. He agrees, but only if they stay the week in his house to see the curse in action. The house fills with an absentminded professor and his abrasive wife (Harry Bradley, Mary Foy), an insurance salesman (Ed Lowry), a hypochondriac and her spiritualist companion (Dale Fuller, Fritzi Ridgeway), a gambler (George ‘Gabby’ Hayes), their lawyer (Sam Godfrey), Prendergast himself, his Hindu housekeeper/dancer (Joyzelle Joyner), his cute nurse (Verna Hillie), a plumber (John Sheehan), and a gorilla. To no one surprise, people begin to die.

Just what kind of legal advice were people getting in the ’30s? If my lawyer suggested I live in some weirdo’s house for a week that had avoided paying me what he owes me for years, I’d get a new lawyer.

Poverty Row loved Old Dark House movies. They also had a strange fondness for killer ape flicks, so here we have both. Two years earlier we’d gotten The Monster Walks, with a angry chimp in a house. Luckily House of Mystery doesn’t take itself seriously because the stupidest thing on hand isn’t the gorilla. I won’t say what takes the crown as there are so many options.

I call this a “light” film rather than a comedy because nothing is funny. I’ve no doubt the filmmakers intended some lines to be jokes, but they didn’t put enough effort in to make the gags work. So it ends up as fluffy nothingness. It isn’t boring, nor is it engaging, People die. People have a sĂ©ance. People discuss insurance. It all has the same weight. It is amusing how little the characters seem to care that bodies are piling up around them.

Some might cringe at the Orientalist stuff at the beginning, though I rather like it, particularly the temple and dancing girl. Sure it fetishize the mysterious East, but the “Asians” (I assume Indians; the tile card simply reads “Asia–1913”) are the good guys and the colonialists are depicted clearly as slime.

After you’ve watched a dozen other Old Dark House films, give this one a shot, but not before.

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The Ghost Walks (1934)

Apr 181934
 
two reels

On a dark and stormy night, as is normal in these sorts of pictures, theater producer Herman Wood (Richard Carle) and his secretary Homer Erskine (Johnny Arthur) are being driven by playwright Prescott Ames (John Miljan) to his home when a fallen tree forces them to take refuge in a nearby house, owned by psychologist Dr. Kent (Henry Kolker). Also within are the butler Jarvis (Wilson Benge), Gloria Shaw (June Collyer), who happens to be Ames’s fiancĂ©e, Terry Gray (Donald Kirke), who also has designs on Gloria, and Terry’s widowed sister Beatrice (Eve Southern), who is being treated by Dr. Kent and speaks to her dead husband. All are marooned there for the night when spooky things begin to happen, however, it turns out almost no one is who they say they are and a completely different mystery and danger are about to appear.

We’re in standard Old Dark House territory here, though with the comic bits turned up and the thriller ones turned down. Quirky characters are stuck in a spooky mansion, with murder and sinister happenings all around, but it is clear from the start that things will be Scooby-Do’d in the end. There are secret passageways, painting where the eyes move, and people vanishing. There is a nice twist at the end of “the first act” that sets this apart from its brethren, though less is done with it than I would have expected (avoid other reviews as almost everyone gives away the twist). Otherwise, everything unfolds as expected.

Ames is an amiable enough protagonist, but most of the fun comes from the comic bickering of puffed-up Wood and effeminate Erskine. That sort of routine often annoys me, but here it is written well and it doesn’t wear out its welcome.

The dialog is a step above the norm (mainly the jokes), as is the acting. The house looks nice enough, but there isn’t enough of it. We keep getting the same angles of the same rooms when we should be seeing strange new locations, or at least a new setup for the camera. Clearly there wasn’t enough money to create the needed sets.

This is a nice Old Dark House movie, so if you are in the mood for one, this will do nicely. But there’s no reason to choose it over others in the sub-genre, and is more a film to watch if it happens to come on TV than to seek out.

 

Other Poverty Row horror films from director Frank R. Stayer: Tangled Destinies (1932), The Monster Walks (1932), The Vampire Bat (1933), Condemned to Live (1935).

 Dark House, Horror, Poverty Row, Reviews Tagged with:

El hombre bestia o las aventuras del CapitĂĄn Richard (1934)

Apr 081934
 
one reel
beastmant

WWI Capt. Richard (Saverio Yaquinto) takes off in his biplane to scout enemy positions. He’s shot down and ends up lost in a jungle, where he turns savage, which includes growing some rather unlikely globs of hair that seam glued to his shoulders. Eventually another pilot lands in a clearing in the jungle and Richard strangles him and steals the plane. He runs out of gas and lands near a mad scientist’s house. The scientist immediately injects him with a “diabolic” drug that brings out the lust in Richard, who escapes and begins kidnapping local women and taking them to his cave. Who will stop this human beast? Well, I can assure you it won’t be the unruly sailors who are hired for the job and die really easily.

El hombre bestia {The Beast Man} is Argentina’s first horror film, and according to Janne Wass on Scifist, there was not another for eight years (which saved me all kinds of time searching). There’s a solid argument that it isn’t a horror film, but an action flick modeled after American serials (the second part of the title is Or The Adventures of Captain Richard). There’s a better argument that it isn’t any kind of film at all. Made not by an experienced filmmaker, but by journalist C.Z. Soprani, El hombre bestia appears to be the result of a hobbyist playing around in his free time, not someone seriously trying to make a motion picture, and then trying to make a few pesos at small-town theaters that weren’t able to get real movies and in private screenings. With that title it could attract a few horror fans or a few adventure fans, and once they’ve paid, it doesn’t really matter what you show them if you aren’t planning on sticking around.

El hombre bestia was considered a lost film, which makes it sound far more important than it is. No one considers the video I took at a convention in 1999 a lost film just because I don’t have it any more. No one it seemed, including Soprani, bothered keeping it around. But in the years it was missing, it gained a mystique. It was, after all, Argentina’s first horror film, so it must be significant. There’s even a documentary about it now, which is massively better than the film itself; its main weakness is having a subject not worthy of a documentary. And it turns out someone—a child of one of the amateur actors—had a copy that got ported to VHS (and in so doing, destroyed the film) as you might an old home movie. So now we can all see a poor copy of a film that doesn’t deserve that much.

Soprani had gathered a few non-actors together, pointed his camera in their general direction and then they moved around, some like Yaquinto, energetically, but mostly slowly and with no real idea what they were doing. Well, Soprani had no idea, so why should they?

Argentina had a small silent film industry primarily in Buenos Aires, but things took off when sound arrived. It was a lot easier for Hollywood to dominate non-English speaking countries when language wasn’t in the equation. So by 1934 Argentina was pumping out Spanish language pictures with tango soundtracks. As El hombre bestia can barely be called a movie, it bucked this trend. It’s essentially a silent picture, complete with intertitles, that occasionally has a scene with dialog—dubbed after filming. None of those involve Captain Richard, who runs about abducting women without even sound effects—just a loud classical score. One of the more amusing aspects, and one that would make a great drinking game, is how the booming music will cut out when we enter a talkie moment, and as soon as the dialog is complete, the music returns.

The editing is
odd. Best I can tell, scenes often start or stop with a piece of cardboard slowly being pulled across the camera lens. It’s a technique whose time has never come.

I’ve seen others say that Soprani used a great deal of “stock footage” but that’s being too charitable. A more accurate description is that he stole chunks from other films and stuck them in his. The only good looking scenes are the charging soldiers and dueling planes at the beginning, all of which was lifted from real movies. I do, however, believe that the pointless beach scene could be stock footage, although I think it is more likely Soprani’s family vacation film.

It’s unfair to call El hombre bestia a horrible film because it isn’t a film. It’s a sad little joke, or a con, or something just fiddled around with. However, it can be amusing to watch in the right state of mind, which would drunk.

 Classic Horror, Foreign Language, Horror Tagged with:
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