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The Devil-Doll (1936)

Oct 081936

Unjustly imprisoned Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore), escapes from Devil’s Island with mad scientist, Marcel (Henry B. Walthall), who has discovered a way to reduce animals to one sixth their size. Marcel plans to use this to help humanity, but when he dies, Lavond teams up with Marcel’s wife, Malita (Rafaela Ottiano), supposedly to continue the work, but really to get revenge on his three ex-partners who framed him. Disguised as a woman, he opens a doll shop in Paris where he sets his plans in motion, but things are complicated by his bitter daughter (Maureen O’Sullivan), who refuses to marry her kind boyfriend (Frank Lawton) because of her connection to a murderer.

The first, and best, of the many killer doll pictures that have popped up over the years, The Devil-Doll has quite a bit of The Count of Monte Cristo in it, only instead of money, the “hero” has the ability to shrink people. OK, that’s a big difference, but consider: there is the unfairly imprisoned protagonist, the escape with a man who’s secret will give the protagonist power, the compulsion for revenge against the three who cheated him, the plan that takes each separately and proves the protagonist’s innocence, and the young lovers that need some nudging.

Director Tod Browning, who assured his name in film history with Dracula (1931), is a bit more reserved than normal, but puts his ample skills into the project, if not his artistic temperament. The lighting, with ranges of shadows, is wonderful. It’s a good looking and sounding film.

Barrymore is a more substantial actor than you’ll find in most “mad scientist” movies. I could have done with less of his old lady routine, but it’s a fast paced movie, and I never got overly annoyed. I always love Maureen O’Sullivan (have you seen her in Tarzan and His Mate? The Thin Man? The Big Clock?), but her bratty daughter role is too melodramatic. Only the actress’s beauty keeps her watchable. The most Browning-like character is the loony Malita, who is played with comical flamboyance by Rafaela Ottiano.

No question this picture earns its way onto the mad scientist list as these are about the nuttiest scientists I recall seeing. Not evil, just fruitcakes. Frankenstein is a reasonable Joe by comparison. After breaking out of prison, Marcel’s first words to his wife are about his work. Yes, he will save humanity by shrinking everyone because…well…people will have more space…and food will be… I give up. It’s a goofy plan.

The special effects are pretty good for 1936, which still means they aren’t great. But when the shrunken people move about on their own (without normal sized ones in the frame), they’re fun to watch.

None of this was the plan. The Devil-Doll was intended to be a full-on horror picture, but Joseph Breen, hit man for the Production Code, had decided the entire horror genre had to go. He went after The Devil-Doll hard, forcing changes to it until is was a light fantasy movie.

Not a classic of early horror, but a step above the B-movie mad doctors that were filling screens, The Devil-Doll is an intermediate genre picture, and one of the last films that even approached horror that would be made for the next two years.

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

Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

Oct 041936

With proof of the existence of a secret, Cambodian, zombie-creating ritual, soft spoken Armand Louque (Dean Jagger) and his bold friend Clifford Grayson (Robert Noland) travel with a team to the ancient city of Angkor. After Armand loses his fiancée (Dorothy Stone) to Clifford, he uses the secret rite to turn anyone in his way into a zombie.

The second zombie film, following 1932’s White Zombie (or the third, if you count The Walking Dead, also in 1936), Revolt of the Zombies is Up Stairs, Down Stairs, with zombies. The upper crust Brits sit around politely chatting while they are served by Cambodians (some as zombies, some not). After a brief attack by zombie soldiers, the film becomes a romance, which isn’t a bad thing if I was watching a romance. For a romance I’d have hired someone other than Dean Jagger, as being romantic is not in his repertoire. Then again, at this point in his career, any kind of acting is not in his repertoire. The rest of the cast isn’t substantially. Eventually, the romance plot fades a bit and the horror-plot takes over…and not much changes. Only in a Monty Python skit about British officers at war have I seen more civilized, stiff-upper-lip folks. Their reaction to Armand becoming a megalomaniac zombie master? “Well, old man, this controlling people’s minds just isn’t very cricket of you.” He’s enslaving and murdering people and no one is all that emotional about it. When he betrays his friend and forces his ex to be his bride, she can’t even bring herself to be cross with him. I want whatever these folks are smoking.

It marches along, slowly, and far too calmly, feeling like a film made in 1930. Then it just winds down. The ending is amusing, and suggests that this could have been a more exciting film.

Made long before the brain-eating, decaying corpses of Romero, anyone expecting blood and body parts is going to be disappointed. These are old time mesmerized zombies.

Back to Zombies

Poverty Row, Reviews, Zombies Tagged with: Two Reels

Mummy’s Boys (1936)

Oct 041936

Stanley Wright and Aloysius C. Whittaker (Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey), take jobs as diggers for an archaeologist who plans to return artifacts to a tomb before the curse of the mummy gets him. With the aid of a subservient stowaway (Willie Best), Stanley and Aloysius take over the mission when the archaeologist vanishes.

Early film was filled with vaudevillians, who brought their wisecracking, audience-aware antics to the silver screen. Assuming this brand of humor was ever funny (it was before my time, and pretty much before anyone’s who is above ground), it rarely translated well to film which is both more intimate, as you can get much closer to the actor, and more impersonal, as the audience and the performer cannot interact. Yet the studios kept trying, and for a time, many vaudeville-inspired acts were popular, though time has washed most of this clean from popular culture.

And that leads me to Wheeler and Woolsey, a comic duo completely devoid of anything remotely amusing. Their twenty-one, quicky, low-budget films made a profit, but have rightfully been relegated to the dustbin of time. If you are unfortunate, you might accidentally stumble upon their work. Just keep walking.

Mummy’s Boys is a painfully unfunny feature. Even fans of the duo (if such people still live) admit that this is a morbid undertaking. The main “joke” is that Stanley forgets everything he is told until he has a nap. If there is any way to wring a laugh out of that absurd premise, the writers never figured it out. We aren’t even given the slapstick encounter with a mummy as one isn’t to be found in this mummy movie (makes me think another name for the picture would have been in order), just lots of comments about the mummy’s curse.

To add to the embarrassment, Mummy’s Boys also presents us with the “yesssum sirrr” mumblings of Willie Best in one of his too frequent, 1930’s, racist portrayals. Besides immediately taking on the servant role to the white ditch diggers, the character is so dim that he has no idea how he got into a box, except for saying, “everything went black.” And yes, that was supposed to be a joke.

I find it hard to believe that there was ever a time Wheeler and Woolsey or this poorly written mess were considered entertaining. But if so, that time has passed.

Mummies, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

Romeo and Juliet (1936) / Romeo and Juliet (1968) / Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Oct 031936

The children of warring families fall in love and secretly marry. Do you really need to be told the plot of Romeo and Juliet?

The play Romeo and Juliet is about two very young lovers who don’t understand the world, and a large number of older people who are out of touch with the young (and don’t understand the world either). Juliet is thirteen, and while Romeo’s age isn’t stated, putting him in his late teens fits the story. Their feelings are true, but they just don’t know what to do about them. Why not just run away instead of attempting a bizarre fake suicide? Because they have barely left childhood. Why does Friar Laurence give such horrible advice? Because he, with his statements that being slow and calm are the best ways, has completely forgotten youth. Don’t trust anyone over thirty? Hell, this play suggests you not trust anyone out of their teens.

Romeo and Juliet (1936)

For the 1936 film adaptation of this story of the generation gap—which makes no sense if the title characters are not very young—producer Irving Thalberg cast his thirty-four year old wife, Norma Shearer, as Juliet and forty-three year old Leslie Howard as Romeo. It is comical watching these middle-aged folks act as high school sophomores. But even more ridiculous is Romeo’s hotheaded, class-clown, friend, Mercutio, portrayed by the fifty-four-year-old John Barrymore. When Mercutio (in Shakespeare’s play) challenges Tybalt, it is as a boy whose pride is hurt, who sees his gang having its “cool” factor stripped away. Here, it is a tired, aging man. Try to make sense of it. The film also crawls, and has had all the sexual innuendo ripped away, but those, and other failing, don’t matter as the casting is enough to sink it. The film is only of interest as an oddity.

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Franco Zeffirelli got the ages closer in 1968. He cast fifteen-year-old Olivia Hussey as Juliet and while there is a huge difference between fifteen and thirteen, this works pretty well. Zeffirelli put the passion of the play into his film. The romance is believable, exciting, and heartbreaking. Unfortunately, it is also slow. Romeo and Juliet, like most of Shakespeare’s works, needs to move at a lightening pace. Zeffirelli falls into the trap of respecting the words so much he abandons moving the story along. As this makes the story overlong, he cuts important dialog and scenes. That respect also has him cleaning up the crude jokes, which is also unfortunate. But passion is enough to make this watchable.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Baz Luhrmann updated the setting for his 1996 Romeo + Juliet, (sometimes entitled William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet in case the gen-Xers it was made for are unaware who wrote the play or are easily offended by the word “and”). The modern city is fine; it isn’t as if the play hasn’t been moved around before. His actors are a bit too old (Claire Danes is seventeen and looks older) for the confusion they display, and Luhrmann does his best to distract viewers from the story with explosions and helicopter blades, but all that could be forgiven.

What makes this a toxic mess is the delivery. It’s OK if the audience doesn’t know the play, but it would be nice if the actors showed some sign that they knew it. Outside of Pete Postlethwaite (Father Laurence), no one appears to know what the words they say mean. It doesn’t help that half the lines are mumbled. No one who knows the story only from this version can possibly understand it. I challenge anyone who has never read the play or seen another production to explain what the hell Mercutio is saying about his dream. It must be important as he is excitedly talking for quite some time. Luckily, I have read the play, and seen reasonable productions, so I do understand the lines (and could fill in the parts that were inaudible). Too bad the entire production wasn’t inaudible.

Reviews, Shakespeare

As You Like It (1936)

Sep 281936

Orlando (Laurence Olivier), kept from the life he should have as a gentleman by his cruel older brother (John Laurie), leaves town for the forest of Ardenne, where the usurped duke (Henry Ainley) lives with a merry band of exiles. At the same time, the new duke, Frederick (Felix Aylmer), banishes his niece, Rosalind (Elisabeth Bergner), the old duke’s daughter. As she has seen Orlando and fallen in love with him, she disguises herself as a boy and, with the Duke’s daughter, Celia (Sophie Stewart), heads to the forest as well. The forest, which has near-magical restorative properties on all, is soon filled with confused lovers, misunderstandings, and reconciliations.

A mannered and stage-like adaptation that displays a more than average collection of talent, As You Like It stands as an encyclopedia of the wrong choices available in putting Shakespeare on the silver screen. For much of its ninety-six minute running time (the play is trimmed, but I could find no additions), no one connected to the production seems to realize it’s a comedy. Considering this is a story where life-and-death struggles and hatreds are resolved in seconds, and with no “on-stage” action from the protagonists (Orlando’s brother changes his behavior between scenes and Frederick is converted and abdicates after a brief chat with a holy man), it is pivotal to play up the humor. The fault lies with producer-director Paul Czinner, but it is most noticeable in Olivier. This was his first appearance in a Shakespearian film, and it would be ten years before he made another. He went on to become the most important figure in cinematic Shakespeare, for good or ill. Here, he makes Orlando a lackluster dramatic figure.

Poorly paced, with attractive but obviously fake backdrops, and artificial enunciation, it is hard to find anything done completely right. But as most elements aren’t done completely wrong either, it might have been of minor scholastic interest except for Elisabeth Bergner. She was a German stage and screen actress who moved to England in 1933 with her husband, Paul Czinner. While she had played Rosalind on the German stage, it is hard to fathom what Czinner and Bergner thought they were doing placing her in the lead. Either she had no idea that a stage play and a movie were different things, or Czinner was so confused. Whatever the case, she overacts with glee, throwing her arms about like she’s waving to someone leaving on a train. But far worse than her ill-conceived interpretation of Rosalind is her accent. With everyone else speaking as if they take tea daily with the Queen, Bergner’s thick Teutonic speech patterns are a distraction. It would be as fitting to stick Arnold Schwarzenegger as Prince Hal in Henry IV or have an overweight white guy play Othello—wait, they did that. Hmm.

Back to Fantasy

Reviews, Shakespeare Tagged with: One Reel

San Francisco (1936)

Sep 251936

Blackie (Clark Gable) is a pleasant, heroic, good guy who runs an exceptionally nice night club but is somehow thought of as scandalous. Huh. That doesn’t make sense, but onward. Blackie spends his time, when not doing the most respectable disreputable things possible, with old friend Father Mullin (Spencer Tracy). Into his club comes prissy opera singer Mary (Jeanette MacDonald), so he hires her and falls for her… Huh. That doesn’t make sense either. The local respectable opera impresario and slumlord (Jack Burley) also wants Mary, both for her singing and romantically, and also wants to stop Blackie from running for public office because he likes fires—more or less. Eventually the San Francisco earthquake hits, which is the reason the film was made.

In the year of My Man Godfrey and The Petrified Forest, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences decided to nominate a melodramatic disaster film for Best Picture as well as Best Actor, Director, Writing, Assistant Director (yes, that was a category), and Sound Recording, and gave the Oscar to it for sound. That was a peculiar thing to do, but who doesn’t love a disaster film?

So, looking for a disaster film? Well, you’re going to have to wait. First you have to spend some time with Gable as the purist rogue that’s ever lived clowning around with Tracy’s annoying priest. And then you’re going to have to listen to Jeanette MacDonald sing. And then sing some more. And then talking and arguing in the foreground as MacDonald sings in the background. Then some more singing. Then some more arguing intertwined with singing. The songs are no more exciting than the story but they take up more time.

Watching all that singing is Blackie, the kind of sleazy that only exists in cinema. He’s rough and tough and gives organs to the church because that’s what rough and tough guys do. His bar and gambling casino is supposed to be seedy, but looks like the best four star restaurant, with everyone in tuxes. And this fake shady character is the most realistic part of the film. No one acts human, no relationship is real (or amusing), and the story is just stuck together as an excuse to put these stars in the same picture with an earthquake.

The acting is somewhere left of terrible. Tracy is often overrated, but here he’s not even trying, mugging for the camera from time to time. It’s hard to say what Gable is doing. My guess is he didn’t take the film seriously and was just goofing off. At least MacDonald makes sense. She could never act, and here she continues her tradition. She was a singer, not an actress, and it shows; it always shows. She has zero chemistry with Gable which is no shock. Chemistry has nothing to do with her and Gable wasn’t bothering. As for that singing, well, MacDonald has skill, but the music doesn’t fit. A rap tune wouldn’t either, nor would a hour long symphony. To the extent that this flick calls out for anything, it calls for jazz. The all too frequent pauses for opera, and operafied pop vary between unnecessary and painful. It isn’t here because the story demanded it, but because studio bosses had to figure out places to put MacDonald. Her final version of San Fransico is pretty good, but can’t make up for the rest.

And then after 90 minutes the earthquake hit with zero warning or buildup and… it’s good. Really good. The special effects are amazing for 1936 and not bad now (some rear screen work is too obvious). There’s a real feeling of weight as buildings fall. And Clark Gable begins to act. The reasonable cinematography shoots up to top notch. I didn’t think W.S “One-Shot Woody” Van Dyke had it in him. It’s like a whole different movie. The cheap unbearable melodrama became solid drama.

Then it’s all brought low by an ugly religious ending that seems to say that it’s good for God to murder lots of people and destroy cities in order for people to worship him. Apparently Gable found it as offense as I do, but he was getting paid and under contract. It’s a spectacularly unpleasant ending.

Disaster, Overrated Films, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Satan Met a Lady (1936)

Sep 231936

In this lighthearted version of The Maltese Falcon, con artist Ted Shayne (Warren William in the Spade role) was just kicked out of town so drums up some business for his old partner Ames (Porter Hall in the Archer role) and then rejoins his detective agency in another city. He, of course, hits on secretary Miss Murgatroyd (Marie Wilson in the Effie role) and Ames’s wife, before Valerie Purvis (Bette Davis in the O’Shaughnessy role) pops in to hire them to find the man who jilted her. The job is a fake and Ames ends up dead. It turns out Purvis is connected to eccentric Englishman Anthony Travers (Arthur Treacher in the Cairo role), famous criminal mastermind Madame Barabbas (Alison Skipworth in the Gutman role), and youthful killer Kenneth (Maynard Holmes in the Wilmer role), all of whom are searching for an animal horn filled with jewels.

This second of three adoptions of The Maltese Falcon in ten years has the worst reputation, but I prefer it to the first as it has a reason to exist, and so, there’s a reason to watch it. It’s different, closer to a comedy than to Noir. The 1931 version is just a pale take on the 1941 masterpiece with a misunderstanding of Sam Spade. This one, for good or ill, mainly ill, is something different. The changes come because Warner Bros wasn’t making this due to the book it is based on or the previous movie, but rather due to the success of the witty and playful The Thin Man movie. They wanted more like that, or rather, they wanted more they could sell in the same way. So, another fun breezy mystery based on a work by the same author seemed to be the ticket. Change the name and they could ignore the book in advertising, replacing it with “By the author of The Thin Man” and change the character names and the item they were searching for and maybe no one would notice they’d tried this five years earlier.

The story changes were substantial from the book and older movie, but far less than in a majority of film adaptations of novels. The real change is in tone. Everything is light. Murders are no big thing and no one is taken seriously. Warren William laughs through his lines—really, he seldom recites a full line without a giggle. Shayne is past being happy and is clearly on some really effective drugs. Purvis laughs less but also seems to care less, which is fitting as Bette Davis didn’t care, only showing up after she was suspended by WB. Arthur Treacher plays Travers the same way William plays Shayne and I have to assume at least the two of them were having a good time on set. And Miss Murgatroyd is around for dumb blonde comedy at all times (she even gets a scene where she forgets how to spell her name).

Yes, it is all pretty dumb, but then it wasn’t trying to be smart. It was trying to be fun, and to a mild degree, it succeeds. The cast (minus Davis) is game for the task and if the jokes don’t all land, enough do to make me occasionally smile. No, it can’t stand up against the Huston/Bogart The Maltese Falcon, but then few films can and this one isn’t trying. It doesn’t have anything to say, the characters have no depth, and it had no effect on the history of motion pictures. But, as an oddity, it isn’t a bad time.

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Two & 1/2 Reels

Ouanga (1936)

Aug 191936

Klili doing her voodoo dance

Klili Gordon (Fredi Washington), a plantation owner and voodoo priestess, has had a two year affair with white man Adam Maynard (Philip Brandon), but on his travels to the United States, he’s gotten engaged to a white woman and is bringing her back to the islands. The black overseer (Sheldon Leonard—yes, Jewish Sheldon Leonard, who’d later produced The Dick Van Dyke Show, and no, he isn’t in blackface) wants Klili for his own and tries to convince her to stick to her own kind. But Klili isn’t going to give up, and after begging Adam to take her, resorts first to a curse, and then to raising zombies.

In the ‘30s there were a substantial number of “race movies” made, with mostly black casts and crews and intended for purely black audiences in segregated theaters, though they were made by white-owned companies and often had a white director. These movies had tiny budgets, even by the standards of Poverty Row. They didn’t get good equipment or the training to use it. Few of the actors were pros and little care was given to hiring skilled people behind the cameras (director George Terwilliger was a silent filmmaker who hadn’t worked in 10 years). Surprisingly the depiction of blacks wasn’t much better in “race movies” than in more mainstream ones. Some of these films would be set (and perhaps filmed) outside of the US, as in this case in the West Indies, but would normally include a male comic relief character from Harlem. (Ouanga was set to film in Haiti with part of the team doing research by watching an actual voodoo service, but they offended the locals and one or two crew members ended up dead—the number is as vague as what exactly happened—so they moved to Jamaica). Another aspect common to these films is how pale skinned the black leads are. I would not have guessed that Washington was black if I hadn’t read it.

With all that, Ouanga is… interesting. It is poorly made. Let’s make that terribly made. The editing is primitive, causing the film to leap from the ridiculous prologue on how nice the islands are and the terrors of voodoo to a dance at a voodoo ceremony (that doesn’t look too bad) and then onto a ship at some unknown time later. Well, it doesn’t drag due to those wild jumps. Nothing indicates that anyone involved knew how to make a movie. But it also is one of the first voodoo horror films and is the second zombie film ever made. And while the cast is generally dreadful, Fredi Washington has plenty of charisma. Her acting only rises a touch above the others, but natural charm makes up for a lot.

While many “race movies” avoided direct commentary on black/white racial relationships, Ouanga dives in. It’s filled with lines like:

“You belong with your kind”
“Am I not as beautiful, as white?”
“She’s his kind. She’s white.”
“Your white skin doesn’t change what’s inside you. You’re black.”

Race commentary in a horror movie could be great stuff, but that requires some artistry and skill, and none is to be found here. At times you could read Ouanga as racist and at others you could read it as fighting racism. If there’s a message, and I’m not sure that there is, it’s “Stick to your own kind.”

Ouanga doesn’t approach being good or competently made, and has a “questionable” theme, if I’m being charitable, but between Washington dancing and the zombies, it isn’t a movie that horror fans should ignore.

It was loosely remade as The Devil’s Daughter (1939).

Horror, Poverty Row, Reviews, Zombies Tagged with: Two Reels

The Rogues’ Tavern (1936)

Aug 161936

Police detective Jimmy Kelly (Wally Ford) and ex-department store detective Marjorie Burns (Barbara Pepper) are in a hurry to get married so hop across the border to the Red Rock Tavern, which is instead an inn—I suppose when the producers couldn’t find a tavern set for cheap they decided it was too much effort to change the word “tavern” to “inn” in the script—where they are supposed to meet with a Justice of the Peace. Instead they find a sinister wheelchair-bound innkeeper (John Elliot), his less sinister wife (Clare Kimball Young), a mentally challenged employee who is frightened by the night, Gloria who reads fortunes (Joan Woodbury), and a few guys who might as well have “CRIMINAL” tattooed on their foreheads. One of the crooks is killed, supposedly by a half-wolf dog. When a second is killed, Jimmy finally gets involved in solving what are clearly murders.

It’s another Poverty Row Old Dark House mystery, though the house is a hotel, and they are isolated mainly because no one has a car. But there are howls, gusting winds, proclamations of deaths to come, power outages, and a secret passageway, so it just barely makes its way into the subgenre.

Wallace Ford could be a decent supporting player (as in Harvey fourteen years later), but he couldn’t handle larger roles, particularly in cheaply-made horror films. Just as in One Frightened Night and Night of Terror, he doesn’t play a character, instead choosing just to be obnoxious and pushy and call it a day. It harmed those films and it kills this one. Jimmy is dismissive of his fiancée to the point of abuse, making it very hard to figure why she wants to marry him. Of course Marjorie is weak-willed, cowardly, and fairly annoying herself—not uncommon traits for female leads in mid-30s B-movies. Jimmy and Marjorie clearly aren’t in love and shouldn’t get married, and there could be some interesting tension built off of that if that had been the filmmakers’ intention, but it seems we’re supposed to like them and want them to get together.

The rest of the cast do better as a majority of them are so generic they it’s hard to dislike them or have any feeling about them at all. I couldn’t tell the crooks apart. The only one who stands out in a positive way is Gloria because she’s given something to do (declare that death is coming) and because the cameraman apparently was in love with her; that’s my best guess as she’s given long intense shots where she is lit beautifully while everything and everyone else looks horrible.

The story falls apart at the end, with a red herring that makes no sense, but I’d checked out long before then.

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

The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936)

Jun 021936

Brilliant but eccentric scientist Dr. Laurience (Brois Karloff) has developed a means of transferring minds between animals. He summons young scientist Dr. Clare Wyatt (Anna Lee) to aid him in his research. His only other aid is the crippled and grumpy Clayton (Donald Calthrop). Wyatt has an extremely pushy boyfriend, Dick Haslewood (John Loder), who is both a reporter and the son of the rich and powerful Lord Haslewood (Frank Cellier). Lord Haslewood offers Dr. Laurience great resources, and then pulls them away again. This pushes Laurience over the edge and he decides to use his mind swapping device to help himself.

This British “quota quickie” mad doctor flick is well made, with solid performances, and excellent ones from Karloff and Cellier who both take on double roles. But it is an odd film, with the first and second halves feeling very different.

The first thirty minutes is unpleasant. I disliked everyone to various degrees and the only thing that could help is if the entire group was engulfed in flame. Dr. Laurience is perfectly reasonable scientifically, but he raves and yells and does indeed act mad, but not in a fun way, and not to any effect. That he happens to be right doesn’t make him better, but brings everyone else down. Clare, who we are supposed to like, is overly conservative, and not much of a scientist. She talks about things being “sacred.” Nothing you want more from an assistant on cutting edge research is statements about how there are things we just shouldn’t know. Her boyfriend, Dick, has two modes: harassment and paternalism. I can’t figure why Clare doesn’t kick him to the curb. Clayton and Lord Haslewood are also horrible in their own distinct ways, but we are supposed to hate them, so that helps. All of these characters and events are taken seriously (more or less), and the last thing this film should be is a serious drama.

Then the film flips. It suddenly realizes that this is all silly and the audience is here for some fun, and it becomes a riot. Karloff casts off being an unhappy man with mental health issues and adopts being a cackling, cinematic, mad scientist and does it with gusto. We get body hopping galore with humor stuck between the murders (the first half had neither comedy nor killings). This is what I came for. What kept running through my mind was why couldn’t this have happened 25 minutes earlier: a short intro and then bam!, body switching. Ah well.

It ends disappointingly, but not unexpectedly, and compared to the beginning, it’s a minor flaw. Watch it, but maybe just read my summery and come in at the halfway mark.

It’s also known as The Man Who Lived Again and Dr. Maniac.

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

The Invisible Ray (1936)

Apr 281936

At his mountain top castle, Dr. Janos Rukh (Boris Karloff) works to perfect his discovery, the ability to capture a ray from Andromeda, and use it to view the past. Laughed at by other scientists, he lives in seclusion with his young wife Diana (Frances Drake) and his mother (Violet Kemble Cooper), but for validation he’s summoned Dr. Felix Benet (Bela Lugosi) and Sir Francis Stevens (Walter Kingford), and they bring with them Lady Stevens (Beulah Bondi) and relative Ronald Drake (Frank Lawton). Rukh’s demonstration convinces them that he’s found something significant, and happens to have also supplied proof for Rukh’s earlier claim that a meteor hit in Africa. The other were planning an expedition to Africa and invite Rukh along to search for his meteor. Rukh’s mother is opposed, predicting that it will end in death, but Rukh and his wife go. Rukh does find the meteor, which is made of radium-X, an element that can cure and kill and do just about anything. Rukh is poisoned by the element, making his touch fatal, and pushing his already shaky sanity.

This is the first atomic horror film, nearly a decade before the atomic bomb fell. Based on that, I’ll give The Invisible Ray more leeway on its peculiar version of science. I’ll assume the film takes place on a parallel Earth, where the rules are different, because the rules of science here are really different.

I enjoy The Invisible Ray though it is silly and greatly flawed. It’s the third Universal pairing of Karloff and Lugosi, and I judge it on a lesser standard. I wanted The Black Cat and The Raven to be great A-films, but The Invisible Ray is a B-movie through and through. It was never going to be great. Fun is good enough. Karloff isn’t at his best, and Lugosi is quite good, but doesn’t get enough to do. It is, however, Karloff and Lugosi, and who doesn’t like that combo?

It’s a strange film, cobbled together from pieces that don’t fit. We start in the Gothic middle Europe of earlier Universal horror pictures. Rukh lives in a beautiful castle that exists in a different time. He works in a mad scientists lab of jolting electricity, though the “science” he carries out is calm and lacking in madness. His mother speaks like a horror film gypsy, making prophecies of doom—very peculiar behavior for someone who acted as a lab assistant.

Then they go to Africa. Why? Plot-wise it is to find the radium-X, which is odd to start with as it is only tangentially related to Rukh’s astronomical discovery. But it is more odd to stick in an African safari segment at all. It has a very different tone. Why not make radium-X Rukh’s lab discovery instead of seeing into the past? That works better for the story structure and keeps us in the land of mad scientists instead of explorers. Then we enter the third act of the film, with Rukh now a vengeful maniac, that has nothing to do with the previous “science” except that Rukh now has a lethal touch. Tacked onto the side we have the love story, which could be stripped away without changing anything else. I picture a studio planning meeting, where lesser execs listed film genres that were popular at the time, and the boss held up a finger and yelled, “Yes, we’ll do them all in one!”

In the end, the evil man is not condemned by being told he has violated the will of God, but that he’s “broken the first law of science.” It makes as much sense as anything else.

Classic Horror, Horror, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with: Two Reels

Le Golem (1936)

Apr 221936

Things are going very badly in the Jewish ghetto of Prague. The people cry out for Rabbi Jacob (Charles Dorat) to bring the fabled golem to life so save them, but he says it isn’t yet time. Emperor Rudolph II (Harry Baur) also has the golem on his mind as he’s heard the prediction that it will bring about his downfall, a fact that Chancellor Lang (Roger Karl) uses to his own advantage. When the golem disappears, Rudolph has Jacob arrested—though not before he can pass on the secret of revivifying the golem to his wife, Rachel (Jany Holt)—and tortured, but Jacob doesn’t know what happened to the clay statue. It was actually Rudolph’s rightfully jealous mistress, Countess Strada (Germaine Aussey) who had the golem moved into the castle. She befriends a French conman/swordsman, Trignac (Roger Duchesne), who is rescued by Rachel causing the conman to get Jacob out of the dungeon. But by now all of the Jewish leaders are to be killed, and only the golem can save them.

Le Golem (titled The Man of Stone for the US, even though it should be The Man of Clay), is a reworking, rather than remake, of the Golem story that had already seen three films. It was meant as an international picture to be made in multiple languages and shot in Germany. It was moved to Czechoslovakia when someone worked out that 1936 Germany might not be the best place to make a Jewish-themed film.

Although always discussed as horror, the Golem story walks the edge between Frankenstein and a superhero tale, though in this case, it is more of a costume drama/costume comedy/religious lesson with a little bit of Samson tossed in at the end. That is to say, it’s a mess, but it is a very well made and pretty mess. It looks good, and the actors are all dedicated to whatever type of film they think they are in.

For the basic story, Jacob and Rachel should be the leads. And they are in a serious religious picture. Very serious and scared. Dorat and Holt do a fine job in what comes close to a religious service. There is no fun to be had when they are on screen; fun would be out of place.

But director Julien Duvivier doesn’t seem all that interested in that story. Instead, he focuses the picture on Rudolph and his slipping sanity, and the palace intrigue that goes on around that. This is mostly a lighter story, one that swings into satire. Rudolph does get a majority of the screentime. But if this is the focus, than Jacob and Rachel’s time should be cut way back, or perhaps the entire golem story should be cut in favor of more wheeling and dealing at court. The two parts certainly have a hard time fitting together. At the very least the torture needs to be less horrific in a satire. And Rudolph needs to be a serious evil force for a faith picture.

Then there is Countess Strada and Trignac, who are in a romantic adventure comedy. They are an amiable pair and probably the only ones you’d want to spend any time around but it is hard to fathom what they are doing in this picture. Perhaps there was a draft where they are the protagonists and heroes as it looks like they will be at one point, but that seems a horrible idea for a Jewish religious film.

Then again, horrible ideas define this movie. There is a lot of talent in front of and behind the camera, but no one seems to know what they are making.

And if you waiting for the golem, you’ve got a lot of waiting to do. He doesn’t move until the last ten minutes of the movie, where he just looks like a guy. It is another problem for the film that he isn’t awakened sooner as all of the suffering could have been prevented. Why wasn’t he? Well, when the film is in full religious fervor-mode, you can just put it down to God. Of course that makes God a real dick, but we’ve seen that before. But as the film so often abandons the holy tone, that answer doesn’t feel right. Put it down to yet another horrible idea.

Perhaps the script was being shuffled around at the last minute to deal with real world issues. Certainly I would have made more commentary on Nazi Germany and what was happening to the Jews there, and some of that is in the film, but not enough, and not with a clear message.

Classic Horror, Foreign Language, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

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