Oct 011939
 
3,5 reels

Edward IV (Ian Hunter) has usurped the throne from the incompetent Henry VI, and rules with the aide of his brave and intelligent brother, Richard of Gloucester (Basil Rathbone). Richard does help his brother, but mainly with an eye toward helping himself. He sees six individuals in his way to becoming king, and he plans to eliminate them all, including his two young nephews. And if that means his peevish younger brother, the Duke of Clarence (Vincent Price), gets cut down—or drowned in a vat of wine—along the way, that’s all to the better. To do his dirty work he has loyal, club-footed executioner Mord (Boris Karloff), who runs an efficient torture chamber and is willing to kill whoever Richard tells him to. Mord also commands a squad of beggars, who act as spies and gossips for him. Most of the barriers to his success are inconsequential, not counting Henry Tudor, but there is one thorn in his side: young, brave John Wyatt (John Sutton), who, with the help of his love Alice Barton (Nan Grey) and the Queen (Barbara O’Neil), will carry out a plan that may drag Richard down.

Other studios would take historical dramas and focus on pageantry for a prestige picture or on rapid lines and more rapid swordplay for a swashbucker, but Universal had its own set of skills, and it used them to bring out the horror in history. Tower Of London follows Richard the III’s rise and fall from power, and like most versions of the story, it tells it as the Tutors wanted it to be told (hey, it’s good to be the winner). That is, Richard is a calculating fiend, killing adult kin and children with abandon. Much of this view is likely false, but if you are going to go with it, as Shakespeare did before, do it with gusto.

Writer Robert N. Lee, brother to the director Director Rowland V. Lee (who was fresh from directing Rathbone and Karloff in Son of Frankenstein) did not use the Bard’s play, but went to older sources, and wrote his own script. The basics are the same, though  enry VI is now nearly as conniving has his brother, and we get the new character of Mord.

Universal pulled out all the stops for this one, with elaborate castle sets (that would get a good deal of reuse), a large main cast and throngs of extras, and battlefield romps. And into this strides Rathbone, Karloff, Hunter, and a bit behind, Price, and blow everything else away. Rathbone is a wonderful Richard, my cinematic favorite which is high praise as it places him over Laurence Olivier and Ian McKellen, as well as Price in a ’62 rough remake of this film. He’s charming, quick, intelligent, and ruthless. This is a Richard who could rise to the top of the violent political world. Hunter’s Edward is nearly as charming, nearly as quick, reasonably intelligent, and nearly as ruthless, which is why it is so captivating to watch the two play off each other, and why I was rooting for Richard. Mord is a inspired addition, letting us see Richard’s worse instincts come to life. It is another stunning role for Karloff who creates a frightening character, who is all the more so because he’s not some supernatural or science fiction entity, but one who is so very human. Richard is a megalomaniac mastermind, and Mord is a sadist, yet I was ready to cheer for them as they submerged Clarence. Their evil is joyful, and their opponents are mostly idiots.

Some may object to me reviewing this as horror, but where else do the deeds of Richard belong? We have beheadings, brandings, and torture on the rack (and in many other grisly ways), and it’s all done with glee. We have the murder of children, and Richard with dolls of each of his targets that he tosses upon the fire when they die. There’s also rain and fog and fear and screams. That sure sounds like horror to me.

For three-fourths of the run time I had this as a 4-star tour de force, but it falls a bit in the final act, as it was bound to. The problem here is the same with Shakespeare’s play, which is it’s all about Richard (or in this case, Richard and Mord). They are what’s interesting and fun. Henry Tutor is hardly a character, so to have him take down Richard always feels anticlimactic. Tower of London seeks to remedy this by bringing in Wyatt, but he’s a milquetoast nothing next to Richard (just as John Sutton fades to invisibility next to Rathbone and Karloff) and I cared nothing for his relationship with Alice. There needs to be a grand character with a huge personality to compete, and I’ve never seen one in any version of Richard III’s story. (This was Universal, which makes me wonder what Claude Rains was doing at the time.) Well, I’ll just blame history.