Fährmann Maria (1936)

Feb 221936
 
three reels
ferrymanmaria

The local ferryman meets the personification of death (Peter Voß) one night, and dies on his ferry. The town advertizes for a new ferryman, but there are no local takers as the townspeople fear an evil force roams the other side of the river. Maria (Sybille Schmitz) wanders into town, lacking papers, so is a criminal. But she’s given the job of ferryman, along with a hut adjacent to a swamp. One night she’s summoned to the other side of the river by a wounded man (Aribert Mog), who says he’s being pursued. Maria ferries him across, nurses him, and falls in love with him. Soon after, she is summoned again, this time by Death, who insists he must find the wounded man before sunrise.

This is an interesting one. In 1936 the Nazis were in power and filmmaker Frank Wisbar was already on the wrong side of Joseph Goebbels; He’d worked on a lesbian-themed film, made movies with dark, psychological themes, and had a Jewish wife. He tried to thread the needle, making Rivalen der Luft – Ein Segelfliegerfilm (1934), a film that pandered to nationalists. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work and after making a few more pictures, including this one, he fled Germany for the United States. He picked up work on Poverty Row production, eventually remaking Fährmann Maria, with a tiny budget, as 1946’s Strangler Of The Swamp.

Things didn’t work out for Sybille Schmitz either. She’d become a star, but her non-Aryan look relegated her to lesser roles. That she had any roles during the Nazi regime meant no one wanted to touch her after the war and she ended up an addict and mentally unstable, committing suicide at 44 with the aid of a shady doctor who was stealing from her.

Fährmann Maria (Maria, Ferryman) is the last gasp of German expressionism. Wisbar tried to balance the twisting style with exteriors shots of landscapes and a nod toward folktales, but it wasn’t nearly enough for the Nazis. While it isn’t hard to read pro-Nazi sentiment in the story (the wounded man expounds on the wonders of his homeland, and how every man must fight because there are so many enemies), it is even easier to read an anti-Nazi subtext. Death has a very Aryan look and totalitarian manner, while Maria is a refugee that can be seen as a  Gypsy or Jew. Maria’s idea that her love for the wounded man will give her a new home puts love over race, a fact that was noted by party adherents. Goebbels despised it, but chose not to ban it as he was winning the propaganda war, and didn’t want a fight over what turned out to be a popular and artistically lauded film. And he was clever as he didn’t need to. Most of the other classic directors were already out of the country and his chosen ones (like Riefenstahl and Harlan) would usher in an era of Nazi propaganda pictures. There wouldn’t be another film like Fährmann Maria.

I’m writing more about what surrounded the film than the film itself, but context here is everything. What I see while watching this film and how it makes me feel is effected by what swirls around it. The imagery is often compelling, particularly when Maria is tugging on the rope that moves her boat slowly through the water, but it means so much more realizing she is non-Aryan and Goebbels was watching, and that Schmitz would have her own confrontation with death relatively soon. Like Triumph of the Will, it can’t be considered in a vacuum.

It has the feel of a top rate expressionistic film from 1930: artistically advanced but technologically regressed. This is essentially a silent film, with the story told with shadows, lingering shots, and over-emotive expressions. Is that a problem? A line can be drawn, starting at The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), through Nosferatu (1922), and ending—snipped off—at Fährmann Maria, and when considered that way, with its kin, then no, it isn’t a problem. This is a movie of a different kind than we are used to in the sound era or in America, with a different cinematic vocabulary, and it needs to be judged for what it is. A movie about death takes on extra meaning when it is the last of its line in so many ways.

That connection to Nosferatu runs deep, not just style, or even theme, but story as well. There was some borrowing going on, but then Begman plundered Fährmann Maria for The Seventh Seal, so fair is fair.

At 85 minutes, Fährmann Maria is long. The story could (and partially did) fit into a half hour Twilight Zone episode. Wisbar and company add in a drunken violinist to fill in some time, but otherwise this is a very simple and direct fairytale. I’d have preferred more complexity, or a shorter runtime. And while it conveys the mood intended, Wisbar is no Lang or Wiene or Murnau. In their hands, this might have been a masterpiece; in Wisbar’s, it is interesting and a must-view for anyone interested in the history of horror on film.

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El baĂşl macabro {The Macabre Trunk} (1936)

Feb 071936
 
one reel
elbaulmacabro

Dr. Maximiliano Renan (Ramón Pereda) will do anything to save his dying and paralyzed wife, and as he’s a mad scientist, complete with hunch-backed assistant (Enrique Gonce), his methods involve strange experiments on young women. His attempts with the recently deceased failed, so now he’s taken to kidnapping women from the hospital, who then die in his home laboratory. The press has made the missing girls big news, much to the dismay of the police. Dr. Monroy (Manuel Noriega), the head of the hospital is also displeased. However, young, hot-shot Dr. Armando del Valle (René Cardona) is confident he can uncover the killer. By coincidence he is engaged to Monroy’s daughter Alicia (Esther Esther Fernández), who comes down with a case of coincidental appendicitis, and she also coincidentally has the perfect blood for Renan’s purposes, and of course, coincidentally, Renan is called in to operate on her. Unfortunately for Renan, a beggar saw him dumping body parts, and goes to del Valle, but fortunately for Renan, it’s del Valle that the police suspect.

This is a movie where you can see the clap board to start one take so quality control was not a concern. We’re in deeply cheap land, though with a few more sets then I’m used to with Poverty Row pictures north of the boarder. Generally it feels very much like a typical Poverty Row mad scientist movie—the plot has popped up multiple times since, including in the Bela Legosi cheepie The Corpse Vanishes. We’ve got a rather drab mad scientist, an evil hunchback assistant, a forgettable hero and his pretty girlfriend who will coincidentally be kidnapped, inappropriate music, washed out photography, an excessive focus on the press, a comedy relief cop, a lot of talking to fill up the time, and very little emotion. Dr. Renan seems very concerned about his wife in the 30 seconds or so we see them together, but that’s about it for bonding. The film isn’t trying to get me to sympathize with Renan, or despise him, but merely to watch disconnectedly as he carries out this chore and that for his grand scheme that means zero to me.

I’ve sat through plenty of cheap empty pictures like this and can have some fun with them, but El baĂşl macabro blows it. We spend a lot of time with the police…a…lot…of…time… Watching the chief inspector march around that one same office and rant about chewing gum isn’t entertaining, but it is far less entertaining when the police do something. We know who the killer is. We know that del Valle will find out from the beggar who the killer is and will eventually confront Renan, so there are no surprises. And while we know it, we are forced to sit through an agonizing slowdown of the story as the police get in the way. The cops getting in the way of the beggar and del Valle isn’t interesting or exciting; It’s frustrating and I was ready to throw something at the screen long before del Valle gets away from them. If there was some emotional connection or chilling effect, perhaps it would be worth the annoyance, but there’s nothing to balance it out.

There isn’t a lot to get excited about in 1930s Mexican horror, and this one doesn’t even feel all that Mexican. Outside of the beggars who are everywhere and at war with the police, this feels more like an American film, with its mad scientist and hunchback.If you are but if you are curious about how Mexican culture interacts with the horror genre, try a different film.

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Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

Feb 021936
 
two reels

Mere seconds after Von Helsing (Edward Van Sloan)—and yes, it is now “Von Helsing” instead of “Van Helsing”—staked Dracula, the bobbies show up. Van Helsing goes with the “I was killing an immortal undead” defense which gets him arrested for murder, although as an upper class professor, he’s treated ridiculously well. Psychologist Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), another holier than though sort, is his choice for legal counsel. The case becomes a bit easier when Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), Dracula’s Daughter, shows up and burns Dracula’s body. The Countess, with the help of her servant, Sandor (Irving Pichel) hunts at night as her father had. The difference is that she is fighting her vampiric nature and wants Garth’s help.

Five years passed after Bela Lugosi stunned audiences with Dracula and Universal had made buckets of money, before they made a sequel. In the ‘40s they spun them out in a hurry, but in the ’30s they hadn’t yet grasped the easy money of horror sequels so took their time. Perhaps they should have taken a bit more time.

Dracula’s Daughter is an uneasy mix of styles, half stilted like early talkies, and half like the more chatty melodramas and light comedies that were beginning to come into vogue. The problem isn’t a particular style, but the switching that is disconcerting. Sandor would have been at home in a 1920s silent film, while Gath’s cute and plucky assistant (Margerite Churchill) is a full on rom-com character.

Continuity is shaky as well. Dracula’s Daughter is set in a different century from Dracula, even though it starts immediately after. And Renfield was now killed due to a broken neck instead of being stabbed.

A poorly paced film—where people travel across a continent in hours, and the ending is a five minute tacked-on scene with no climax—Dracula’s Daughter’s strength lays with Gloria Holden. Her regal but haunted bearing makes her a perfect daughter for the king of vampires. Every time she speaks, or better, covers her face and allows her piercing eyes to express hunger, the film is elevated to the top ranks of the Universal monster movies. Unfortunately, when Kruger or Sloan take over, the film plummets. Garth is a moralistic, unpleasant, aging figure who we are supposed to root for. I just wanted to see him drained and tossed aside. With a better protagonist, or a change in the structure to make the Countess the main character, Dracula’s Daughter could have been one of the greats. Instead, it is frustrating.

The often-mentioned lesbian subtext makes Dracula’s Daughter more interesting, but that is mostly on display in only one scene. Afterward, the Countess goes chasing after Garth for reasons which are impossible to understand. But being the first lesbian vampire film, even if only for a few minutes, does give it some status. That, and Holden, make it worth watching, if not with complete attention.

While even under duress, they should have been able to make a better film, but it is relevant that the film was under constant attack and the original plans would have made a better film. Joseph Breen of the Production Code Administration hated horror films and wanted them stopped, and he’d tasted blood. The studios would cave if he pushed, so for Daughter of Dracula, he pushed hard, forcing rewrite after rewrite, and with each one, softening the horror, weakening the Countess, and emphasizing the morals that he preferred. Breen wanted the horror removed from this horror picture, and he mostly succeeded.

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The Walking Dead (1935)

Dec 051935
 
two reels

Gangsters assassinate a judge and frame an ex-con, John Ellman (Boris Karloff).  Two witnesses are too frightened to testify until it is too late and he is electrocuted, but fanatic scientist Evan Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) resurrects him.  Ellman comes back without his memory, but with knowledge of who is responsible for his death.  Soon, the mobsters begin to die in strange accidents.

A combination gangster-horror film, The Walking Dead is a B-movie of the type no longer made.  I can imagine this playing with a cartoon, a news reel, and a short, along with an A-picture.  That would be the way to see it.  It’s enjoyable, but by itself, it lacks substance.

The first half is purely a crime film, with no supernatural elements.  It doesn’t even build toward or imply the later horror.  It’s a standard Warner Brothers ’30s mob film, focusing on the criminals.  The movie would have been far more powerful if it had spent that time with Ellman, letting us get to know him so that his eventual death and zombie-like rebirth had more meaning.  Once we get to the horror portion, the film is too brief.  The “accidental deaths” have little setup and again, not enough time is spent with Ellman.  More time is given to Edmund Gwenn, who doesn’t feel like a mad scientist, but just a nut who badgers undead Ellman about what being dead is like, even after it is obvious that the poor man has no idea.

While the script is hurried and weak, the directing is top notch from Michael Curtiz (The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca).  Even in small, low budget films like this, Curtiz’s steady hand and skill makes every scene look good.

What makes The Walking Dead worth your time is Karloff, and how Curtiz films him.  Karloff mixes sinister with confused.  Even with his slight screen time, it’s hard not to care about him as he stands, sad and lost, looking at a “victim.”  The most memorable moment has the reborn Ellman playing the piano before an audience that contains his murders.  Karloff”s performance rivals his work in Bride of Frankenstein as he meets each one’s gaze.

The Walking Dead leaves us with the line “Leave the dead to their maker.  The Lord our God is a jealous god.”  A Biblical statement, but somehow unnerving given the circumstances.  In a horror film, “unnerving” is a good thing.

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Werewolf of London (1935)

Oct 061935
 
three reels

Botonist Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) is bitten by a werewolf while searching for a rare moon-blossoming plant in Tibet. Upon his return to London, he is approached by Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland) and warned that there are now two werewolves in London, and the only hope for both are the flowers from the strange planet, which can treat, but not cure, the condition.

This is where the cinematic werewolf began, but Werewolf of London never reached the status of Universal’s other ‘30s monster movies.  It would take Lon Chaney Jr.’s The Wolf Man, six years later, to elevate a lycanthrope to the ranks of Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, The Mummy, and the Invisible Man. Still, that shouldn’t be held against this lesser, but still very enjoyable feature.

As the movie werewolf is a completely invented creature (folklore shape changers are very different entities), it should be no surprise that the rules of lycanthrope are different from what has become the standard. The only reason silver is necessary to kill a werewolf is because it’s stated in The Wolf Man.  Here, regular bullets will do nicely, any moonlight (not just a full moon) will cause the transformation, and a flower is the only treatment. However, the werewolf still seeks the one it loves.

In 1935, Universal was still uncomfortable with monster pictures. Uncertain of the reaction of censors and concerned with frightening audiences, Werewolf of London was far more restrained than it should have been. The monster makeup was deliberately made less terrifying, and the killings were few and mainly off screen (and of loose women which apparently don’t have as much of a right to life as proper citizens). That doesn’t mean the murders weren’t dramatic. And the werewolf design is actually very good as long as you aren’t expecting a more extreme beast. But turning up the intensity across the board would have made for a better film.

The script leans heavily on both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Invisible Man. Glendon is an obsessed scientist, and while it is an external source that changes him rather than his own invention, the effects are pretty much the same as Dr. Jekyll’s potion. This werewolf isn’t a beast, but a man who can’t control his impulses.  He even puts on a cloak and hat before going out to kill.  Like The Invisible Man, Werewolf of London is filled with eccentric lower class characters (and a few upper class ones), that drink too much. Unlike the early film, it is these supporting characters that get all the good lines. The film is at its best in dialog-heavy scenes when the monsters are nowhere in sight.

Thematically, Werewolf of London touches on repressed emotions and the Theory of Evolution’s effects on society (when a high society gentleman sees some of Glendon’s more unusual plants, he comments on “…bringing a beastly thing like that into Christian England.”  However, nothing clear is said on either issue.

While there are many slight flaws with the film, it is one mistake that drops it from the classic it might have been. The heart of most werewolf films is in the pain of the protagonist as he struggles with his curse. For that to be engaging, the audience has to sympathize with the doomed man. But Glendon is too stuffy and unromantic to elicit any positive emotion from me. He’s not a bad man, exactly, but he’s inconsiderate, an uncaring husband, and obsessed with something of no interest to the viewer. Hull brings only an additional level of rigidity to the part. I didn’t for a second care if this guy lived or died; well, I may have leaned toward dying since then his wife could find a better match.  Again, the scriptwriter stole many of the character’s traits from earlier films, including Frankenstein, not realizing that no one loved that movie because of the doctor (it was the monster).

Werewolf of London is a fine film, firmly in the second tier of classic monster pictures, and forever in the shadow of The Wolf Man.

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Condemned to Live (1935)

Oct 061935
 
three reels

A rash of murders in a small village have the citizens blaming an unseen giant bat.  The kindly professor Paul Kristan (Ralph Morgan), nearly worshiped by the townspeople, has no solution.  Worse still, he finds himself ill, blacking out at night as his marriage to a young girl approaches.

The poorly titled Condemned to Live is a well acted, entertaining stage play on film.  The camera rarely moves and most rooms are shot from the same side every time.  It is dialog-rich, with minimal movement by the characters.  There are a few too many sets for your typical live performance group to manage, but with very little alteration, I could easily imagine this coming to a stage near you.

Of course this isn’t a play, but a movie.  And a movie should be far more dynamic, using the tricks and skills of the art of filmmaking, not theater.  However, if you know what you’re getting into, and you can enjoy a bit of theater on a screen, Condemned to Live won’t disappoint.  One of the better “Poverty Row,” cheaply made, horror films of the 1930s, its story strongly resembles that of The Vampire Bat, made two years earlier by the same director, Frank R. Strayer.  In both, there is the good doctor, the strange murders, and the innocent man accused of the crimes.  In this case, it is the loyal hunchback, Mischa Auer, that the townspeople chase with torches.

While the problems are traced back to vampire bats, this is more of a lycanthrope film than a vampire one.  The killer isn’t evil, but a man afflicted by a curse.  Remove the comments about bats and add a wolf mask, and Condemned to Live becomes a standard werewolf movie.

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The Student of Prague (1935)

Sep 281935
 
two reels
StudentofPrague

Balduin (Anton Walbrook) is a popular student and a skilled fencer, who has won the heart of Lydia, a young innocent girl. At her birthday celebration he becomes obsessed with Juila (Dorothea Wieck), an opera singer. But she already has two admirers, the foppish Baron Waldis and the sinister Dr. Carpis (Theodor Loos). While Julia appears fond of Balduin, she says she cannot see him, but she does not explain that it is because she fears what Carpis might do to him. He assumes it’s because he’s poor, so he doesn’t even question when Carpis says that he can give him a “lucky hand” to win Julia, as long as he gives up his sentimental dreamer side by never looking in his mirror. Balduin becomes rich from gambling, but of course, things start to fall apart soon after.

This is a fairy tale, a very simple story with a very simple message. With all that simplicity, it would be more fitting as an episode of a 30 minute anthology show. Anything it had to say it said again and again. And I knew everything that would happen long before it did. Sure it looks good, though not in any particularly interesting way. And the acting is reasonable, though not remarkable. The characters were all fine (though Balduin seemed like an ass for how he treated Lydia before any magic was introduced), but are no more complicated than necessary for their part in the story. Which leaves us a film that would be engaging for about a half an hour,

It had been made twice before, both times as silent pictures, with some alteration on how the reflection functions, and with the sorcerer more clearly the devil. Those films were more expressionistic, particularly the 1913 version, but this was 1935, and Hitler wasn’t a fan of expressionism. I wonder if politics was also the reason why the woman was changed from a lady of the upper class to an opera singer. Of the three, I prefer the 1926 version starring Conrad Veidt, and I’m not a particular fan of silent film.

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The Raven (1935)

Sep 221935
 
three reels

Beautiful, young, and beguiling Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware) crashes her car, leading to brain damage. The only one with a chance to save her is Dr. Richard Vollin (Bela Lugosi), a Poe-obsessed retired surgeon. Her father, stuffy Judge Thatcher (Samuel S. Hinds) pushes Vollin until he agrees. The operation is a success, and Vollin falls for her, and she has some feeling for him, though she is engaged to Dr. Jerry Holden (Lester Matthews). Her father puts an end to what little chance he had—and it was very little— driving Vollin further into insanity. When escaped murderer Edmond Bateman (Boris Karloff) tries to get Vollin to change his appearance, Vollin deforms him, and uses him as muscle in his plan to torture and kill those between him and the girl.

The Black Cat (1934), combing Karloff, Lugosi, sadism, great sets, and a title—though not story—derived from Edgar Allan Poe was a big hit, so they tried it again, and damn if they didn’t make one twisted and riotous picture. The Raven is outlandish, flamboyant, creepy fun. It’s also pretty shocking for 1935 (the production code was in effect), and scenes like a man tied under the slowly lowering bladed pendulum were used to support the partial ban on horror that was in effect from ’36 to ’38. It can’t live up to The Black Cat’s remarkable art design as few films could, but it beats it in story and sheer wildness. My only complaint is the one I had with The Black Cat; it doesn’t go far enough, but that’s far less of an issue here than there.

While I stated the art direction wasn’t as good, that doesn’t mean it isn’t fabulous. Vollin’s house is a wonder of improbability. It’s properly filled with assorted knick-knacks that can cast shadows, including a stuffed Raven. It also has multiple secret passageways, entire rooms that act as elevators, and a well decked out dungeon with some really nice torture and execution devices. Naturally everyone comes over when there’s a powerful storm.

Karloff is excellent as a killer who’d like to be better, and  mostly plays for pathos. Lugosi, however, truly knows what kind of film he’s in and goes full lunatic bombast. This is his film and he looks like he’s having a great old time. His enthusiasm is contagious, and I joined with him wanting to see a few folks get tortured to death. As he quite insanely points out, all this torturing will get torture out of him, making him the sanest man ever. Ummm. Sure. Why not?

This is a bonkers movie and definitely worth your time, particularly at your next horror-themed party.

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Seven Keys To Baldpate (1935)

Sep 041935
 
two reels
Sevenkeys1935

Successful author William Magee (Gene Raymond) makes a bet that he can finish a novel in 24 hours and heads to a secluded lodge, that’s closed for the winter season, to do so. The timid caretakers meet him there and give him the only key to the place before leaving. He adjourns to a room to write, but is interrupted by a string of mysterious characters, beautiful woman, and criminals (Eric Blore, Grant Mitchell, Henry Travers, and a host of others now mostly forgotten), a majority of whom have a key.

For a property seldom remembered now, Seven Keys To Baldpate certainly was popular in early cinema. And that popularity is why I’m including it. It barely counts as an Old Dark House film, or as a horror one, but it’s too important to the subgenre to skip. The 1913 novel, by Charlie Chan scribe Earl Derr Biggers, was immediately turned into a play be composer George M. Cohan (and no, he didn’t add music). It was very popular, both as an Old Dark House mystery and a parody of such, with the characters purposely one-dimensional representations of what you’d find in less self-aware mystery plays. It was translated into a silent film in 1916. Two more versions followed in 1917 and 1925, with the first sound adaption popping up in 1929. This is the second, and it would be followed by two more, in 1947 and in 1983, the last under the title House of the Long Shadows and including in its cast Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine.

All of which sets it with The Bat and The Cat & The Canary as a foundational story in the subgenre. It was these movies that were copied over and over for the next twenty years.

This one sets the tone properly with eerie sounds, frightened innkeepers, a raging and surprisingly sinister snowstorm, and talk of ghosts. It follows that with skulking intruders and mysterious guests, but by the time the third key has popped up, the uncanny atmosphere is already dispersing and is long gone before the first act is complete. This doesn’t ruin the picture, but is something of a disappointment for anyone looking for a few thrills. The later appearance of secret passageways and a murder do nothing to restore the creepy feeling.

So we end up with a goofy comedy mystery. It’s quickly paced, with most everyone speaking in quips and ripostes when not simply fulfilling their stereotypes. It’s amusing enough for it’s brief 80 minutes, but it doesn’t have any weight and I can’t imagine anyone caring about either the characters or what happens to them. They are all so preposterous, and the story is ridiculous. Everything about our lead is odd. He doesn’t act like a human. He’s brave to the point of insanity, totally unconcerned with things he should worry about, and is obsessive about the first girl he sees in the area. He’s funny from time-to-time, though less so than the scene stealing hermit and part time ghost (Henry Travers) whose hatred of women is a running gag, but he’s impossible to get invested in. And there’s a reason for that. In the play, everyone acts strangely because no one is who they appear to be. Everyone except the writer is an actor sent to distract him so he losses his bet. But then it turns out even that isn’t true as everything has just been the novel that the author has been typing the whole time.

However, for this version, the meta-narrative was pulled, as was everyone being actors, but their peculiar way of behaving was kept in. That leaves us with everything feeling false and silly with no explanation, and therefore, no point. That doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable. The 1929 version starring Richard Dix (one of those major stars of the ‘30s that’s vanished from popular culture) kept the meta-narrative, and it isn’t as entertaining as this one. The characters are false, but I don’t mind spending time with them, and it’s a nicely, if not particularly, artistically shot flick. Call it a diverting curiosity.

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The Phantom Light (1935)

Aug 171935
 
three reels

Sam Higgins (Gordon Harker) arrives at an isolated Welsh village to take over running the local lighthouse. The villagers are a strange and superstitious lot, believing the lighthouse to be haunted, a belief that is buttressed by the disappearance of the previous lighthouse keeper as well as Tom Evans (Reginald Tate) having just gone mad while in the lighthouse. Not only do the ghosts attack those who trespass on their domain, but they also create a phantom light, thus summoning sailors to their doom. Higgins is approached first by beautiful and bouncy Alice Bright (Binnie Hale), who he mistakes for a prostitute, and then by reporter Jim Pearce (Ian Hunter), both wanting him to take them to the lighthouse. He refuses, and then heads out in a boat with local authorities, including the one stable person in the area, Doctor Carey (Milton Rosnier), who need to check on Evans. The Doctor concludes that Evans is in no shape for the difficult trip off of the island, and so must stay at the lighthouse with Higgans and his two underlings, cheerful Bob Peters (Mickey Brantford) and dour and hulking Claff Owen (Herbert Lomas). Pearce and Bright find their own way to the lighthouse in a small boat, and then are stuck there for the night. What do Pearce and Bright want and who are they really? What drove Evans insane, and are there ghosts? The answers will come before daybreak.

Six people confined to a eerie building on a foggy night, with doors opening on their own and talk of ghosts. Yes, we’re in Old Dark House territory once again, with a lighthouse swapped in for a dilapidated mansion for the second time in 1935. But this British entry doesn’t resemble Hollywood’s lighthouse spooky film Sh! The Octopus, but England’s own The Ghost Train. It was based on the stage play The Haunted Light, which I haven’t read, but assume was either itself based on the play The Ghost Train, or the filmmakers decided to borrow from the film The Ghost Train as much as from the play they were supposed to be using. They both have the same tone, with a lot of humor, focused on a few characters while everyone else plays it mostly straight. They have creepy moments with the newly arriving folks hearing the ghostly tale of the place from a local who is terrified. Both have a significant fraction of the characters not being who they say they are. They have plans by the heroes and villains that don’t stand up to scrutiny. And they have very similar secrets that are revealed in the final act.

This isn’t a comedy as it is often labeled, but fits best in the horror, thriller, and mystery genres. There is humor, but it is soft, not so much gags or big jokes as quirky character moments, and those come mostly from Gordon Harker, He was a stage comedian who got a good deal of work in film playing the third banana comic relief character. Leads were rare for him. Here Ian Hunter takes on the romantic bits, leaving Harker the lighter tones, and he does a nice job of it. As do the rest. It’s a good cast. They are given reasonable dialog to speak and a passable plot to act out, though one that has a few major problems with why people act the way they do. All of which would make this a decent but unremarkable little film. But it has something else. It has Michael Powell.

Powell, once he partnered with Emeric Pressburrger, became one of the greatest directors of all time. He helmed I Know Where I’m Going!, A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes, and what I consider to be one of the top 10 films ever made, Black Narcissus. He had an incredible eye for what worked on camera and was willing to break all the rules. And as subject matter he often touched on the normal person in what he/she considered the normal world stepping into what he/she felt was a more primitive environment, and then finding that “normal” and “primitive” don’t mean what they had seemed to mean (not a view that was big in England as the empire faded). And in 1935, he was a young, though busy filmmaker. As was common at the time in Britain, he learned the craft by working on quota quickies—low budget films made in England that were used to fulfill the requirements that a percentage of all movies be made locally. If theaters wanted the latest blockbuster from the US, they had to show a British picture. Not surprisingly, few of the quota quickies were great art, or even passable art. It took something special to elevate movies where the producers only cared that they existed, not that they were any good. Powell couldn’t make gold from the lead, but he could make silver. And The Phantom Light was a quota quickie.

So many shots in The Phantom Light have the Powell touch. There’s sudden, shock close-ups. There’s winding camera movements. There’s shadows wrapping the frame. Early on, and again when the towns people head for their boat, there’s a documentary texture; Powell used a documentary-type style with some of his early classics. But he is particularly known for his surrealistic tendencies, and those are on full display. By the end, The Phantom Light feels like a dream, one that is terrifying on the edges, but is not a nightmare. And that’s Powell. I find something Lovecraftian about his work: the world is fine here, though perhaps a bit boring, but just beyond here, things get strange, and beyond that are wonders and horrors we cannot conceive. That would reach its climax with Black Narcissus, but I can see it here, and it makes a cheap movie into something very interesting.

The Phantom Light isn’t one of Powell’s classics. It isn’t a great film. But it is a good film that shows a great artist finding his way.

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One Frightened Night (1935)

Aug 121935
 
two reels

Grumpy millionaire Jasper Whyte (Charley Grapewin) has given up hope of finding his granddaughter, who would be his sole heir, so on the night before the inheritance tax is set to rise, he tells his greedy relative and friends (Arthur Hohl, Lucien Littlefield, Regis Toomey, Hedda Hopper, Clarence Wilson, Rafaela Ottiano) that he will give them a million each on this night. However, immediately after, his granddaughter, Doris Waverly (Evalyn Knapp), appears at the door. As Jasper is getting to know her, another girl shows up claiming to be Doris (Mary Carlisle), this one accompanied by a stage magician (Wally Ford). And now both women are targets of a killer.

Old Dark House films are first cousins to Cozy Mysteries, but they aren’t the same thing. One Frightened Night is more mystery than horror. Yes, there’s a killer, but only the granddaughter, or anyone claiming to be her, is a potential victim. No one else is in danger. And the murderer is clearly one of the house guests. There’s no suggestion of a supernatural source or an escaped maniac. No one goes off to sleep and there’s not even an ongoing thunderstorm. Once there’s a murder, the police show up and for the rest of the film it’s interrogations and clue-finding. It still has plenty of the Old Dark House characteristics: the large house, the rich old man and his “will,” secret passageways, and screams. Plus there’s a bit more rushing about then in an average Cozy, but it’s quite a stretch to call it horror. Outside of classification, is that a problem? Well, yes. With the spooky elements so restrained, it needs a stronger detective/mystery story than it has to take up the slack.

The dialog is snappy, and the cast as a whole carries it off well. What keeps this film a step ahead of many of its peers is Charley Grapewin. He would soon jump into A-Pictures with The Petrified Forest and The Wizard of Oz, though he’d always be a character actor. Here he’s a curmudgeony fireball, with some real emotion between verbal attacks. He’s a more powerful actor than found in a majority of Poverty Row pictures.

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