Supernatural (1933)

Black widow Ruth Rogen (Vivienne Osbourne) is executed for her three murders, with her final thoughts ones of revenge on conman Paul Bavian (Allan Dinehart) who betrayed her. Around the same time wealthy Roma Courtney (Carole Lombard) is in deep mourning from the death of her brother. Bavian, thinking he can cheat Roma out of some money, contacts her, claiming to be a spiritualist who has spoken to her dead brother. Her suitor Grant Wilson (the always wooden Randolph Scott) and financial manager Nicky Hammond (William Farnun) don’t buy it, but Roma is less certain. Reputable Dr Carl Houston (H.B. Warner) is both a friend of Roma, and an expert in keeping spirits in dead bodies—really, this guy is supposed to be a reputable scientist. I’m not kidding. Unfortunately, he sucks at his job, and his experimenting with the dead body of Ruth Rogen—again, he’s reputable—leads to Roma being possessed by Rogen.

A horror film with Carole Lombard! Sign me up.

Made by the same team as made White Zombie! Well, not my first pick, but sure, yeah.

And Randolph Scott! Ummm.

Made by Paramount! Can we reconsider this.

Lombard was a great comic actress, and given a chance, she could have conquered any genre. Certainly she could have managed horror and thrillers, as she demonstrates here. When Roma gets possessed, and she switches from depressed innocent to depraved temptress, that is a great moment of cinema horror.

What the hell was going on the rest of the time?

Basically no one at Paramount, and I suspect that includes the one-shot wonder Halperin brothers, had any idea what people wanted in a horror film. This one is barely over an hour, and Lombard doesn’t get possessed until the 45 minute mark. That should have happened a half hour earlier, so we could get Lombard going in and out of vamp-mode, murdering people in her way. “But why have that,” thought the shirts at Paramount, “when we could have a lot of sitting around and talking. And lets keep everything looking very proper. People love that.” Houston should have been a ranting mad scientist. The guy’s carrying out random experiments on a dead body that he obtained by misleading the woman before death, and yet he’s presented as a calm and reasonable paragon.

They had Lombard, and enough money to make a good film, but they wouldn’t go for it as they didn’t know what “it” was. It seems their goal was to make a film for romance fans who would want to see Lombard and Scott get together. Well, if that’s the film they wanted, then they should have made it—a nice romantic dramady without spirits and murderers. No one behind or in front of the cameras had a clue how to make a horror film, except Lombard and Beryle Mercer as a cackling landlady, and it shows.