The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Oct 041944
 
two reels

Amy (Ann Carter), the daughter of Oliver and Alice Reed (Kent Smith, Jane Randolph), is a lonely and overly imaginative child.  With no friends, she wishes for one, and Irena, the ghost of Oliver’s first wife, appears.  Amy also meets an old, pleasant, but mentally unstable neighbor (Julia Dean), who is cared for by a daughter (Elizabeth Russell) she doesn’t acknowledge.  Oliver is worried about Amy’s “flights of fancy” and tries, with little success, to force her to accept reality.

Not a sequel to Cat People, or even a horror film, Curse of the Cat People is a slight fantasy about a child and her imaginary friend, which happens to repeat actors (and character names) from the earlier film.  There is no were-cat, no frights, and practically no plot.  Amy has no friends.  For a while, she sees an imaginary one that looks like Irena, and then she stops.  That’s it.  About a third of the film is spent on a subplot about an aging neighbor, building up to a climax that doesn’t come.

With all of the special, family moments, a better title might have been Curse of That Darn Cat as it feels like one of the 1960s, Disney films, although with some atmospheric, shadowy shots, and a few fake “scares” thrown in.  In one, the servant (yes, a middle class white guy has a black servant) reaches for a door handle and finds it…(dramatic music)…locked.  So then, out of nowhere, comes a hand which…(dramatic music)…unlocks the door.  Wow, that was worth building tension.  Any possibility of taking this as a ghost story is killed when Irena shows up in a sparkly princess gown.

So, not horror, not a sequel, and lacking a plot.  It could survive the first two, but the third is a problem.  Curse of the Cat People is generally considered to be a psychological examination of lonely and troubled children, but then it really needs to say something deeper than “daddies should be friends with their children,” which ends up being the theme.  Your tolerance for the film will be based on how much you like watching “cute kids” playing.

But everything isn’t a bust because this is a Val Lewton picture, and he did have a singular style.  The cinematography is excellent: sharp, with layers of shades beyond normal.  And a scene that splits between the parents and their friends belting out a Christmas tune in the kitchen, while Irena stands in the snow-covered yard, singing in a much more melodic fashion, is  beautiful.  But style isn’t enough.

Simone Simon didn’t think much of the film, nor did the rest of the cast who signed on due to a sense of obligation.  In this case, I’m not going to argue with the stars.

Val Lewton produced a series of genre films for RKO including I Walked with a Zombie.

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The Uninvited (1944)

Oct 021944
 
five reels

A brother and sister (Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey) purchase a beautiful seaside house for far less than it is worth from Commander Beech (Donald Crisp). Beech’s granddaughter Stella (Gail Russel) is obviously unhappy about the sale, thinking of the house as hers, the only connection to her dead mother. It seems Stella’s father was an unpleasant artist with a roving eye and her mother was a kindly woman who either jumped, fell, or was pushed off of a cliff to her death. The new owners quickly discover the reason for the cheap selling price: The house is haunted. With a little help from Doctor Scott (Alan Napier), they set out to discover the the hidden past of the house that endangers Stella’s life and leads to Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner), a strong-willed and odd woman who runs a creepy sanitarium.

The Uninvited is the first Hollywood talkie that dealt with a haunting in a horror context. Before this ghosts showed up in comedies. Most of the sub-genres of horror have an iconic film, one that is skillfully made and that contains a story whose elements are repeated in a majority of the others, one that sets characteristics of any “monsters.”  For vampires it is the 1931 Dracula.  For flesh-eating zombies it is Dawn of the Dead. For werewolves it is The Wolf Man (even though there were earlier films in the sub-genre such as Werewolf of London)  For ghost stories, films of hauntings, it is The Uninvited.  If you’ve seen any cinematic ghost stories of the last sixty year, you’ll recognize the basic structure: The entrance of people not connected to previous events who find themselves at risk, the slowly building supernatural activity, the threat to an individual, the search for the secret that created the ghost, and the climax when the heroes confront the ghost with events of the past.  No film has done it better. It is subtle, but not slow. The horror is present, with several of the great cinematic fright scenes, but the whole doesn’t dwell in it. This is not a heavy picture.

While taking place in “modern” times, The Uninvited is a gothic horror tale. Partly this is due to location. As the house is situated in an isolated location on the coast, lacking electricity, everything has the look of  a hundred years earlier—until they leave the haunted house at which point the world becomes lighter and far less frighting. It’s a clever bit of tone juggling. The film (and to some degree, the novel it was based on, Uneasy Freehold) takes some inspiration from Rebecca, one of the classic gothic romances. It would be a spoiler to say what it borrows but I can say it does a better job with the material than Rebecca does.

The cinematography is superb (it was nominated for an Oscar, and should have won) and the piano piece, “Stella by Starlight” became a hit.  Ray Milland portrays Roderick Fitzgerald with the proper mixture of determination and humor.  It is one of his finest performances and if I’d had my way, he would have been nominated for an Oscar, though he should have lost to Fred McMurry in Double Indemnity. The Academy had different plans so nominated neither. The supporting cast is also excellent,  except Gail Russell as Stella, who is acceptable if a bit shrill. Cornelia Otis Skinner is particularly good as the overbearing, cultish “psychologist.” Alan Napier, best known now as Alfred, Batman’s butler in the ’60s TV show, anchors the film as the voice of calm and reason.

I’ve commented elsewhere that I am rarely frightened by horror movies.  In fact, I’ve only  found three frightening.  This is one.

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Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Aug 251944
 
three reels

Private detective Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) is hired by dim-witted, hulking, ex-con Moose (Mike Mazurki) to find “his Velma.” He’s also hired for a one night body guard job that ends up with his client dead, the killing somehow connected to a stolen jade necklace belonging to the Grayle family: ingĂ©nue daughter Ann (Anne Shirley), father Leuwen (Miles Mander), and stepmother femme-fatale Helen (Claire Tevor). The two cases are connected through Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger), a quack doctor.

Raymond Chandler wasn’t happy with the messy way Hollywood had used his novels, taking his plots but dropping the main character and replacing him with The Falcon and then detective Michael Shayne. He wanted to get out of town, but RKO already had the rights to Farewell My Lovely. Edward Dmytryk was tired of 3rd rate productions and wanted a chance to prove himself. Dick Powell was too old for the boyish roles he was known for and had wanted to get away from musicals and take on tough-guy roles for years. Claire Trevor had been on the edge of the A-list, playing good girls, but her stock was dropping fast and she needed a new image. Chandler hated the notion of a dancer playing his private eye, almost as much as Dmytryk hated it. And all four ended up happy. Trevor and Powell got new careers, Dmytryk got his chance, and Chandler was happy with a proper representation of Marlowe, at least for two years until Bogart became the definitive Marlowe in The Big Sleep. The title Farewell, My Lovely confused movie-goers who assumed it was another Dick Powell musical so it was renamed Murder, My Sweet, and they sold tickets, making the studio happy too.

The story is as convoluted as Chandler’s stories normally are (try working out The Big Sleep some time), which is a minor advantage. You won’t figure it all out in the first reel. And the high contrast photography has that marvelous Film Noir feel. But the star of the show is the dialog: Chandler’s or Chandler-like. Chandler was a master of elaborate lines structured with his invented slang and somehow making it sound like something an uneducated man would say, at least if he existed in a world far wittier than ours.

World class dialog can be a mixed blessing as it becomes noticeable when the execution is only average. And that’s the problem with Murder, My Sweet. Dmytryk was a competent director, but nothing special. He’d no artistry to elevate the material. And Powell? Like the director, Powell is fine. He doesn’t embarrass himself. He should come off as a bit tougher, but that’s not a major issue. But he’s flat. There’s no spark. Twenty other actors could have done the same and be equally “fine.” In the mouth of Bogart (and with the aid of Billy Wilder  or Howard Hawks), the lines would have made this a masterpiece. But with Powell, it’s
fine.

In addition to this film and the ’46 The Big Sleep, Marlowe has appeared in numerous films, most of which it is fine to skip: Lady in the Lake (1946), The Brasher Doubloon (1947), Marlowe (1969), The Long Goodbye (1973), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), The Big Sleep (1978).

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The Monster Maker (1944)

Jul 081944
 
toxic

At a piano recital by the accomplished Anthony Lawrence (Ralph Morgan), Mad scientist Dr. Igor Markoff (J. Carrol Naish) spies Lawrence’s daughter (Wanda McKay). Obsessed with her similarity to his dead wife, he injects Lawrence with the disfiguring acromegaly disease as leverage to force her to marry him.

Quick Review: One of the more distasteful films I’ve viewed, The Monster Maker is a reasonably made “Poverty Row” horror film. Naish overacts, though not massively. Otherwise, everyone is believable. That said, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to watch this. It isn’t exciting, or mysterious, or even shocking. There is no sex or gore, and little violence. There’s just drab unpleasantness. When a movie is this unpalatable, it needs some importance message, some insight into the human condition. None are to be had. For its brief sixty-two minute running time, the audience is supposed to wallow in the “joy” of watching an insane scientist give a disfiguring disease to a kind, elderly man. I’m missing the fun here.

Perhaps if Morgan had been less sympathetic as the pianist, this might have been tolerable. Maybe with some low comedy (very low indeed)
  Well, maybe not. Put onscreen bodies being ripped asunder by hooks, and I’m there, but some things are too much for me.

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The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)

Jun 061944
 
two reels

Amnesiac and psychopath Robert Griffin (Jon Hall) escapes from an asylum after regaining his memory, and seeks out his old cohorts, the Herricks (Lester Matthews, Gale Sondergaard), demanding his cut, and more, in a diamond mine. Thrown out and on the run, he happens to stop at the home of a scientist (John Carradine), who turns Griffin invisible.

The Invisible Man series turns dark once again with this 5th film. While the title character is named Griffin, like the first Invisible Man, there is no other connection. Nothing suggests he’s a decedent, and the serum comes from a new, wacky scientist. It’s hard to say if the drug still causes insanity as Griffin is already over the deep end.

Where The Invisible Man’s Revenge doesn’t work is in several plot contrivances, and in its comedy. Having Griffin, lost and on the run, happen to come upon a house where a scientist just happens to be looking for an experimental subject for his invisibility drug, rips credibility to pieces and stomps on it (and it would be nice if everyone didn’t have the same blood type, or perhaps blood types don’t exist in this world). The so-called comedy is in the form of a helpful bum who tries one greedy scheme after another, or is forced into them by Griffin. An overlong dart game (gosh, he wins by having the Invisible Man run the darts to the target; what a surprise) takes up time, but does nothing else for the film besides dissipate the tone.

When acting as a horror film, The Invisible Man’s Revenge is nearly the equal of The Invisible Man Returns, with Hall making a much more convincing villain than he did hero in The Invisible Agent. He drips malevolence. The gray nature of all the characters makes it more interesting as well. Griffin has been cheated and the Herricks may have tried to kill him years ago. They are good and loving people in many ways, with a touch of larceny. Exactly what happened, who is guilty, and what is fair is never spelled out.

The FX are the best in the series (well, they should be as it is the last in the series). The most impressive trick has Griffin splash water on his face to become momentarily visible. It holds up fifty years later.

The ending is manipulative, which isn’t a bad thing on its own. It will either make you cheer or groan. I’m on the cheering side.

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It Happened Tomorrow (1944)

May 131944
 
two reels

Newspaperman Larry Stevens (Dick Powell) makes a wish to see tomorrow’s newspaper and it comes true when his deceased colleague shows up with the paper. This brings him only trouble, except for bringing him closer to his new-found girlfriend, Sylvia Smith (Linda Darnell)

RenĂ© Clair was a French director that mixed comedy with Fantasy. His works all have a similar feel—gentle, moralistic, fun, and a bit simple. They are nicely filmed with dramatic B&W cinematography and casual editing. His English language talkies include The Ghost Goes West, Beauty and the Devil, and the superb I Married a Witch. It Happened Tomorrow feels like the others. The single most applicable word would be “cute.” Dick Powell is likable, though not captivating as the lead—words that describe him in every movie. Darnell is adorable and supplies the charisma that Powell lacks.

But It Happened Tomorrow lags behind those others by being heavy-handed with its silly message, but worse, it is dated, or at least I think it is. In 1944, was this story fresh? By now we all have seen or read enough time travel stories that we know the basic rules. If you know the future, you don’t draw excessive attention to yourself. If you know that there is a robbery before it happens, you don’t tell everyone about it, and certainly not the police. Perhaps the way Larry acts made sense in 1944, but watching it in 2017, I spent half the time saying, “For God’s sake don’t do that!” The story is old tropes run into the ground such that no one would use them now.

There’s also an unwanted framing piece that tells us at the beginning how the relationship and knowing the future will work out, which cuts away any suspense (but to be fair, with a magical romantic comedy, it was pretty clear how things were going to work out).

It Happened Tomorrow is a nice little fantasy about time whose time has past.

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Gaslight (1944)

Apr 121944
 
one reel

This is one of those movies that has made its mark on modern culture while few people of recent generations have seen it. “Gaslighting” has become a verb, used normally in a political context and often dealing with feminism. Of course the terms current usage defines something quite mild compared to what happens in the movie.

Ingrid Bergman stars as Paula, a traumatized woman whose famous aunt had been murdered, probably for a set of gems. The case is unsolved: both the murder and the robbery. She falls in love with Gregory (Charles Boyer), a mysterious piano player who manipulates her into marriage and a return to her aunt’s home. He spends his time doing something secretive at night, but the day is spent with him convincing her that she is insane. He gives her a gift, steals it back and then tells her she lost it. He’s constantly telling her that she is ill, that she is confused, and that things are not as she remembers. This works shockingly well and she’s nuts in no time. Meanwhile a detective (Joseph Cotton), intrigued by how much Paula looks like her aunt, picks up the closed case, and quickly realizes that the piano player is the murderer and he’s back looking for the rocks.

And people love this film.

I’ll grant that it is filmed beautifully with high contrast B&W that gives everything a gothic feel. But once I’m done marveling at the cinematography and smiling at the solid if unmemorable score, I’ve nothing else to compliment. Bergman and Boyer overact in the way I expect from stage productions. She’s doing the acting 101 crazy person routine. Her movements belong in a silent picture. Her speech would be too much in a radio drama. Boyer is doing the comic liar bit. He might as well be winking at the camera. Everything he says is clearly a lie to the audience, and should be to Paula. Yes, she’s weak-willed from finding her aunts body ten years ago, but this isn’t a matter of will. He does everything but twirl his mustache.

Are we supposed to be engaged with Paula’s slow decent into madness? Nope, because that all happens in three weeks during one scene change. They show up, and in the next scene she’s already “too sick to go out.” So that’s already done and we just see Boyer lying to her over and over and her squirming about or whispering.

I don’t think anyone would say we are supposed to be interested in the mystery. Gaslight is often characterized as a mystery, but it isn’t one. We know immediately who the killer is, and the minute the gems are introduced, we know what the killer is doing, where he is doing it, and that he will be caught. There’s no mystery.

Are we supposed to be pulled in by the suspense? What suspense? There’s no uncertainty for us. Every single thing in the movie is telegraphed. Most events (to the extent this film has “events”) are set in stone at the beginning. We know exactly what is going to happen and how it is going to happen. There are no surprises, no doubt, and no tension.

Don’t come in looking for a character study. These people have no characters. Paula is “girl going nuts.” Gregory is “crazed liar.” That’s it. There’s nothing deeper.

Perhaps if we spent more time with Cotton and his police work, it might—might—have been interesting as a procedural, but that takes up very little screen time. Most of the movie is just Boyer lying about how Paula is crazy and Bergman overacting her responses. It happens over and over. Some have said this is like a Hitchcock thriller, but I’d say its closest cousins are in modern torture porn. We are watching unpleasantness (overdone, unbelievably presented unpleasantness) for unpleasantness’s sake and we are watching it over and over again. It doesn’t lead to anything, since any plot points connected to driving Paula insane are covered in a few seconds. Once we get that he’s broken her (and as mentioned, we get that early and quickly), there’s nothing more to learn, yet we get fully an hour more of psychological torture.

If that’s entertainment, I’m happy to remain unentertained.

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House of Frankenstein (1944)

Apr 061944
 
2.5 reels

All of the Universal monsters, Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange), Dracula (John Carradine), Wolf Man (Lon Chaney), a hunchback, and a mad scientist meet in a monster mash.  The evil Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) and a hunchback murderer (J. Carrol Naish), who acts as his servant, escape from prison to continue Frankenstein’s work, and stumbles upon the other monsters.

Quick Review: So much is wrong with House of Frankenstein (the sixth film in the series after  Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man) that I’ll stick with the good, and you can assume that the rest is a mess.  Luckily, the good is enough to make this acceptable Saturday afternoon free TV fare for fans of the earlier Frankenstein films.  You couldn’t ask for better than Boris Karloff, who plays not The Monster, but the mad scientist.  He purrs evil, which is quite a feat.  Lon Chaney Jr. still can do the Larry Talbot angst bit, though it is starting to get old by the film’s end.  The Wolf Man continues to be the best incarnation of lycanthropy and leaps around convincingly.  And the story of the hunchback in love with the shallow gypsy girl works on all levels.  That’s it, and it is just barely enough.

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The Cry of the Werewolf (1944)

Mar 141944
 
one reel

cryofthewerewolfAt a horror museum, while the tour guide (John Abbott) gives speeches on werewolves, Doctor Charles Morris (Fritz Leiber)—doctor of
history maybe, or voodoo—researches a werewolf woman. He’s murdered, seemingly by a wolf, and his scientist son (Stephen Crane) and the son’s semi-sister/girlfriend (Osa Massen) play detective to find the murderer. Police detective (Barton MacLane) also plays detective. Is the murderer human or werewolf, and is it the gypsy queen (Nina Foch), the janitor (Ivan Triesault), or the guide?

In the ‘30s and ‘40s, Universal was the king of monster movies. There was a reason for that. Studios that dabbled just couldn’t figure out what to do. They didn’t know who their audience was, so aimed at young teen boys. Their low budgets looked as cheap as they were and they often pulled in actors who had no interest in the parts, or no talent. The Cry of the Werewolf, along with The Return of the Vampire, was Colombia’s attempt to cash in on Universal’s and, to a lesser extent, RKO’s recent successes, and Colombia made all the mistakes expected. The weak world building—a gypsy tribe hangs around New Orleans like it is 17th century Romania and there is almost no lore or rules for werewolves—isn’t a big negative but simply a failure of imagination. The confused tone, on the other hand, is enough to sink the film on its own. The gypsies seem to be in a much better, and serious horror film while the main cast is in a mystery serial, and the police are in a slapstick comedy. Others have compared the police antics to the Three Stooges and it is a connection easy to make. The film thinks it is a mystery, but we know who the killer is and why from the beginning.

Nina Foch wasn’t going to win an Academy Award but she’s easily the best actor in the film. MacLane is only here for the paycheck, but that puts him above Massen, who is a master next to Crane. Too bad Crane’s the star. This was his first film and he cleverly quit the business a year later. The script gives him nothing to work with, but he had nothing to give. If everything else had been fantastic, the film would still have failed due to Crane’s high school theater gangster version of a scientist.

The werewolf genre could have used another good entry. This isn’t it.

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The Canterville Ghost (1944)

Mar 091944
 
four reels

Due to an act of cowardice, Sir Simon de Canterville (Charles Laughton) is cursed never to know peace until a descendant performs a brave deed.  Three hundred years later, American troops are billeted at Canterville castle, and one of them, Private Cuffy Williams (Robert Young), turns out to be a distant relative.  The young Lady Jessica de Canterville (Margaret O’Brien) befriends Cuffy and the ghost, and together they attempt to break the curse.

Sir Simon makes a good point when discussing Americans: “What can a people without ancestors know about ghosts?”  What indeed.

This is the best rendition of The Canterville Ghost yet to be filmed, though Oscar Wilde would have some trouble identifying his own play.  Much of Wilde’s themes are missing, replaced with wartime propaganda, but in this case, it works.  Instead of a minister and his family taking over the castle, it’s a group of American G.I.s preparing to show Hitler what for.

I saw The Canterville Ghost first sometime in the early ‘60s (I was quite small at the time, so you’ll have to forgive me for being inexact).  I watched it again every year ‘till well into my teens and often afterwards, and while it isn’t quite as magical now as it was forty years ago, it’s close.  I still laugh and smile throughout, and I still feel for the characters.

Even with the forced addition of WWII era flag-waving (and I can’t think of a better time for a bit of patriotic fervor than 1944), there’s a lot of wit in the dialog.  Both during the comedic segments and the emotional ones, it’s a joy to hear the characters speak.

Robert Young is an amiable lead, but better still are the numerous supporting players (including the always wonderful Una O’Connor, who added so much to classics such as The Invisible Man, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Christmas in Connecticut).  As good as they are, the film belongs to Margaret O’Brien and Charles Laughton.  O’Brien, who is best known for her crying jags in Meet Me in St. Louis, is at her best here.  She’s funny, and charming.  Laughton plays it wildly flamboyant and quietly sentimental.  It’s a remarkable performance, and no one has come close in the many remakes.

While the story made sense to a pre-teen, an older me questions the behavior of the troops.  If you are a soldier, away from home, and given the opportunity to slow-dance with cute British chicks, why would you switch the music to boogie-woogie?  Yes, I’m perfectly willing to accept the existence of a ghost, but not G.I.s giving up the opportunity to hold girls tightly in their arms.

The Canterville Ghost is a perfect choice for a family afternoon, movie marathon on Halloween.

It has been remade numerous times, but always as TV movies, including a horrible 1986 version.

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