Foster on Film » Page 131

Doctor X (1932)

Oct 081932

When the police inform Dr. Xavier (Lionel Atwill) that they suspect someone from his Academy of Surgical Research to be the cannibalistic Full Moon Killer, he requests time to do his own “scientific” inquiry, to avoid adverse publicity. However, investigative reporter Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy) overhears the police, and writes a story, forcing Dr. Xavier to take his four research scientists and his daughter, Joan (Fay Wray), to a forbidding cliff-side mansion where he carries out his peculiar experiment in order to discover the killer.

With the success of the Universal horror films, Dracula and Frankenstein, Warner Bros decided to try their luck with genre films. So, adapting a light stage mystery by adding more frightening elements, they created this early and atypical Mad Scientist picture. An old style “Tales of Terror” type story, Doctor X is a beautifully filmed but highly flawed gem.

On the beautiful side is the 2-strip Technicolor that creates a mysterious mood. Pre-dating full Technicolor, Doctor X is the first horror film in color. Using only red and green, the film looks like a series of illustrations. The sets are impressive, as is the camera work. It was directed by Michael Curtiz (The Walking Dead, Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, Casablanca, We’re No Angels), who gets my vote as the most underrated director. With a German expressionistic style, he could make any scene interesting and was a master of pacing. He also understood actors, and could get the best from them. His touch is in evidence on every frame of this film.

Basically a mystery, it takes five mad scientists (they are all loony, though most aren’t evil, just far too devoted to their work), one cute girl, a reporter, a butler, and a maid, sticks them together in a house, where they can determine the identity of the killer. It was a structure used over and over in the ’30s and ’40s. But instead of the reliable detective figuring it out, it is up to Dr. Xavier and his absurd tests. While his methods lack both scientific integrity and a shred of thought, they do make for great cinematic images. In the final experiment, each scientist is chained to one of the well-spaced, throne-like chairs, facing a stage where Fay Wray lies on a table in her lingerie. Tall thin tubes of red liquid indicate the stress level of each of the scientists, and it is all bathed in green light. Now that’s a cool scene.

While plot holes abound, they do little to take away from the effectiveness of the movie. The same cannot be said of Lee Tracy and his vaudevillian newspaper reporter. His inane antics (he walks around with a hand buzzer) belong in a completely different kind of film (that’s not true, they don’t belong anywhere). Similar, though considerably less annoying, characters pop up in a range of ’30s movies; it is a cultural curiosity that such a man was considered desirable by studio producers. I feel confident that no woman was excited by anyone remotely resembling Lee Taylor in reality.

It was followed by the sequel in name only, The Return of Doctor X.

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

The Old Dark House (1932)

Oct 041932

A severe storm drives first Philip and Margaret Waverton and their friend Roger Penderel (Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart, and Melvyn Douglas), and then wealthy Sir William Porterhouse and dancehall girl Gladys Perkins (Charles Laughton and Lilian Bond), to ask for shelter in an old dark house. They are ungraciously greeted by prim Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), his nearly deaf and righteous sister, Rebecca (Eva Moore), and their brutish butler, Morgan (Boris Karloff). They try to make the best of the situation, but there are too many secrets and too much danger connected to the Femm family for comfort.

The Old Dark House is the signature James Whale film. His style—his mastery of shadow and movement, control of everything in the frame, and exuberant and quirky sense of humor—is visible in his classics Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man, but The Old Dark House has nothing but Whale’s style. The plot is nearly nonexistent. People are marooned at an out-of-the-way house. Events, generally unconnected to other events, happen. The end. It’s odd to think that the film was based on a novel, as novels normally require stories.

Whale presents a stream of fascinating images. Half of the cells in the film could be plucked out and hung in a gallery. Nothing is haphazard. Candles are precisely placed. Actors stand as if posed for Rembrandt. All movement is tightly choreographed, producing a near balletic effect. Atmosphere is everything.

The characters are much of the mood. The cast was remarkable. Fascinating voices abound. A young Charles Laughton (yes, Laughton was young once) rattles off a sharp, Welsh accent while a young Raymond Massey (yes, he was young as well) just does Massey. Thesiger warms up for his role as the effete Dr. Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein, but his Horace Femm is not powerful, but a weak-willed prisoner of his own home. He is still flamboyant, and manages to make the line “Have a potato,” hilarious. Melvyn Douglas brought his normal dashing, impertinent tones. Gloria Stuart, known now as the old woman from Titanic, didn’t have an unusual or lyrical voice, but she was a beautiful woman who could scream and run down stairs with the best of them. Unfortunately, Karloff, who had the best voice of all, is given little to do and nothing to say as a savage mute.

While The Old Dark House is a stylish picture, style is all it has and it isn’t enough. Any moment works wonderfully, but as a whole, it gets tiresome. There’s plenty of weird behavior, but little of it is funny. With no real story to follow, it becomes a pointless exercise in skill. It is more interesting than enjoyable.

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

The Thirteenth Guest (1932)

Sep 231932

Thirteen years ago a dinner party is interrupted when the master of the house, John Morgan, dies. Only 12 of the expected 13 guests had arrived and his Last Will and Testament leaves the bulk of the estate to the missing 13th guest. Now Marie Morgan (Ginger Rogers), on her 21st birthday, has been sent to the old house which has been closed all these years. She’s electrocuted and her body left in the chair she occupied at the dinner. Police Captain Ryan (J. Farrell MacDonald) and his mentally deficient sidekick Gump (Paul Hurst) are put on the case and Ryan calls in obnoxious womanizing private Detective Phil Winston (Lyle Talbot). Then a second murder is committed by a black-robed figure, and it seems that someone plans to murder all of the still-living dinner guests in the order they sat at the table. To confuse things, Marie shows up alive; the first victim had been surgically altered to look like Marie.

Ah, Monogram Studios, king of Poverty Row. This is yet another of the many, many Dark House mysteries that they churned out in the 1930s, this one including a villain who’s straight out of the serials. It’s pushing it to call this horror or even an Old Dark House film since they keep leaving it and roaming about in the sunshine, but there’s secret passageways and murders, and plenty of screaming, so close enough.

This is a cheap flick, and it looks it. We’re talking bottom basement camera work and below bottom lighting. I hope you don’t want to actually see what is going on. Rogers and Talbot aren’t turning in their best work, and they are the only ones who give the impression of that they do this for a living.

It doesn’t seem any money was set aside for the script either, but then what charm it has might come from how stupid it is, and I’m not talking about the non-stop sexist sludge coming from Winston, who we are supposed to like. The fiendish plots (there are two of them) don’t make any sense. Why is the killer using such an elaborate method? Why is he dressed like a second-rate super villain? And why didn’t the script make Winston a police detective instead of a PI?. Private detectives cannot give commands to police officers and get judges to do their bidding. Unless the law has changed a whole lot in 80+ years, I think there’s something wrong here. But the film is easier to take when everything is silly. And this is one very silly film. I laughed at it, which beats sleeping through it. And that’s the key. It isn’t boring. It’s light, stupid fun, and not a horrible way to spend an afternoon, as long as you aren’t paying for it.

This made enough money for Rogers and Talbot to appear in a follow-up mystery, A Shriek in the Night, playing different characters. It was remade in ’43 as The Mystery of the 13th Guest.

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

Tangled Destinies (1932)

Sep 141932

A small passenger plane makes an emergency landing in the middle of nowhere to avoid a storm. The passengers take refuge in a large, empty house. While romances and minor intrigues occupy some of the passengers, one is murdered. It turns out he was carrying diamonds. The security guard hired to protect the stones wants to find the killer while most of the others are more interested in dinner and the storm.

Low budget director Frank R. Strayer is at it again with another Poverty Row Old Dark House film. This one is even harder to call horror than the others, and reasonably hard to sit through. Strayer wasn’t given much to work with, and unfortunately he didn’t have the skill to stretch a buck. The sets are drab square box rooms with the camera parked on one side. The design is boring as is the cinematography. Strayer could bring a little extra to stylized horror period pieces, but the closer a story was to reality, the less he could do with it. It’s funny that he finally found his niche directing Blonde movies.

The little known actors are game, but seem to have been given little help. The many long pauses turn the whole thing to sludge, and since the dialog has no flare, I didn’t need more time to dwell on what anyone was saying.

There’s a ghost of a good idea in the elderly woman who spends her time knitting and watching everyone else, getting involved in two romances as well as the discovery of the murderer, but it isn’t developed well enough. Perhaps if she’d been the lead, instead of just another of the thirteen… But I just as easily could say, “Perhaps if the script had been better…” The ending is both silly and uninteresting, though there’s no reason for an average viewer to stick around till then.

Strayer’s other Dark House films are The Monster Walks (1932),and The Ghost Walks (1934). He also directed the non-Dark House horror films The Vampire Bat (1933) and Condemned to Live (1935)

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

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1932)

Aug 171932

Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill), a master artist of wax figures, is crippled by a fire that destroyed is greatest works. Unable to use his hands, he now oversees a group of sculptors, but his goal is always to recreate what was lost. Luck comes his way when he sees Charlotte (Fay Wray), who would be the perfect model for his long lost wax figure of Marie Antoinette. Reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) is investigating a murder that also involves body snatching, and she believes that Igor’s wax museum has clues that will break the case.

I love two-strip Technicolor. It produces a dreamlike look that is fitting for horror and fantasy. In the proper hands, it can be used to produce stunning images, and Michael Curtiz, the master director of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, and The Sea Hawk had the proper hands. He was an expert of all genres and in all styles. Mystery of the Wax Museum was his follow-up to Doctor X (1931). Both are two-strip Technicolor horror films focusing on a reporter uncovering a mystery, and starring Lionel Atwill and costarring Fay Wray. Unfortunately, only B&W prints of Mystery of the Wax Museum were available for thirty years and the color one that was finally discovered was a copy in Jack Warner’s personal collection. So it is less vibrant than Doctor X. It’s a good looking film, but I can only imagine how beautiful it once was.

There’s no flaws in casting, but it is the cinematography that stands out. Even with the faded film, there are cells that should be hung as art, particularly those of the evil lair. But the script doesn’t match the look. We spend too much time with the reporter. While initially amusing, she grates quickly. Worse, she spends a lot of time away from the main action, including in two poorly conceived romance subplots.

It was remade as House of Wax in 1953, with Vincent Price taking over for the burnt artist. The later version improves on the first by decreasing the reporter/mystery side of things, and increasing the horror. But it loses out both in direction and in the marvelous expressionistic sets. So I’ll call it a draw, but suspect if the original negatives of this version were ever found, it would slip ahead.

Lionel Atwill played mad doctors or police inspectors in and string of horror films, including The Vampire Bat (1933), Mark of the Vampire (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Man Made Monster (1941), The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Night Monster (1942), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945).

Artists, Classic Horror, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

Aug 161932

Big game hunter Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea) is sailing back from a hunt with his wealthy friends when their yacht hits a reef and sinks. Rainsford alone makes it to the shore of a small island, which is inhabited by hunting enthusiast Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks) and his servants (Noble Johnson, Steve Clemente, Dutch Hendrian). It also is currently acting as sanctuary for Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray) and her brother Martin Trowbridge (Robert Armstrong), survivors from a previous wreck. While it seems friendly to Rainsford, Eve tries to warn him that there’s something sinister going on, and that the secretive Zaroff may be a murderer.

How many versions of this are there? I’d seen 6 or 7 as episodes of TV shows before I read the short story, and I did that in junior high. IMDB lists 19 film versions, but there are many, many more when you include television. It’s a fun, quick little story and directors Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack took an important lesson from the literary source and made a rapid fire movie. It runs only a touch over an hour and there’s no slow moments and no wasted time. We zip through a fearful chat to a ship wreck to a shark attack to a strange castle to a menacing henchman and on it goes.

The filmmakers also had the benefit of free sets, and good ones. Production overlapped King Kong’s, with all it’s lovely jungle sets just sitting there. The Most Dangerous Game also shares much of its cast and crew with Kong. Fay Wray is lovely and Leslie Banks makes for a proper wide-eyed sadistic loon. And it’s all shot with style.

The fast pace is needed as the flaws would overwhelm the picture if it slowed down even a little. Joel McCrea was a limited actor, and he was given no help here either by the directors or by his character, which is a generic, overly upright he-man. That makes it hard enough to root for him, but add in that Rainsford’s a rich kid that gets his kicks by murdering animals and its tough to choose between him and Zaroff. At least Zaroff has done some minor self-examination. And Martin’s drunk routine is way over the top, existing less to fit the story or character, or show how drunkenness works, and more to push producer Merian C. Cooper’s anti-alcohol views. Finally, there’s Eve. Fay Wray comes off as the best actor of the main cast, and she has some wonderful moments, but at random times, Eve acts incredibly stupidly, basically to fulfill her role as the incapable damsel in need of rescue.

All of that is pretty bad, but the viewing experience is better than it should be. Before I really get a chance to be annoyed by any one the problems, we’re on to something else, and then to something else again. Sometimes, speed saves.

Note: I’m amused that this is one of the few cases I’ve seen of white-face. Johnson was a black actor, here made up to look like a Russian Cossack.

Classic Horror, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

The Monster Walks (1932)

Aug 141932

A strange scientist dies suddenly and his will is read ridiculously quickly in his old dark house on a stormy night. attending the reading, or just hanging around nearby, are the dead man’s odd lawyer (Sidney Bracy), his paralyzed and very suspicious brother (Sheldon Lewis), his two plotting servants (Martha Mattox, Mischa Auer), his constantly fainting and screaming daughter (Vera Reynolds), her he-man fiancée (Rex Lease), and their raciest-caricature chauffeur (Willie Best). There’s also a chimpanzee in the basement that hates the daughter and whose mate was killed by the scientist in an experiment. Of course bad things will happen.

It’s another randomly titled Old Dark House film from prolific Poverty Row director Frank R. Stayer [Tangled Destinies (1932), The Vampire Bat (1933), The Ghost Walks (1934), Condemned to Live (1935)], and we get all the expected elements: mysterious sounds, secret passageways, hands reaching out over sleeping girls, no one believing claims of being attacked, and murders. And we get an angry chimp. Two years later in House of Mystery, a killer gorilla in the house was presented in a joking way, but The Monster Walks is very serious. Well, it’s very serious except for the raciest stylings of Willie Best. His “Yes’m master” routine is never amusing and drags down any film he is in, but at least he has only a small role this time.

It’s that earnestness that’s the real flaw. A lot of what goes on is silly by nature, and several actors are so over-the-top in their “I’m eeeevvvvil” ways that they really should be winking at the audience. It’s too goofy to be so humorless. The characters actually sit around and discuss how the chimpanzee might be making plans and using secret passageways. This isn’t realistic drama folks, and he ought to make that clear. It wants to be both horror and drama, and can’t manage either.

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

The Phantom of Crestwood (1932)

Aug 101932

High-class escort Jenny Wren (Karen Morley) intends to retire after blackmailing four of her past clients: banker Priam Andes (H.B. Warner), Eddie Mack (Richard “Skeets” Gallagher), William Jones (Gavin Gordon), and Senatorial candidate Herbert Walcott (Robert McWade). She instructs Andes to invite the other three and their significant others to his lodge for a party, which she’ll attend along with her maid. By coincidence, her sister Ester (Anita Louise) returns from school that day with her fiancé, who happens to be Andes’s nephew. so they head to the lodge as well, which causes Andes’s estranged, family-obsessed sister (Pauline Frederick) to show up. The final invited guest is the frail Mr. Vayne, who has a crush on Jenny. But there’s also uninvited guests. Cary Curtis (Ricardo Cortez) has been following Wren all day. He’s a gangster who’s been hired to steal some letters from her that are incriminating to yet another wealthy client, and he’s brought along a few local thugs as backup. When Wren is murdered, Curtis realizes the police will frame him for it, so he plays detective, frantically trying to find the killer before the police can arrive.

Well, they don’t sell them like this any more. As a marketing gimmick, the story was broadcast as a radio serial with the last episode missing. Then they asked listeners to send in their ideas for who killed Jenny Wren for a prize. However, there was no promise that a submitted ending would actually make it into the movie. The film actually begins with Graham McNamee, a radio superstar at the time, standing before an orchestra at what appears to be NBC’s radio studio, explaining the contest in tones that only game show hosts can match and asking “Who killed Jenny Wren.” Then he fades away and the film begins in proper.

The Phantom of Crestwood must have really resonated with Depression-era audiences. Our heroes are Jenny Wren, the blackmailing call girl, and Cary Curtis, the criminal detective. Both are smart, likable, and reasonable, and both are sticking it to the man. They are we the people, getting by as best they can in a world that is against them. The others, except for our two babes who are too immature for the real world, are wealthy elites, and are hypocrites and scum, cheating the masses. Two of them are directly connected to the stock market crash, one a banker and the other a politician who was conning people into “selling short.” The Phantom of Crestwood has something to say, and it’s “Eat The Rich.”

All the Old Dark House tropes are here, used with a bit more panache than usual. The house is spooky enough, but a secret passageway, the phantom, and a death mask give it an extra kick. The storm creates the proper backdrop, with a lovely mud slide keeping everyone in place. It’s all good, as is the story, but The Phantom of Crestwood beats most of its competition on character. It’s Wren and Curtis (and Morley and Cortez) that make this one of the better mysteries and horror films of the decade, though I also give points to the stylish spin that takes us into multiple flashbacks, and those flashbacks have the added advantage of keeping Wren in the movie. It’s the perfect role for Cortez, who always mixed charm and sleaze. Here it fits. Morley is even better, powerful and sexy. She could have been one of the great stars, but studio politics derailed her career and then the Black List killed it. It’s a shame, but we’ve got her here.

If you have any interest in mysteries or Old Dark House films, The Phantom of Crestwood is a film you will want to see.

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

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

Jul 221932

Medical students Pierre Dupin (Leon Waycoff) and Paul (Bert Roach) take in a traveling carnival with their girlfriends, Camille L’Espanay (Sidney Fox) and Camille’s sister (Betty Ross Clarke). There they see a gorilla, named Erik, kept by the severe Dr.Mirakle (Bela Lugosi). At the end of his lecture the four “youths” approach the cage and Erik takes Camille’s bonnet. It’s clear he likes her, which makes Mirakle interested in her. He’s a mad scientist who goes out at night, and with the help of his strange assistant, Janos (Noble Johnson), kidnaps women and injects them with gorilla blood in the hopes of proving a connection between humans and apes. So far, it hasn’t gone well, leaving only dead women floating in the river, but perhaps Camille will be a closer link.

One factor that elevates ‘30s horror above most that has been made since is German expressionism. These movies were not meant to be taken literally. Sets were built and backgrounds painted that adhered to dream logic, not reality. Rooms would be oddly shaped, large but lacking in furniture, with sloping ceilings. Building and whole cityscapes resemble something out of Lovecraft. And scripts would follow this. It didn’t matter what the evil scientist was doing, only that it gave the viewer the feeling of something deeply wrong.

Murders in the Rue Morgue is all expressionism, and for a change, that not only includes the dark and sinister, but also the bright and happy. The romance is presented with flowers and swings and recitations of poetry, none of which match how it would be in reality, but which do feel like love. Of course more of the expressionism is in the darkness, with misshapen buildings and peculiar angles (shot by the masterful Karl Freund). The characters and script keep to that dream-state (you didn’t think you should be taking a gorilla kidnapper literally, did you?). Lugosi is over-the-top as the obsessed scientist, as he should be. Janos is an unexplained and unexplainable fiend. And the torture scene shows little, but feels far more intense than anything in Saw.

I was pleasantly surprised by our young hero and damsel in distress. Universal studios had difficulties with these sorts of roles. Take a look at Dracula and The Mummy; the “heroes” are so bland I am continually disappointed that the monsters don’t shred them. Dupin and Camille pale next to Mirakle and his team, but they don’t fade away. There’s some life and energy to them, enough for me to root for them.

The only real problem with Murders in the Rue Morgue is that there isn’t enough of it. It is too short, but also it sometimes pulls back when it should plow ahead. And to explain that I’m stuck doing what I hate which is repeating what so many others have said, but I’d be remiss in skipping over the production of this film, so here goes. Murders in the Rue Morgue was set as a low-budget film, using the title and a few bits and pieces from the Poe story, but with a brand new story. Eventually George Melford (director the Spanish language Dracula) was given the job of director. Robert Florey was set to direct Frankenstein, from his own script, with Lugosi planned for the role of the doctor. Studio bigwigs, meaning primarily Carl Laemmle Jr., wanted Lugosi for the part of the monster, which made neither Florey nor Lugosi happy. It didn’t matter though as James Whale was currently a golden boy at Universal thanks to his money-making work in melodramas, so he was given his choice of projects and he took Frankenstein, booting Florey to Murders in the Rue Morgue, which booted Melford onto a couple bottom barrel films. Whale wanted Karloff, so Lugosi was booted down to the lesser project as well. However, Florey fought off some poor suggestions from producers, managed to increase the budget, and got Murders in the Rue Morgue made his way—made but not released. Once it was finished, the studio panicked from the gruesome murders and tortures and cut between 10 and 21 minutes, now lost. They also shuffled the scenes about moving the kidnapping and murder of the prostitute from the opening to later in the picture.

Murders in the Rue Morgue is a good picture, but it might have been more. 20 minutes of additional ghastliness would have done the trick.

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

The Mummy (1932)

Jul 081932

An archaeological dig, lead by Sir Joseph Whemple (Arthur Byron), unearths the mummy of Imhotep (Boris Karloff). A scroll buried with the mummy brings him back to life. Years later, Imhotep, now masquerading as modern Egyptian Ardath Bey, attempts to bring back his ancient love who has been reincarnated as Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), while Sir Joseph’s son Frank (David Manners) and occultist Doctor Muller (Edward Van Sloan) fight to stop him and save the girl who will be lost if he succeeds.

Of the original Universal Classic Monsters films, The Mummy is the most difficult for modern audiences to get into. While it is a Gothic tale, it is also rooted in 1932. The public—and press—had gone nuts over the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 and discussions of “the curse” were all the rage at cocktail parties. People took it seriously, and so this movie is presented seriously: no lighthearted moments or comic relief. Real people from the Tutankhamun excavation had died recently, perhaps—the papers suggested—from a real curse, so jokes would be in poor taste. And as this horror was in a faraway land, but current, The Mummy is made to look faraway, but current, with a flapper as our damsel in distress, and the then-popular slow melodrama as the story structure. For the details of that story, Dracula had been a big hit, so Universal saw no reason not to reuse its plot—placing it in Egypt was enough of a change. And when Imhotep displays memories of the ancient past, they are shown in the style of a silent film, as what would be more natural for the cinematic past in 1932 than a silent movie?

So The Mummy takes a different mindset. It was a mindset I found easy to get into as a child due to the general mystical, creepy feeling of the movie, but which eluded me as I got a bit older, as it is quite slow moving, and self-serious. However, now older still, I can again enter its world.

The connection to Dracula is closer than the plot (an evil, but in many ways sympathetic undead creature seeks a girl while an elderly occult doctor and a young romantic hero try to stop him) and the use of Swan Lake as its opening music. Screenwriter John L. Balderston was a writer on Dracula (as well as Frankenstein). Additionally he’d covered the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb as a reporter. Actors Edward Van Sloan and David Manners were ported over from Dracula, and played essentially the same parts. And just as Van Helsing is annoying and “John” Harker is forgettable in that film, Doctor Muller gets on my nerves and Frank is a non-entity. Dracula’s acclaimed cinematographer Karl Freund was promoted to director. Dracula looks more like a Freund film that a Tod Browning one—Browning tended toward the lurid. Freund’s touches are visible throughout The Mummy (most obviously with the way the eyes are lit), and so is his restraint.

While it’s a good looking film, with some evocative set designs, The Mummy is rightfully remembered for two things: Jack P. Pierce’s makeup and Boris Karloff’s performance. As he’d shown with Frankenstein (and Dracula—yet another connection), Pierce was a genius at makeup design. The Mummy is amazing, both the fully wrapped version seen for only a few minutes, and as Ardath Bey, with the deep lines in his flesh. There wasn’t yet an Oscar for makeup, but they should have added one to give it to Pierce. The waking of the Mummy is one of the best scenes in horror history, showing little besides the movement of a hand and Karloff’s slowly opening eyes. It is frightening and memorable, and is a credit to both Pierce and Freund.

Karloff has no problem acting under that makeup (no visual problem; apparently it was very unpleasant to wear and have applied). He was a greatly underappreciated actor. He could mix menace and mystery with vulnerability. This movie would be a dud if the audience didn’t feel for Imhotep, but Karloff makes us care…makes me care.

The Mummy made it clear that Dracula and Frankenstein were not flukes. With it, Universal was now a monster factory, and Karloff was a star. And it’s a very good film, if not quite in the league of its brothers. Its pace is too slow, even with that correct mindset, and the ending is too sudden (another similarity to Dracula), and most any time spent without Karloff feels like wasted time. But Karloff is onscreen a great deal, and the strengths outweigh the weakness. If you don’t like it, wait ten years, and try again.

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Classic Horror, Mummies, Reviews Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

Jul 031932

Sir Lionel Barton (Lawrence Grant), who is the definition of an Englishman, has discovered the tomb of Genghis Khan. This news worries the always-worried but also stiff upper-lipped Nayland Smith (Lewis Stone) of the British secret service. He knows that Dr. Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff) wants the mask and sword of Genghis Khan to make himself the leader of all of Asia, which will rise up and wipe out the white race—well, the men anyway. When Barton is kidnapped, Nayland Smith gathers Barton’s team of archeologists to try and beat Fu Manchu to the tomb. Accompanying them is Barton’s easily frightened daughter Shelia (Karen Morley), who knows where the tomb is, and her heroic but dim fiancée, Terrence Granville (Charles Starrett). But what chance do these upright British folks with American accents have against the evil of Fu Manchu and his incredibly sexy daughter Fah Lo See (Myrna Loy)?

We are deep into colonialist and yellow peril cinema. Fu Manchu isn’t a stereotype of yellow peril. He’s the foundation of it. All others are compared to him. Ming the Merciless is simply Fu Manchu in space. We are wading into some racially troubling waters.

But this is the 1930s, and nothing is as clear as you’d expect. The title isn’t The Adventures of Nayland Smith. Much like in Dracula, the interest lies with the villain. No child who watched this wanted to go play Nayland Smith or That Other White Guy. They are dull as death. They represent the polite and proper British government, and no one could possibly want to be a part of that. Smith actually announces that Fu Manchu must stop his evil “by order of the British government.” Really? That’s a comedy line, and don’t think they didn’t know that at the time. Smith isn’t the dashing type as he would be in the 1960’s Christopher Lee Fu Manchu movies. He’s just an aging, drab representative of exactly what no one wants. And that put him miles ahead of the young white hero whose name no one remembers. And they never have fun. Ever. Fu Manchu, on the other hand, is exciting, charismatic, and electric (both literally and figuratively). He’s smarter than all the others; he’s more educated than all the others, and he has a better time. As for the women, Shelia is kinda pretty and panics every few minutes. Fah Lo See, on the other hand, is a dynamo of sex and power. She’d rip your spleen out instead of cower. So yes, this is a colonialist yellow peril films. It also could be a recruitment video to join the uprising.

Anyone in 1932, and anyone now, who watches this watches it for Fu Manchu and his daughter, and Boris Karloff (not Chinese) and Myrna Loy (also not Chinese, though most of Hollywood seemed to think she was until she starred as Nora Charles) deliver. The two actors decided this pulp material needed to be tongue-in-cheek, taking camp to operatic levels, and it’s delicious. Karloff, smiling and fawning over his victim as he carries out the “bell torture,” his enthusiasm in announcing how the Brits will be the first martyrs for the new Genghis Khan, and Myrna Loy crawling over the unconscious man she plans to have sex with and then murder (or the other way around), are all joyful morsels to chew on. And then there is the most memorable scene of the picture: Fah Lo See crying out in ecstasy as she has Granville whipped simply for her pleasure. There’s nothing approaching it until Xenia Onatopp crushes a man to death with her thighs in GoldenEye. There is a strong current of BDSM to the multiple torture scenes, giving them an energy I can’t recall seeing anywhere else.

This was an MGM picture, so there was more money and more behind the scenes talent than was usually allotted to horror films, which means it looks great. The sets are large and ingeniously designed, with vast open spaces, and art nouveau touches. The lab and death ray have the look that serials strived for and could never obtain. And all of that is shot with style. It’s arguably the best artistic design of the year.

The Mask of Fu Manchu may be trash, but it is great trash.

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

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

May 221932

Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is tossed overboard by a surly and drunken sea captain at the first port-of-call, the Island of Dr. Moreau. The mysterious doctor (Charles Laughton) isn’t happy with his uninvited guest, but soon changes his mind. The island is inhabited by beast-men created by Moreau and his assistant Montgomery (Arthur Hohl) via vivisection. His finest creation is the near-human female Lota (Kathleen Burke), which he hopes to mate with Parker to both bring out her more human side, and to prove the success of his experiments. Parker’s waiting fiancée (Leila Hyams) finds a captain to take her to the island to recover him, but Moreau has no plans to let anyone leave.

The first, and best adaptation of H. G. Wells’s novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau (the others being the drab 1977 Island of Dr. Moreau and the weird and troubled 1996 version) shifts the tone of the tale away from science fiction and toward horror. In doing so, the story is given power and one of the great cinematic “mad” doctors is created.

There’s so much to bite into. You can spend the entire film dwelling on the twisted Garden of Eden myth. What must God really be like and why should his creations obey to him? Or you can examine what it means to be human. Are the beasts human? Is Lota? Morality clearly does not make the man. If they aren’t human, does that makes them lesser beings, or perhaps it is better not to be human? Then there is the sexual angle. Is this a story of bestiality? If so, does that matter? Lota is oozing sex appeal. Do claws make a difference? Does how she was born make one?

Or if that’s too much philosophy, how about sociology. If your society is based upon an absolute set of laws, what happens to the believers in that society when a law is broken? What happens to religious followers when they discover that their god is not omnipotent?

Still too thoughtful? Then skip all of it and wallow in the horror of the House of Pain. There are plenty of thrills and chills.

Arlen and Hyams are adequate as the generic hero & girl types of the time. Hohl gives a more memorable performance while Burke easily trumps him. Of course she’s going to make an impressions—she’s a beautiful, scantily clad woman portraying a character born a panther. Bela Lugosi is also good in a small role as the Speaker of the Law, the leader of the beast-men. But this is Laughton’s film. His Moreau isn’t mad. He’s suave, clever, domineering, and evil. He enjoys his work, and enjoys the worship of his creations. His loathsome scientist, the suggestion of vivisection and the mere contemplation of bestiality had The Island of Lost Souls banned in many places—it took fifty years to get to England uncut. But it is everywhere now, and everyone should see it.

Classic Horror, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

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