Foster on Film – Page 129 – The Film Criticism of Matthew M. Foster

El hombre bestia o las aventuras del Capitán Richard (1934)

Apr 081934

WWI Capt. Richard (Saverio Yaquinto) takes off in his biplane to scout enemy positions. He’s shot down and ends up lost in a jungle, where he turns savage, which includes growing some rather unlikely globs of hair that seam glued to his shoulders. Eventually another pilot lands in a clearing in the jungle and Richard strangles him and steals the plane. He runs out of gas and lands near a mad scientist’s house. The scientist immediately injects him with a “diabolic” drug that brings out the lust in Richard, who escapes and begins kidnapping local women and taking them to his cave. Who will stop this human beast? Well, I can assure you it won’t be the unruly sailors who are hired for the job and die really easily.

El hombre bestia {The Beast Man} is Argentina’s first horror film, and according to Janne Wass on Scifist, there was not another for eight years (which saved me all kinds of time searching). There’s a solid argument that it isn’t a horror film, but an action flick modeled after American serials (the second part of the title is Or The Adventures of Captain Richard). There’s a better argument that it isn’t any kind of film at all. Made not by an experienced filmmaker, but by journalist C.Z. Soprani, El hombre bestia appears to be the result of a hobbyist playing around in his free time, not someone seriously trying to make a motion picture, and then trying to make a few pesos at small-town theaters that weren’t able to get real movies and in private screenings. With that title it could attract a few horror fans or a few adventure fans, and once they’ve paid, it doesn’t really matter what you show them if you aren’t planning on sticking around.

El hombre bestia was considered a lost film, which makes it sound far more important than it is. No one considers the video I took at a convention in 1999 a lost film just because I don’t have it any more. No one it seemed, including Soprani, bothered keeping it around. But in the years it was missing, it gained a mystique. It was, after all, Argentina’s first horror film, so it must be significant. There’s even a documentary about it now, which is massively better than the film itself; its main weakness is having a subject not worthy of a documentary. And it turns out someone—a child of one of the amateur actors—had a copy that got ported to VHS (and in so doing, destroyed the film) as you might an old home movie. So now we can all see a poor copy of a film that doesn’t deserve that much.

Soprani had gathered a few non-actors together, pointed his camera in their general direction and then they moved around, some like Yaquinto, energetically, but mostly slowly and with no real idea what they were doing. Well, Soprani had no idea, so why should they?

Argentina had a small silent film industry primarily in Buenos Aires, but things took off when sound arrived. It was a lot easier for Hollywood to dominate non-English speaking countries when language wasn’t in the equation. So by 1934 Argentina was pumping out Spanish language pictures with tango soundtracks. As El hombre bestia can barely be called a movie, it bucked this trend. It’s essentially a silent picture, complete with intertitles, that occasionally has a scene with dialog—dubbed after filming. None of those involve Captain Richard, who runs about abducting women without even sound effects—just a loud classical score. One of the more amusing aspects, and one that would make a great drinking game, is how the booming music will cut out when we enter a talkie moment, and as soon as the dialog is complete, the music returns.

The editing is…odd. Best I can tell, scenes often start or stop with a piece of cardboard slowly being pulled across the camera lens. It’s a technique whose time has never come.

I’ve seen others say that Soprani used a great deal of “stock footage” but that’s being too charitable. A more accurate description is that he stole chunks from other films and stuck them in his. The only good looking scenes are the charging soldiers and dueling planes at the beginning, all of which was lifted from real movies. I do, however, believe that the pointless beach scene could be stock footage, although I think it is more likely Soprani’s family vacation film.

It’s unfair to call El hombre bestia a horrible film because it isn’t a film. It’s a sad little joke, or a con, or something just fiddled around with. However, it can be amusing to watch in the right state of mind, which would drunk.

Classic Horror, Foreign Language, Horror Tagged with: One Reel

Menace (1934)

Mar 211934

In Africa, three bored, wealthy wastrels, Helen Chalmers, Col. Leonard Crecy, and Norman Bellamy (Gertrude Michael, Paul Cavanagh and Berton Churchill) harangue their friend (Ray Milland) to come and play bridge with them, even though there’s a storm, the dam he’s responsible for could burst, and he’d have to fly his biplane to get there. But eventually he gives in and shows up for the card game. When he receives dire news from the dam, he takes off, but ends up dead. His insane brother swears revenge on the three, giving an exact date on when he will kill them. On that day, the three gather at a large, secluded house in California, along with Cavanaugh’s chauffer (Forester Harvey). They also hire a new butler, Skinner (Halliwell Hobbes), and welcome Helen’s kid sister (Arletta Duncan) and her brand new boyfriend (Robert Allen). Finally they are joined by the eccentric old woman from a mile or so down the road (Henrietta Crossman) and the young man who is a friend of her son’s (John Lodge). It soon becomes clear, in case it wasn’t already, that the killer is in the house.

I’ve pointed out that the Old Dark House films are the ancestors of Slashers. Menace shows you can have your children when you are young. It’s often categorized as an Old Dark House film, but it’s a Slasher, one of the earliest, coming four decades before the subgenre’s normally stated birthdate. We have our groups of dim characters, gathered together, with a knife-wielding maniac set to kill them. And the targets of his wrath aren’t randomly chosen, but people who bare partial responsibility for a death.

And as in so many Slashers, these are remarkably stupid people. The psycho told them he would kill them on a particular date. So they get together. Why? Since they had just been scattered over three continents, it would have been impossible for the threat to be carried out. They choose as their haven a house over a mile away from the nearest neighbor, and distant from a town. And they choose this day to hire a new butler (are they so degenerate that they couldn’t take care of themselves without a butler for a single day), as well as receiving a visit from a sister who brings a guy she’s only known for a few weeks, and let in the neighbor with a man she’s only known for a few days. Is this really the time to be having visitors? Either hire a team of 10 or 15 bodyguards, or keep out all strangers. And shouldn’t they have asked the doctors at the asylum just what the maniac looked like?

And once they know the killer is there, their stupidity rises a level. They separate over and over again. They do so for trivial matters, like wanting another cocktail and moving a body (shouldn’t they leave it until the police show up) and for important ones, like fixing the fuse. Sometimes they run off on their own. Sometimes this is an actual plan. The Colonel is the worse offender, telling the others to go off here and there. It’s dumb the first few times, but after that it’s just funny.

If you can get past how brain-dead these people are, you are left with a passable thriller. Somehow with them all in eveningwear it comes off as slightly less silly since this is a stiff-upper-lip crowd, and hey, didn’t rich people in the 1930s act like this? (The answer is no, but it feels like they might.) Menace builds up the appropriate level of tension, and is unusually graphic for 1934 as we get to see the dagger sliding into a victim (I did say this was a Slasher). The characters are at least identifiable, and the old lady is amusing. You also get a few minutes of a very young Ray Milland. I’d have felt gypped in 1934 paying full price for this, particularly as it’s 58 minutes long, but it isn’t bad to watch while curled up on the sofa.

Classic Horror, Dark House, Horror, Reviews, Slashers Tagged with: Two Reels

The Private Life of Don Juan (1934)

Mar 181934

An aging Don Juan (Douglas Fairbanks) returns to Seville with his servant (Melville Cooper) where he is threatened with jail by his loving wife Dolores (Benita Hume). He visits a few ladies, including a dancer, Antonita (Merle Oberon) and all the town is excited by his return. A young man pretending to be Don Juan is killed when found with a man’s wife and Don Juan takes this as his opportunity to escape his legend and relax by pretending to be dead. But he soon finds it less fun than he thought it would be to be a regular man.

The Private Life of Don Juan is not a Swashbuckler, but I list it with the genre as it is the end of a Swashbuckling legend, and a commentary on both the genre and on the end of legends. Douglas Fairbanks was the greatest Swashbuckling actor of the silent screen. He practically invented the genre. And his time was at an end. He didn’t make the switch to talkies—too old to play the action hero, and with a voice a bit too reedy to live up to expectations. After four failed attempts, he retired, but came back for one last hurrah (probably more if it had been the hit it should have been). Errol Flynn ended his era of big budget Swashbucklers with an aging Don Juan film and I said it was the perfect choice, but actually this is a far better end-of-career picture. Unlike Flynn’s there is no attempt at sword play and it is much more complete in deconstructing a legend.

As the film begins, Don Juan is not what he once was, but then he was never what his legend proclaimed. No one could be. His success with the ladies is now entirely due to his reputation. They want the fantasy and are willing to believe it in order to have it. And without that reputation, he is nothing but an ordinary man well past his prime.

The Private Life of Don Juan takes a few pokes at the people (or perhaps I should say audiences) who cling to the legends and swear their love to celebrities, but it also finds such legends important. The real target of the movie is those who would believe their own publicity. Fairbanks was mocking himself. Just as Don Juan was only important due to the legend, so Fairbanks only mattered for a brief time due to a beautiful lie, and he was replaceable (and would be replaced a year later by Flynn). This is a remarkably message-heavy film for being so light in tone over all. The Private Life of Don Juan is funny and never pretentious. Fairbanks is as good as he’d ever been and the army of beautiful women who slip in and out of the picture are delightful. This is no dirge. It’s about aging, but with a smile and a wink. Fairbanks couldn’t have gone out better.

Reviews, Swashbucklers Tagged with: Four Reels

The Count of Monte Cristo (1934)

Feb 241934

If there is a literary king of the Swashbuckler it would have to be Alexandre Dumas. His fast-paced historical fiction (which held only a winking acquaintance with actual history) was serialized in French papers in the mid 1800s and was extremely popular. His stories contained many of the elements that make a good film, so they have been made into films, over and over again—close to two hundred times. The most popular, and most often filmed, are The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Unfortunately, most film versions of Dumas stories do not live up to the novels. The exception is the 1934 The Count of Monte Cristo.

It is a story of revenge. Edmund Dantes (played by Robert Donat in his only U.S. picture) is unfairly imprisoned by the actions of three men. There, he is taken under the wing of a wise eccentric who happens to know where a vast treasure is hidden. When Dantes escapes, he finds the treasure, and christens himself the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo in order to destroy his three enemies in ways most fitting to their personalities and flaws. It is a cathartic film and I couldn’t help smiling as each met his fate. Unlike other versions of the movie, this one is reasonably true to the book, and that’s a good thing.

Made only a few years into “talkies,” The Count of Monte Cristo has the look of a silent film. Gestures tend to be on the grand side and the pacing is languid. Donat, who is best remembered for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, plays the young Dantes a bit too angelic to be believed, but has complete control over the part of the older “Count” out for revenge.

Even with its flaws, The Count of Monte Cristo is a satisfying film. Once the retribution begins, it’s all fun. The newest, and much inferior version replaces a court scene with a swordfight, which would normally be a reasonable way of increasing the excitement. But it doesn’t work, in part because the fight is just standard violence where the court scene holds a much more poetic revenge.

Why is it Important?

Any list of top Swashbucklers needs at least one film based on the works of Alexandre Dumas, and this is the best of them. Pleasingly acted and filmed, it still just barely counts as a Swashbuckler due to its leisurely pacing and scarcity of swordfights. But due to its lineage, it’s impossible not to put it in the genre. It also represents where the genre was in the early ’30s. While it cannot be called the firstSwashbuckler (the genre faded into being from its silent roots), no earlier film demonstrates anything more about the genre than The Count of Monte Cristo.

Reviews, Swashbucklers Tagged with: Five Reels

Drums o’ Voodoo (1934)

Feb 231934

Tom Catt (Morris McKenny) has returned to rural Louisiana, with plans to carry out that are both immoral and illegal. Top on his list is blackmailing the upright preacher, Amos Berry (J. Augustus Smith), who has a secret indiscretion in his past that Catt threatens to make public. He’s nearly as interested in turning the preacher’s niece, Myrtle (Edna Barr) into a prostitute. The locals only way of dealing with Catt is to turn to Autie Hagar (Laura Bowman), the Voodoo woman, whose nephew, Ebenezer (Lionel Monagas) is in love with Myrtle, and has turned against Voodoo.

Drums o’ Voodoo, also known as Voodoo, Voodoo Drums, She Devil, and Louisiana, is not a horror film, but as a Voodoo film, it’s part of the discussion of early horror. It’s a race picture (very low budget films made by nearly all Black casts and mostly Black crews to be shown for Black audiences) based on star J. Augustus Smith’s stage play, Louisiana. That makes Drums o’ Voodoo the first film based on a work of a Black playwright. The play had a very limited run, summing the wrath of New York critics. Smith found a producer, who, as was generally the case with race pictures, was White, who then hired short-time White director Arthur Hoerl, who is better known as the writer of Reefer Madness.

They ported the play over mostly intact, including a majority of the cast and the set designs. Drums o’ Voodoo is closer to a recorded play than a typical movie. The backdrops are obviously painted flats, the camera seldom moves, and everyone speaks toward the same direction. All of that is less of a problem than you might think. A majority of the race pictures I’ve seen have had such poor camerawork that it’s an improvement to park it, and the acting may be overly theatrical, but that’s its main downside, which is a step up from actor’s emotionlessly reciting words they don’t understand. Taken for what it is, it’s not bad.

And there’s a lot to like in the story. Mixing Christianity with Voodoo creates some nice philosophical and character moments. Drums o’ Voodoo isn’t negative about Voodoo. Christianity has its good points, but for dealing with terrible people, sometimes you need Voodoo. The preacher and the Voodoo woman are on friendly terms and work together more often than not, while Ebenezer’s desire to get away from Voodoo purely for social acceptance presents lots of interesting possibilities. It’s refreshing.

There are a few odd makeup choices that may have had meaning in the 1930s that escapes me. Laura Bowman wears Blackface, except she’s Black. Did they think she was too pale for a Voodoo priestess? It’s noticeable. Far more noticeable is James Davis as Brother Zero (listed as Brother Zumee on IMDB) who also is a Black actor—though I can’t confirm that—who is in full mistral show Blackface. No one else is. Since he’s both an ass and a comical character, I assume that his look was to indicate he was a fool, but now it’s just strange.

Unfortunately there is one insurmountable problem with Drums o’ Voodoo. It was lost for fifty years, and when found, it wasn’t in good shape. Nearly twenty minutes are missing, including most of the climax. Enough exists to explain what happens to everyone, but some needed details are gone. It makes for a very unsatisfying conclusion. I’ve found no evidence for their being a complete copy of the film.

Horror, Poverty Row, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Black Cat (1934)

Feb 221934

An accident in Hungary lands Peter Alison (David Manners) and his slightly injured wife (Jacqueline Wells) at the home of famed architect and war criminal Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). Dr Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi), who has befriended the couple, is there for revenge, and to find out what happened to his wife and daughter while he was in a prisoner of war camp.

I loved each of the classic Universal horror films upon first viewing in the 1970s, all except The Black Cat. It seems this is not a film for an eleven-year-old. However, as a fifty-year-old, I can’t look away.

The main attraction in 1934 was the confrontation between horror icons Karloff and Lugosi, the first of eight. But The Black Cat is not satisfied with being a stunt movie. This is a twisted tale in several different ways. The story combines vengeance with fascism, Satanism, incest, and a hardy helping of insanity, sometimes tied tightly together, sometimes not. It is horror by way of the art house.

The sets are a bizarre glass and brick wonderland. It’s hyper-modern architecture meets military fortress and it is beautiful. The cinematography keeps it simple—no tricks; it just shows off those sets. If anyone could replicate those sets, The Black Cat could be a solid stage play as a majority of the picture is confined to a few rooms.

With such gorgeous weirdness and suggested perversion, it is no surprise that the ending is a let down, though the degree of that drop is a bit of a shock. Everything wraps up too quickly and cleanly. There needed to be another scene or two dealing with Werdegast’s daughter, as well as some more of whatever plan Werdegast was supposed to have been playing out. And it needed a more gruesome finale. I suppose the motion picture code wasn’t going to allow it to go where it needed to, but it did need to go further. So it ends up being a fascinating might-have-been.

Classic Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

El fantasma del convento (1934)

Feb 211934

Somewhat effeminate Eduardo (Carlos Villatoro), his wife Cristina (Marta Roel), and Eduardo’s more manly friend Alfonso (Enrique del Campo) get lost while walking in the woods at night. A strange man with his dog, Shadow, appears and offers to take them to the nearby monastery of the cloistered Order of Silence. There they are taken in by the mysterious monks, and frightening things begin to happen, many of which seem to relate to Cristina and Alfonso’s secret affair.

The Mexican film industry had gotten off to a shaky start—revolutions will do that. Though it would rise quickly to become the dominant Spanish language film provider in the world, in 1934 things were just getting started, and while government backing made filmmaking financially safe, the lack of Hollywood-type money restrained it. Combine all that with the general reluctance for anyone to make horror and Mexico’s extremely powerful Catholic church, and it’s a shock any horror movies were made in Mexico.

Fernando de Fuentes was the most important Mexican director to try his hand at the genre in the 1930s. He was known primarily for his revolution films, and for creating the comedia ranchera genre, not for horror. This was the second Mexican horror film of the sound era (little survives of silent Mexican cinema, including records), so he had no precedent to work from and was finding his way.

On the horror front, de Fuentes does surprisingly well. This is a creepy picture with tons of atmosphere. His location (I’ve been told it was an actual building instead of a set—though I’m dubious that some of it wasn’t shot on a soundstage) is wonderful, both an attractive and freaky monastery. And he makes great use of it; if there’s a shadow to be played with or an ominous door to approach, de Fuentes does so with style. He takes his cues not from Hollywood, but from Germany, who were the masters of creepy photography. This would fit nicely next to Vampyr.

With plot, things aren’t so good. There’s maybe 30 minutes of story here, if I’m being generous. Far too much time is spent with the characters sitting or standing still, talking. We know Eduardo is a bit cowardly; we don’t have to hear about it over and over.

The score is a bit over the top, but it helps a lot when it is there. However it vanishes far too often, leaving silence which isn’t scary, just dry.

El fantasma del convento is a nice second attempt at the horror genre. It feels a bit primitive, but then Mexican filmmaking was a few years behind.

The title is translated both as The Phantom of The Convent and The Fantasy of The Monastery. The first is a poor translation as there is neither a single Phantom nor are they in a convent.

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

Death Takes a Holiday (1934)

Feb 041934

Death (Fredric March) wants to understand humans and their reaction to him so decides to take on human form and spend three days on the estate of Duke Lambert (Sir Guy Standing) in the guise of Prince Sirki. Death makes one rule: the Duke cannot tell any of the others in attendance who he really is. Those others consist of the Duke’s wife Stephanie (Helen Westley), son Corrado (Kent Taylor), Baron Cesarea (Henry Travers), American Rhoda (Gail Patrick), and Countess Alda (Katharine Alexander). Death had assumed that elderly Princess Maria (Kathleen Howard) and her exceptionally sensitive and poetic daughter Grazia (Evelyn Venable), who is also Corrado’s fiancée, were guests as well, and is disappointed when they leave. The mysterious Prince Sirki is both compelling and off-putting to the guests. As Death studies them and the lives they lead, Ronda and Alda compete for his affections while Cesarea passes on his philosophies. Corrado is uneasy with him, a feeling which is greatly amplified by his interactions with the two women and the returning Grazia who sees in Death a kindred soul.

Death Takes a Holiday is the ultimate goth film and Grazia is the ultimate goth princess. If it didn’t start the subculture, it should have. Death is dangerous, but can be kind, and feels lonely. Art and flowers and the night rule while sports and games and the bright day offer nothing of substance. There’s also a shadow that follows our characters, elaborate dialog filled with significance, symbolism all around, and high contrast B&W photography. If you could add some dark-wave music, it would be impossible to get any more goth. If the goth scene doesn’t call to you, watch this film anyway as it’s a brilliant motion picture.

The film is based on the Italian play La Morte in Vacanza by Alberto Casella, which had already been translated into English, and sticks closely to its source, mainly just trimming. Its theatrical roots are clear while watching, but it isn’t a detriment. It’s been opened a bit, starting in town and then following the wealthy merrymakers on their speeding car ride, which gives it enough sense of a larger world without deluging us with unnecessary scenery. The story is about Death staying at a duke’s estate for three days, so we stay in the estate. As the house is ornate and complicated, we get all the variation we need. And as the movie is quick at a mere 79 minutes, I didn’t get tired of the setting. I’d have liked a bit more time among this group, but as the film works so well, I’m content to be left wanting more.

Death Takes a Holiday has the trappings of horror, comedy, romance, and melodrama, but foundationally it’s a philosophical examination of the meaning of life and how to view death, although it’s as much of an emotional investigation as an intellectual one. Baron Cesarea tells Death that life has three games: War, Money, and Love. War, they both seem to agree, is pointless, and the only purpose in money is for love, which simplifies things a good deal, but Death Takes a Holiday isn’t that simple. It leaves a lot for us to mull over. What is the best way to react to death? The three women take very different paths, and each has its points. One is mildly annoyed by death, one is forcefully repelled, and one embraces death. Should you even care about death? Is wildly grasping for life healthy? How accepting of death do you want to be?

In the first act, Corrado wants Grazia to marry him quickly, and their families and friends agree. Metaphorically, they’re pushing her toward life. She says she isn’t ready, which seems true. What does it mean when someone isn’t ready for life? Is she searching for unconditional love or is she suicidal? And is that a problem?

You could sit for hours analyzing Death Takes a Holiday, or you could turn your brain off and just enjoyed the surprisingly complex characters. A smart film engages you in multiple ways, and they don’t make them much smarter.

It was remade in 1998 as the dreary and bloated (it’s 3 hours!) Meet Joe Black, with Brad Pitt failing to portray the grandeur that Fredric March managed, Anthony Hopkins failing in the emotion and humanity expressed by Guy Standing, and Martin Brest, best known now as the director of Gigli, failing in general.

Classic Horror, Fantasy, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

Chloe, Love Is Calling You (1934)

Feb 031934

Old dear lord… OK, here goes: In some fantasy Deep South straight out of the wet dream of a KKK Grand Dragon, Voodoo practitioner and stereotype Mammy (Georgette Harvey) has returned to the broken down hovel she’d abandoned when her husband Old Sam was killed by Colonel Gordon (Francis Joyner). She brings along her half-White daughter, Chloe (Olive Borden); as Mammy and Old Sam were Black, it’s a bit hard to figure where they all think Chloe’s White blood came from. Chloe is unhappy…deeply unhappy…because she’s got Black blood and being White would be better. Family friend Jim (Philip Ober), who’s Black or White or something—look, he’s a White actor with some dark powder plopped on his face—is interested in Chloe, but he’s Black…ish, so why would anyone want him? Luckily for her Wade (Reed Howes) is the new foreman for the Colonel, and he’s White, so that’s a much better match, if only Chloe wasn’t so impure. But wait! It turns out Chloe is fully White and Mammy just stole her, because that’s the kind of things Blacks do, so there’s hope for her. Of course someone will have to stop Mammy and her Voodoo if everything is going to work out properly for the good White folks. Also, Jim wrestles a swamp alligator in what is clearly a pool because… I’ve no idea. And they kill a real snake, because animal abuse and racism always go best together.

So, is it worse when your racist garbage is well made or when it’s horribly made? I think well made as Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind have done great harm, and this rancid heap has mostly been forgotten. For those of us who do find a reason to watch it, which is purely for a historical record, the feeble filmmaking makes it doubly cringe-worthy. I’m sure it goes over well at local Confederate Honorary Society meetings, where they might have an easier time ignoring the lack of skill on display.

Because of the Voodoo subplot, Chloe, Love Is Calling You gets grouped with horror, but it’s not. It’s a racist propaganda drama film. It’s not concerned with frights, but with supplying such useful information as Black people are all criminals and murderers unless they’ve taken their proper role as a servant, being half White is better than being all Black, but being all White is better still, and Whites who hang around too much with Blacks will sink to their level as White Trash. It just spews its hatred so badly.

Pinnacle Productions was a Poverty Row company, and even among those it was the bottom of the barrel. Still, I’d expect some meager level of professionalism and none is on display. Marshall Neilan was both the director and writer. He’d been successful in silent films, but hadn’t adapted to the new technology. He was also an alcoholic which made learning new skills tougher, and also explains parts of this movie. Multiple scenes look like something you’d make just before you black out. There’s no one from a sound department credited, probably at the sound man’s request. I wouldn’t want this on my resume.

As for the cast, they either went on to careers of minor roles in B-pictures, or this was the end of the road. Olive Borden had been a significant silent star, but this would be it for her and she ended up destitute and dying young. Well, everything about this film is tragic.

Horror, Poverty Row, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

Black Moon (1934)

Feb 031934

Juanita Perez Lane (Dorothy Burges) is a dutiful and loving wife and mother, but she feels a call back to the island of her birth, back to the voodoo rituals in the jungle. She decides to take her young daughter and visit the plantation, currently run by her uncle, Raymond Perez (Arnold Korff). Her husband Stephen (Jack Hold) encourages her as he’s noticed that there is some past issues she needs to confront. Her uncle doesn’t want her to come, and sends a family friend to stop her, but he is murdered. This gets Stephen just concerned enough to send his secretary, Gail Hamilton (Fay Wray) with his wife, never noticing that Gail clearly has a crush on him. On the island, Juanita fits in immediately, but both her uncle and Gail are nervous. When the natives start having more and more influence over mother and daughter, Gail panics and sends a wire insisting that Jack come, which he does on a charter boat captained by ‘Lunch’ McClaren (Clarence Muse). What follows is voodoo and death.

There’s fewer voodoo films than pop culture seems to think there are, and when you eliminate zombies, you’re left with only a few. This is one of the better ones. It’s also complicated. I’ve seen it called extremely racist and I’ve seen it labeled the least racist film of the era. It has a strong feminist vibe while at other times promoting a very traditional family. The patriarchy is supported as it promotes survival, but also painted as creating a dull, passionless world hardly worth staying alive for. McClaren is black, but an equal to Stephen, with his own motivations and choices. Ruva may have been the nanny for a white girl, but she’s strong and has her own agency. The black natives are dangerous and carry out blood sacrifice, but colonialism is the evil that has caused much of the worlds racial unrest. Yeah, this one isn’t going to allow for any easy answers.

And that’s true of the plot and characters as well. The story meanders for a time, though it is never boring, and it could have gone any number of directions. It ends up going several places at once.

As for the characters, they are the heart of things. Juanita is the protagonist, though she gets less screen time than Gail, who may be the lead (her or Steven). Gail is pleasant, kind, hard working, and nearly obsessive with keeping children safe. Juanita is prickly and dangerous. And it’s Juanita I’d want to hang around. She’s fun, alive, and has depth. Gail is a pretty empty glass. There’s nothing to her. Outside of her drive for safety she’s passionless. You might not live as long with Juanita, but you might have never lived with Gail. They are opposite sides of life and of society.

Steven is given the chance to choose between them, not that he ever would as that wouldn’t be proper. He’s a good man. A steady man. A successful man. He loves his wife and daughter and is a far better father than your average 1930s movie businessman. It’s also clear that Steven is an idiot. He starts an “uprising” by shooting one guy (and not killing him) during a sacrifice. And then he leaves. How does this solve anything? They can still sacrifice the girl, but now they’re pissed. If he had some kind of plan, some idea of rushing in to save the girl, and whisking her away, or alternatively killing all the voodoo practitioners (if he had explosives or a machinegun, which he doesn’t), than he could claim the badge of hero. But he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t save anyone. He just shoots. Now his intentions are good in that he’s opposed to human sacrifice and feels compelled to do something about it. That’s the thing with him; his intentions are always good. He’s even given a chance for an ultimate sacrifice that would absolutely save what he cares for most of all, and he says he’d do it, but of course when being more of a he-man pops up, off he goes. He just doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing because he’s a nice, pleasant, boring man.

Raymond Perez is our icon of colonialism and he’s easy to hate—although he is smarter and more self-aware then Steven. At one point our colonialist icon relates that there’s been 12 white people who’ve fallen into that pit, and all of them were interfering with the blacks. Maybe they should stop interfering. Maybe all these white folks ought to stop claiming someone else’s land and telling them how to behave, and instead get the hell out of there. When asked why he stays considering the danger, Uncle Raymond has no good answer. His people took it, and lived here and he’s not running away. He wants the power for no reason other than to have it. Am I reading too much into him to make him the villain instead the voodoo practitioners? Nope. In the source material it is spelled out even clearer with Raymond and Steven ending up chasing each other across the island in a gun fight. That sort of adventure has been removed from the film, but Raymond is still a villain. Of course it isn’t just Raymond, but the whole Perez line down through the years, and the result of that is clear. Raymond lives in the one nice building on the island, but it is fenced and barred, and as the film goes on, those bars can no longer keep anything out, but instead only keep him in.

There’s a strange feeling throughout this film, less frightening than eerie. This is another place, another time, and if you belong there, then it is a kind of paradise. But if you don’t belong, you should run far away as quickly as you can. Ruva and the voodoo priest and Juanita belong. Everyone else does not, and all the suffering comes because it takes everyone too long to figure that out. For a 1934 horror film, that’s a hell of a message.

Classic Horror, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

The 9th Guest (1934)

Jan 141934

Eight of the city’s social elite receive telegrams inviting them to a party in their honor in a penthouse. They are corrupt politician Jason Osgood (Edwin Maxwell), the university dean who is under his thumb Dr. Murray Reid (Samuel Hinds), the man Osgood told Reid to fire for being too radical Henry Abbott (Hardie Albright), Osgood’s rival Tim Cronin (Edward Ellis), his lawyer/girlfriend Sylvia Inglesby (Helen Flint), society snob Mrs. Margaret Chisholm (Nella Walker), actress Jean Trent (Genevieve Tobin), and journalist Jim Daley (Donald Cook). When they arrive, they find three servants (Sidney Bracey, Vince Barnett, uncredited), none of whom know the host. Then a voice from the radio informs them that they are stuck there due to the gate being electrified and that they will play a game of skill where the losers will die, as the 9th guest is Death.

While I’m reviewing The 9th Guest as an Old Dark House film, it doesn’t fit that categorization in multiple important ways: They aren’t in an old house but an art-deco penthouse; there’s no storm, and the murders aren’t committed off screen or in the dark. But it is too similar to the best of the Old Dark House films, And Then There Were None, to leave it out. But you can’t accuse The 9th Guest of plagiarism; it came first as a novel, and first as a stage play, and first as a movie. If there was any borrowing, it would be by Agatha Christie, and there’s no evidence that the similarities are anything but coincidental.

Like most in the sub-genre, The 9th Guest has a group of clearly defined, upper class people trapped for a night in an elaborate space. Secrets abound, and they are all targets of a murderer who is most likely one of them. So, I’ll call it close enough.

The tension in this case comes as much from the characters’ previous interactions as from the current situation. There’s a lot of hatred in the room. The question they, and I, kept asking, was who hates enough to kill. And the characters are drawn just clearly enough to make guessing fun. Unfortunately the big secrets that each character was supposed to have turn out to be little to nothing. I wanted something to dig my teeth into, but there was no meat. The cast is filled with character actors or those trying to be leads who never quite made it, but they do a good job with what they were given. I only know four of them from other films and they were my favorites here: Edwin Maxwell from His Girl Friday, Edward Ellis from The Thin Man, Nella Walker from Sabrina, and Genevieve Tobin from The Petrified Forest. Those are pretty good credentials for the B-team.

The A-team was made up of the uncredited set designer. It’s a stellar penthouse, with an in wall pendulum clock which dominates every scene.

What doesn’t work are the murders. I’ve learned to expect more. With all the meticulous setup the killer did, and the huge amount of money spent, he didn’t seem to put much thought or effort into the killings. The radio announces specific times when victims will die, but he does nothing to assure that. People just happen to die at the right times, and it is very noticeable that it’s coincidental, at least to the viewer. Those in the film seem to think the murderer is doing something very clever, but he’s not. He has no clear plans for any of the killings, and there’s no emotional weight given to his motivations, at least from a viewers perspective, which makes it a mediocre murder mystery, with better than average sets.

Classic Horror, Dark House, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Before Dawn (1933)

Oct 291933

Joe Valerie dies at Dr. Paul Cornelius’s (Warner Oland) clinic, trading knowledge of where he hid a million dollars in stolen loot for euthanasia. Soon after, Joe’s wife (Jane Darwell) falls to her death after seeing Joe’s ghost. The police, picking up fraudulent spiritualists, get one who’s real, Patricia Merrick (Dorothy Wilson). So on a dark night, Patricia, her corrupt father Horace (Dudley Digges), the sinister Dr. Cornelius, Mattie (Gertrude Hoffman), and officer Dwight Wilson (Stuart Erwin) all end up in the house together, to either solve the case or find the loot.

If there’s anything unusual about this standard Old Dark House mystery, it’s that Patricia really does have clairvoyance. Usually in these sorts of pictures it’s just weird people and some Scooby Doo goings on, but she actually has power. But it’s not much power and does very little to help once they all get into the house. So that leaves the normal events and items: secret passageway, phones out of order (or not existing), screaming women, someone pretending to be a ghost, etc. It’s only interesting when someone stylish is behind the camera, such as James Whale. Director Irving Pichel had neither enough style nor enough money to pull this off. Workmanlike is the most polite term I can think of for how this flick is shot.

Of course it’s those odd characters that make or break an Old Dark House film, and apparently Pichel wasn’t much help there, though the actors and script can claim much of the blame. Darwell is flat and boring. Sure she’s supposed to be in a trance much of the time, but when she isn’t, she still seems like she is. Digges goes the other way and overacts, going arch when he shouldn’t (why didn’t Patricia know her father was a cheap creep when his every line screams, “I’m an immoral crook!”). Oland, best known as Charlie Chan in sixteen films, overacts as well, slipping into oozing evil psychopath mode, but he pulls it off better. Erwin does the old “Oh shucks” routine, so I can’t tell if he can’t act or his character is just really badly written—my guess is both. Hoffman takes on the part of the gangster old lady, a version of which I’ve seen in multiple films of the time; she’s fine, but her character isn’t interesting enough for me to care.

Everyone acts stupidly, while telegraphing what they are going to do, and by the end I was tired of it all. It doesn’t help that the sets are so cheap. This is an Old Dark House film; at least give us an interesting house.

You’re unlikely to stumble upon this one, but if you do, keep on stumbling.

Classic Horror, Dark House, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

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