Foster on Film » Page 126

Life Returns (1935)

Jun 271935

John Kendrick (Onslow Stevens), Louise Stone (Lois Wilson) and Robert Cornish (playing himself) are three happy college students out to change the world with their theory of bringing the dead back to life. At graduation, Kendrick excitedly tells his colleagues how he’s gotten them all jobs at a pharmaceutical company. The others object because a commercial firm can never share their lofty goals, but Kendrick is certain that their resources will complete the project faster, and abandons them. Kendrick becomes even more obsessed, and he also marries a socialite (Valerie Hobson) and has a child, though those aren’t important matters as we learn about the first only through a newspaper headline. As it turns out, Stone and Cornish were correct—as if that wasn’t really clear from the start—and the company wants him to break off his vital research to work on “hair growth brushes.” This disappointment is too much for him and he has a mental breakdown. He runs around announcing that he wants to bring the dead to life, which for some reason doesn’t go over well. Then his wife dies of…I don’t know…perhaps being poor… It isn’t explained. Perhaps she died of Valerie Hobson walking off this project in disgust; that makes sense anyway. His child is taken away by the state since Kendrick shows no signs of being able to take care of anything (how does he still have a house?), but the kid runs away and meets up with a bunch of escapees from an Our Gang comedy that all live in a club house. The kid’s much beloved dog is captured by the dog catcher and put to death. So now it’s up to Dr. Kendrick, with help from Dr. Robert Cornish—who is the greatest human being to ever walk the Earth; all praise to Robert Cornish—to bring the dog back to life in order to regain his son’s love.

As Life Returns was distributed by Universal, starred Onslow Stevens who was in House of Dracula, co-starred Valerie Hobson who was in both The Werewolf of London and Bride of Frankenstein, and is about a “mad scientist” bringing the dead to life, it has gotten grouped in with Universal Horror. It doesn’t belong. It also was banned in Britain, so it’s gained a mystique. It doesn’t deserve that either—the mystique that is; the banning is another matter.

This isn’t Universal horror. This is trash cinema of the lowest sort, trying and failing to exploit a recent headline. Produced by Scienart Pictures (its only film), not Universal, the news it was exploiting involved Robert Cornish, although perhaps “exploit” is the wrong word as it is more of a propaganda piece, or advertisement for Cornish.

In the early ‘30s Dr. Robert Cornish had theories on “bringing the dead back to life” which today we’d call reviving or using CPR. He wanted to work on humans, but this was frowned upon, so he got five dogs, suffocated them, and then immediately tried to revive them with adrenaline and rocking them on a “teeterboard.” It didn’t work well, but had some effect. Three died; the other two were brain damaged and blind, after which Cornish hid them away and claimed it was a success. He was fired from the UCLA because they weren’t idiots. So he decided to work from home on pigs, because nothing says sane and reasonable like killing pigs in your extra bedroom in order to bring them back to life. Of course killing animals in your home can get pricey and he wanted funding, so he tried to get some positive publicity with Life Returns. I don’t know if he approached the producers or they approached him. The idea was to build an emotional, fictional story around a recording of one of his dog experiments. So footage of the actual experiment is in the film (and as Britain isn’t keen on animal abuse in cinema, it was banned) and the movie starts with two different statements on how Cornish’s work is miraculous and important. No mention was made of him being a weirdo working at home.

Life Returns didn’t gain Cornish the popular acclaimed he desired, possibly because it’s a tedious film. He did pop back up in the news some years later when he wanted to bring a convicted child-murderer back to life after his execution. Needless to say, the authorities weren’t keen on this idea. That he couldn’t have done it didn’t stop him getting as much press as possible out of it.

It’s hard to express how horrible this movie is. At first I couldn’t imagine how they got Valerie Hobson to appear in this kind of trash, but I hadn’t realized she was only 17 at the time (or perhaps 16 during filming) and is only in it for a few minutes. Onslow Stevens didn’t have a shining career, but he rated better than this, so I assuming they just lied to him. Cornish gets top billing.

I can’t find a budget for Life Returns, but by the look of it, I figure it was in the hundreds. The setups are primitive with the camera generally sitting in one place and the result is ugly (though to be fair, no one has put any care into preserving this abomination). Stock footage is used which doesn’t match the shot footage (and I’m not only referring to the experiment, which does indeed match extremely poorly; in an early montage we see a college graduation which clearly is from a different source from the set-bound scene that follows). The movie starts (after a fade-out of Cornish’s face), for no reason I can determine, with stock footage of wheat and ploughing. I’m guessing they could get it for free.

There’s something gruesome about the dog resurrection scene, knowing that we’re not watching some kid’s pup that had been dead for hours brought back, but a dog that Conrish had just killed and then only partially restored. The “procedure” is intercut with shots of Onslow Stevens overacting, a group of medical scientists watching, and the child oozing about how swell his dad is. All of which makes it worse.

The dialog is exactly what you’d expect from a quickly written propaganda flick. Important moments flash by with a few words, and then we get long speeches, all culminating in the final:

“Dr. Cornish is the man of the hour; Dr. Stone and I are merely contributors to his fulfillment. “

(Kid: “Dad, You’re the swellest dad in the world”)

“Gentleman, what you’ve seen demonstrated is only a forerunner in the march of science. It’s promise to humanity has been answered today. The next step is in the hands of tomorrow.”

Life Returns isn’t horror, except for it’s connection to dog murder. It’s sometimes called science fiction and I suppose that fits since Cornish couldn’t do what is implied in the film. The best label for Life Returns is garbage.

Horror, Poverty Row, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

Mad Love (1935)

Jun 261935

Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre), perhaps the greatest surgeon in France, is obsessed with goth actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake). Her husband (Colin Clive), a concert pianist, has his hands mangled in a train wreck and although Yvonne is frightened by Gogol, goes to him to try and save her husband’s hands. That’s impossible, so Gogol transplants the hands of a murderous knife-thrower onto him.

The Hays office did its best to cut Mad Love off at the knees, but it could only manage to snip away the simple and straightforward. The subtext and metaphor are strong and give the film more power than most horror films of the time. Gogol is the repressed virgin, whose sexual need and self-doubt as a man drive him insane and to violence. Stephen Orlac had previously taken a route no more fulfilling, but far more social acceptable: he’s sexless, with any sexuality he has pumped into his hands and his art. When his hands are cut off, it is equivalent to castrating him, and with his outlet gone, he too slips into insanity, picking up phallic knives and sticking them wherever he can. Yvonne’s sexuality is all fake, a performance. She writhes on stage when the hot irons caress her skin, a sexual goddess, which fades away when she changes to street cloths. There’s plenty to play with in all that if you are of a mind to do so.

This first sound version (of at least 4 adaptations) of the far better titled novel, The Hands of Orlac, smartly switches the focus from Orlac to Dr. Gogol. The part was beefed up when Lorre was cast, hot off his German classic M and recently immigrated to escape the Nazis. And it’s Lorre who powers the film. He’s more impressive here than in M—a great actor who knew how to express insanity and abnormality sympathetically. I found myself rooting for him. But then he has the best character. Yvonne abuses his interest in her to get him to work on Stephen in his home, something he wouldn’t normally do. Stephen Orlac’s mix of weakness and drama creates a personality that is impossible to like, and Colin Clive is an actor prone to turn it up to twelve. His kind of histrionics works only when under control of a very peculiar kind of artist, such as James Whale. Karl Freund was not that kind of director. His genius lay in the look of film. He was the cinematographer on Metropolis, and while he could have easily functioned with a 3rd rate cinematographer, he instead had Gregg Toland working for him here, who would later shoot Wuthering Heights and Citizen Kane. It seems almost silly to point out that Mad Love looks incredible. Freund digs into his German expressionistic roots, giving us arches and strange angles and shadows that seem set to reach out and pull the lost humans into oblivion.

The conventional ending, which feels both hurried and tacked on, as well as Clive, and a reporter that is meant as comic relief but never quite makes it, drags Mad Love down, but there’s enough here to put it on a short list for any fan of classic horror.

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

Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935)

Jun 031935

Depressed, jealous, opium-addicted choirmaster John Jasper (Claude Rains) is obsessed by Rosa Bud (Heather Angel), who is the fiancée of his nephew, Edwin Drood’s (David Manners). She finds Jasper’s attentions creepy, though she keeps it to herself. Neville Landless (Douglass Montgomery) and his sister Helena (Valerie Hobson), of mixed racial heritage, come to town with Neville falling immediately for Rosa and Helena becoming Rosa’s roommate. Neville and Edwin come to blows over Rosa, but Neville’s sensitivity has an unexpected source: he doesn’t want to marry Rosa. And luckily for Neville, she doesn’t want to marry Edwin, and the two call off their engagement. Unfortunately, they don’t tell anyone, and when Jasper sees them in a goodbye embrace, he becomes murderous. Soon after, Edwin disappears and Neville is blamed. But who really killed Edwin… OK, we know. It’s really, really obvious. Really, as in they should of changed the title to Not a Mystery of Edwin Drood.

The 1930s are filled with non-horror films in horror clothing. Mystery of Edwin Drood is the most notorious of those. Made at Universal by their horror team, its stars, as well as bit players, also appeared in classic monster films: Rains in the Invisible Man, Manners in Dracula, Hobson in Bride of Frankenstein and Werewolf of London. Director Stuart Walker was also at the helm of Werewolf of London, and writer John L. Balderston had his pen in Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, and Dracula’s Daughter. Its sets were shared by horror films, including the crypt now more famous from Bride of Frankenstein. There’s a storm, an opium nightmare, and gothic touches throughout, and Universal sold it to TV as a horror film. All of that sets expectations, which was the intention. But it isn’t horror. It’s a stodgy costume drama with a few tense moments. It lacks the thrills of a horror picture and the depth and complexity it would need as pure drama.

Despite the title, there’s no mystery, though the source material has a kind of mystery. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was the final novel of Charles Dickens, unfinished at the time of his death. We’ll never know if Dickens planned the story to be a mystery; the film decides that is isn’t, naming the killer before there is a killing. Many Dickens fans believe that he intended Edwin to be secretly alive, but I don’t object to Universal choosing to go a different way, only that they didn’t do anything interesting.

While there’s little that is horribly wrong in Mystery of Edwin Drood, I find little that’s right. The sets are nice and it’s shot professionally, but Walker has no flair. It looks pretty, but the way the camera is used doesn’t say anything special, which would be fine if the plot or characters were stronger. Thus I call it professional, or even skilled, but not artistic. The actors all are a bit confused. The supporting cast camp it up. That’s not surprisingly based on what they are used to doing in Universal horror pictures and what is easy to fall into with Dickens’s dialog, but Walker can’t make use of it the way James Whale did in The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein. They need to release built up tension or show the quirky nature of humanity. Instead, when set next to the more serious performances, they seem silly. Rains is one who takes his part seriously—too seriously; I rate him as one of the greatest film actors, so his being off the mark I lay at Walker’s feet. Manners was not a good actor, and based on this, I’d say the same of Montgomery, but Hobson was solid, though not here. Again, I look to Walker, though poor Hobson and Montgomery were forced to perform in ridiculous brown-face makeup that couldn’t have helped.

Though that leads to my confusion on if this is a progressive or regressive film. The makeup is atrocious, and Neville is violent and uncontrolled. But he’s also the hero, which makes me wonder how this got past the censors. The Breen office didn’t allow interracial relationships. Did half-Indian not count? But then the film also got away with opium use, so I’ll change my earlier statement: the film did something right in getting around the Production Code.

I think their mistake with Mystery of Edwin Drood was trying to play it both ways. Universal should have made a straight, Dickens, period piece, or they should have gone full in with horror. What they ended up with isn’t much good as either.

Classic Horror, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

El misterio del rostro pálido {Mystery of the Ghastly Face} (1935)

May 161935

Forceful and obsessed Doctor Forti (Carlos Villarías ) carries out strange medical experiments in his home, aided by his weak-willed son, Pablo (Joaquín Busquets). Pablo wanted only to play the violin and marry Forti’s beautiful ward Angélica (Beatriz Ramos) but instead does what Forti commands. Both Pablo’s Aunt Doña Engracia (Natalia Ortiz) and the butler know that there’s something wrong with Forti, but they have no power to stop him. Forti summons Doctor Montes (Miguel Arenas), who brings along his son Luis (René Cardona), who is both a friend of Pablo’s and in love with Angélica, announcing that Pablo’s wedding will be delayed as the two are going to the mysterious Land of Pale Faces, deep in the jungle, to continue his research, and Pablo meekly agrees. Eight years pass, and Angélica has finally given up on Pablo, and agreed to marry Luis when she hears Pablo’s violin music and sees a masked face at her window. The next day they find that Forti has returned with a fanatically loyal servant (Abraham Galán), and are informed that Pablo is dead. Forti pressures Angélica to move back in with him, and he has strange plans for her involving marrying the dead, while Doña, the butler, Montes, and Luis fight to save her.

This is the pinnacle of horror filmmaking in 1930s Mexico. Writer-director Juan Bustillo Oro, who’d written El fantasma del convento (1934) and directed the horror-adjacent drama Dos monjes (1934), gets right what others could not. El misterio del rostro pálido looks great, with some reasonable camera work, but mostly because of the set design, which merges expressionism with Art Deco. It’s beautiful and conveys a mood of strange otherworldliness. The music reminds me of Universal’s monster films, and the costuming also hits the right notes with the masked pale man having everything necessary to be an icon. The plot is nothing special but workable, and an eerie feeling hangs over it all. And Bustillo manages to tone down Villarías’s (best know for Drácula) tendencies to play to the back rows such that I hardly recognized him.

But damn, is it slow. So slow. We never get to know any of these folks, or care about them, be we do get to hear them talk. Forti is a mad doctor, but he’s even more of a chatty one. Everything is discussed, talked around, and then brought up yet again. I wanted to put the whole thing on 2x speed. The problem is integrated into every part of the picture, but I’ll lay it on editing. There was a very good horror movie here, but it died in post-production.

The ending is disappointing, both anticlimactic and unsatisfying, as two characters do complete personality shifts in under three minutes, but I could only get so annoyed as I was too bored to get emotional.

El misterio del rostro pálido was released with no premier, little publicity, and to little notice. Bustillo’s later successes in more mainstream fare are all that kept this film in anyone’s mind. It should, and so easily could, have been much better, but just as people did in 1935, it’s fine to ignore it. If you are curious, come for the Art Deco-expressionism, and leave when you’ve gotten your fill of architecture.

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

Murder by Television (1935)

May 101935

Prof. James Houghland (Charles Hill Mailes) has invented a new technology for that newest of new products: the television. Multiple companies want his invention, and secretive people threaten him. During his demonstration, he is murdered. Nelson, the chief of police (Henry Mowbray) has many suspects, including Houghland’s assistant Dr. Arthur Perry (Bela Lugosi), medical experimentalist Dr. Henry Scofield (Huntley Gordon), Richard Grayson (George Meeker), and the two servants, Isabella – the Cook (Hattie McDaniel) and Ah Ling – The Houseboy (Allen Jung), and he is keeping them all close at hand until he finds the murderer.

In 1935, this was science fiction. Transmitting moving images from multiple locations around the world onto a large screen was something yet to happen. It would be nearly a decade before commercial television broadcasts were more than just a lark. Now the technological death ray of this film, and the “science” of determining who could be a killer by examining their brain… Yeah, those things haven’t happened yet, and the second was stupid at the time. So, this is science fiction—very slow and dim science fiction.

But no one watches this film based on that genre. With its name including the word “murder” and the presence of Bela Lugosi, Murder by Television is often classified as horror. How does it stack up as horror? Significantly worse than it does as a mystery or science fiction. It’s not tense or frightening, nor does it try to be either. It’s plodding, with each clue examined and discussed two or three times longer than necessary. As a procedural, it’s tedious.

The characters are mostly forgettable, though not the subservient, hysterical Black cook or the fortune-cookie quoting Asian house boy. Yes, he’s a “house boy.” When the white woman sees someone who looks like the dead man, she calmly tells the others that she’s seen something she can’t explain. When the cook sees the same thing, she comes screaming into the room, yelling “Oh’lordy Lordy!” and drops to her knees blubbering about ghosts. I’ve seen more racist portrayal, but Hattie McDaniel is usually a bit less embarrassing.

The only other actor to make a mark doesn’t make me cringe. Bela Lugosi doesn’t have much of a part to work with, but he’s charismatic enough that I didn’t mind most of the overly long discussions that he was a part of. Although even he couldn’t pull off the never-ending speech at the end, where there are long pauses as the camera frames one person, then the next, and then the next. Yes, I know they are all listening. Maybe you could show them while he’s talking instead of giving us a few words, then a couple second shot of each and every person in the room, and then a few more words, rinse and repeat.

Murder by Television isn’t terrible. It’s just not very interesting, and the basic filmmaking skill is lacking. This was made in 1935, when most of the industry was getting the hang of how to make films in the sound era. I’d have bet this was made in 1930 if I hadn’t seen the date. It’s primitive next to Dracula, which was made four years earlier. Lugosi isn’t enough of a reason to spend an hour with Murder by Television. Just watch Dracula again.

Horror, Poverty Row, Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with: One Reel

Scrooge (1935)

May 081935

The first feature-length, talkie, version of Dickens’ story in which Ebenezer Scrooge (Sir Seymour Hicks) learns the meaning of Christmas from three spirits.

Quick Review: Yes, 1935 was a long time ago and many film techniques were not yet invented, but that is no excuse for dull acting and non-existent camera work. Nor does saying “it was the depression,” make up for poor execution. Those are explanations for this film’s failure, but noting them doesn’t make it any less of a failure. I might be able to ignore the invisible ghosts (Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come are not seen, and the Ghost of Christmas Past is just a blur) but the static camera work stays with me. Cameras need to move. Not a lot necessarily, but some. In Scrooge, the cameraman must have stepped out for a quick sandwich while filming.

Seymour Hicks plays Scrooge as if he he’s reading the lines for the first time (surprising for a man who had performed the part on stage for years). The rest of the cast are forgettable (well, Christmas Present isn’t, but it’s a performance I’d prefer to forget). As Dickens wrote a good story, I’d be forced to recommend this film if no others existed, but many others exist.

Christmas, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Phantom Ship (1935)

Mar 251935

Captain Benjamin Briggs (Arthur Margetson) takes the ship Mary Celeste on a sea voyage to England and has decided to bring along his new wife, Sarah (Shirley Grey). He should have spent more time gathering a proper crew as his current one includes a sadistic first mate (Edmund Willard), the mysterious Anton Lorenzen (Bela Lugosi) whose life had been destroyed by previously being shanghaied on this ship, and a sailor sent by Sarah’s previous lover. Soon people die or vanish, and it seems likely that a member of the crew is responsible. But which one?

The Mary Celeste was a real ghost ship, found abandoned and adrift a month after it had left port in New York. Its lifeboat was missing, but its cargo was still on board, as were the possessions of the sailors. No further clues have ever been found, which has lead to wild speculation in stories told in every medium. This particular version is a thriller, explaining the disappearance of the sailors due to a murderer. It also ignores facts, making up its own crew and changing the history of the captain.

Is this a horror film? Not really. But it does have some atmospheric moments. It also has Bela Lugosi in the cast, and is one of the first features from Hammer Films, twenty years before they became a horror company, so it is of interest to horror fans.

Docudrama, thriller, or horror, is it any good? Not much. The first half of the 62 minute film is mostly focused on the generic and almost undefined captain and his love triangle with the barely-written girl and another generic and almost undefined captain. I neither cared what happened to these people or knew who they were. Without Lugosi popping in briefly, you’d have a lullaby. Things improve greatly once the bodies start to appear and our perverse crew become more important, but then there’s a different problem.

The film’s original name was The Mystery of the Mary Celeste and it had an 80 minute runtime. It was cut with a hatchet for the US market with 18 minutes removed, and no one involved was concerned that the result made any sense. That butchered version was titled Phantom Ship, and in the years since, the British cut has been lost. So in the film we have, necessary characters never appear and two main ones simply vanish from the story. They aren’t murdered or jump ship. They just aren’t there. There’s also a gap in time. How much? We don’t know. What happened? We don’t know. There is an ending, but with so much missing, it doesn’t matter.

The Mystery of the Mary Celeste could never have been great. Major characters are too weak, the pacing is off, and the beginning is dull. But it likely was decent thanks to some excitement in the later half and the presence of Lugosi. However all we have is tatters, and except for someone doing research on Lugosi or the history of Hammer, there’s no reason to watch.

Classic Horror, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

The Clairvoyant (1935)

Mar 181935

Maximus (Claude Rains) performs a mind-reading act with the assistance of his wife, Rene (Fay Wray). They travel with an aging partner (Ben Field) and Maximus’s mother (Mary Clare). When a performance falls apart, he receives an actual prophecy. Predicting the future casts him into the limelight, which brings money but starts to pull his family apart. It’s soon clear that his power only works when he is around Christine (Jane Baxter), the daughter of a newspaper tycoon.

British films of the ‘30s seemed to be a year or two behind those of Hollywood with regard to technique. And this is a low-budget flick, making it even more primitive. That doesn’t make it bad, and a majority of the shots look good, but it’s simpler than it should be in ’35. A scene of a calamity in a mine is effective, and probably used up half the budget. The dialog is audible, so the sound is good enough, but that’s about all it manages.

The story is more drama and romance than horror, even with its supernatural elements. The power is promoted as being frightening, with both the mother and wife feeling it will destroy Maximus, and there’s even the suggestion that it comes from the Devil, though it never seems problematic in an objective way. Rather it is more an issue that it may break up relationships. Certainly it instigates changes in Maximus, but the focus is on how this could drive a wedge between him and Rene, mainly in the form of Christine. Making Rene insanely jealous before she has reason to be undercuts the weight of that (and come on, she’s Fay Wray, the hottest woman in any room she enters). I am pleased they didn’t make Christine an evil temptress—something I would have expected from a thirties melodrama.

While the drama and romance are engaging, the pull here is the cast. Clare, Wray, Field, and Baxter are superior to the material (in ascending order), but it’s Rains that takes it to a higher level. It’s rare to see him in the lead, and a crime he didn’t get the top spot more often. He was arguably the greatest character actor of all time and all his skills work as well in the lead spot. He was famous for his voice, and he puts it to good use, purring or commanding, or sometimes both. It’s a pleasure just to hear him speak. He can go from calm and reasonable to wild and insane in a few seconds and I believe it all. Rains makes Maximus sympathetic, genuine, gentle, and fierce—a multilayered performance for a multilayered character. The film in general is a 2-Star, and Rains’s performance is a 4-Star, so I’ll call it a 3-Star picture.

Classic Horror, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

Mar 161935

Hermia (Olivia de Havilland) loves Lysander (Dick Powell), but is required by her father to marry Demetrius (Ross Alexander), who had recently had an affair with Helena (Jean Muir). The Duke (Ian Hunter), who is preparing to wed the queen of the Amazons, sides with the father and the four youths escape into the wood. In those same woods, a group of peasants, including Bottom (James Cagney) and Flute (Joe E. Brown), practice the play they are to perform at the wedding feast. The forest is filled with fairies, whose king, Oberon (Victor Jory), is fighting with Queen Titania (Anita Louise) over a boy she has stolen. He sends Puck (Mickey Rooney) to solve the problems of the human couples, but instead ends up confusing things further for both humans and fairies.

I wanted to love this film. It was a lavish production of a play that I love. It is filled with Warner Bros. A-list actors and is the first film of de Havilland, who had played Hermia on the stage. The score is Mendelssohn’s, adapted and arranged by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the greatest film composer, and this was the film that brought him to Hollywood when director Max Reinhardt insisted that only an artist of his quality could adapt the music.

But it just doesn’t work. Many of the mistakes are the common ones. The fairies are played by children, and children can seldom act, with the exception in this case of Mickey Rooney who was 14 but looked 11 and acted so hard I’m surprised the sets didn’t collapse. The dialog is performed too slowly (so that we may properly RESPECT every word). And the film is overlong, not only for the reason stated, but due to the addition of long dance sequences and establishing shots that never end. For years it was only available in a severely cut fashion, which I have not seen since I was a child so have forgotten, but I have to wonder if it is better as some cuts are needed.

The cast may have included the major stars of WB (with some odd omissions, like Bette Davis who Reinhardt requested), but they are wrong for their parts. Powell and Alexander play Lysander and Demetrius exactly the same, as smug bastards. Mind you Dick Powell was wrong for every role he was ever given. Similarly I never discovered Brown’s charms. De Havilland is lovely, but had not yet discovered the difference between stage and screen acting (nor had Reinhardt who’d directed her on stage and had never before worked on a sound picture, nor would he again). Jory is strangely stiff while Louise is beautiful, but generic. Cagney overacts almost as much as Rooney, but somehow comes off the best of the lot.

The cinematography is impressive, winning the only write-in Oscar, but it is something to appreciate more than enjoy. Yes, they painted a lot of trees to get the astounding look, but the look doesn’t help the play.

The whole thing drags such that by intermission (there’s an intermission card), I wished it was done. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy, but I never laughed. It is a romance, but I felt nothing for the lovers. Shakespeare has been poorly treated on film and this should have been something great, but is instead part of the pack of failed adaptations. I suggest seeking out a stage version.

Fantasy, Reviews, Shakespeare Tagged with: Two Reels

The Ghost Goes West (1935)

Mar 141935

Murdoch Glourie (Robert Donat) of the clan Glourie dies a ignoble death and is cursed by his father to exist as a ghost until he can humiliate a member of the clan MacClaggan. Two hundred years later, Donald Glourie (also Robert Donat) is forced to sell Glourie castle to a crude American businessman (Eugene Pallette) who ships it stone by stone to Florida.

I saw The Canterville Ghost (1944) long before The Ghost Goes West and I can’t but think of this film as a weak version of the other. The ghost plot is the same, as is the comparison between the long history of our friends across the pond with American obnoxiousness. But where all that is funny and emotional in the Canterville Ghost, here it is placid. The jokes are OK, but didn’t raise a chuckle from me. The emotions are simply absent.

Of course, since The Ghost Goes West was first, it is the one that set the precedent. The latter film took as much from the earlier one as it did from Oscar Wilde’s play, so I have to give it credit for that. Otherwise, it’s hard to give it credit of any kind. It isn’t bad, just ho hum. Pallette is good, as always, but if you want to watch him, might I suggest The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Mark of Zorro or My Man Godfrey. I did enjoy the cameo by a youngish Elsa Lanchester because I always enjoy her.

There’s a romantic sub-plot that doesn’t go anywhere and should either have been dropped or greatly expanded. The girl confuses the ghost with the man, but that causes surprisingly few problems and any true romance is absent.

Director Rene Clair also made the much better genre film, I Married A Witch.

Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Feb 281935

The Monster (Boris Karloff), having survived the fire at the mill, wanders the nearby forest, hunted by villagers, until he meets a blind hermit (O.P. Heggie), who treats him well and teaches him to speak. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) also survived the fire, but weakened, and is being nursed back to health, both physically and mentally, by Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson). His recovery is interrupted by Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), who has had his own successes in creating life, and pressures Henry into working with him on a Bride (Elsa Lanchester) for the Monster.

Is Bride of Frankenstein the greatest horror movie ever made? No other film has a better claim to the title. It takes what was good in Frankenstein, and improves most every element as director James Whale was given complete freedom and he spread his wings (well, freedom except for the censors). If the first existed in a German expressionistic fantasy, now we’re in a twisted fun-house of telephone pole forests, labyrinthine cemeteries, and echoing halls. It’s beautiful and captivating. If before Karloff gave an award-worthy, sympathetic, pantomime performance, here he give an award-worthy performance, with speech, and it will tear your heart out. The old cast was good; the new cast is better (even when we have a repeat actor, as in the case of Dwight Frye who is playing a different sadistic assistant). Valerie Hobson is an Elizabeth I can care about, though Thesiger is the best addition. He dominates scenes even when he’s with the monster. His wickedly humorous Doctor Pretorius slides the film into dark comedy. And of course, there’s Lanchester, as both the Bride, and as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly.

Bride of Frankenstein begins with a prologue intended to calm censors and churches, with Mary Shelley spending an evening indoors with her husband and Lord Byron. She claims that her tale is “a moral lesson and the punishments that befell a mortal man that dared to emulate God.” Lanchester says this with a glint in her eye that makes it clear she has other ideas: darker, sexier, and more fun. The censors insisted that her lines suggesting that they were sexually a threesome (or more) and that they cared nothing for traditional rules of marriage be chopped, but Lanchester manages to get the idea across.

Is the rest of the movie a moral lesson? Well, not that moral. The Monster is shown even more sympathetically than in the first film, being compared to Christ. As for punishment, Henry, who is addicted to acting as a god, goes on to a happy life. It is the Monster who suffers. It’s always those society brands as monsters who suffer, and they deserve better.

However, there’s absolutely a lesson in Bride of Frankenstein. There’s so much going on that there are a string of them. Books have been written on the different meanings that can be taken from the film, and to some extent, most of them are true. Is it a comment on male jealousy of the act of creation (call it vagina envy)? Sure. It is a gay metaphor? Sure. Is it a criticism of organized religion, and perhaps faith generally? Sure. It is an examination of social class? Sure. And much more.

It’s topped off with a memorable score by Franz Waxman’s, a stirring and emotional work that gives each major character their own musical theme.

Bride of Frankenstein is exhilarating, thoughtful, haunting, and funny. It welcomes us all into a new world of gods and monsters.

The other six films in the series are are Frankenstein (1931), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943), and House of Frankenstein (1944), and House of Dracula (1945).

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The Black Room (1935)

Feb 251935

In a semi-Germanic, semi-British, semi-French Barony somewhere in Europe, the Baroness gives birth to twins, a dark happening as the family prophecy states that the family will end when a younger twin kills the elder in The Black Room (it needs to be pointed out to the rather dim lieutenant that twins don’t pop out side by side, but that was is born first). The Baron notes that it is even more likely in this case as the younger, birthed only a minute later, not only has lost out on a title, but he will be bitter because he was born with his right arm paralyzed. Years later Gregor (Boris Karloff), the elder twin, rules the barony as a fiend. Multiple peasant women have vanished and everything is run down. He has summoned his younger brother, Anton (also Karloff) to help him rule, or so he says. Gregor’s only ally is Col Paul Hassel (Thurston Hall), who’d been the dim lieutenant at their birth. He despises Gregor, but doesn’t want an open revolt from the peasants. Gregor wants to marry Hassel’s daughter, Thea (Marian Marsh), who is loved by brash Lt. Lussan (Robert Allen), though as both Hassel and the daughter hate him, that’s not likely. Gregor has a plan that involves his brother that will get him out of his current problems, and get him the girl.

High born twins were constantly getting in trouble in early Hollywood, with one killing the other or taking his place or sticking him in an iron mask. As such, this story doesn’t have much in the way of surprises. It’s difference comes in tone. Usually we get melodramas shifted into action & adventure. This time it is a melodrama shifted into horror. Instead of leaping and swordplay, there’s secret passageways, shadows, curses, suggestions of revenge from beyond the grave, and a pit filled with the dead.

More than tone and story, the draw is Karloff. When he was given a chance he was an excellent actor and here he was given three distinct parts to play: each of two brothers and one brother imitating the other. And he makes each of them different. As Gregor he is indolent, sneering, and cruel. His voice is hard and his posture is relaxed. As Anton he’s a bit of a fop, though genial, with a soft pleasant voice, and a much more controlled baring. And when he’s one pretending to be the other, you can always see the real one, though it is completely believable that others wouldn’t.

The sets for the great stone castle are wonderful, but what’s better is Karloff stomping around him them. Everything—sets, people, objects, and animals—is just support for Karloff. It’s a magnificent portrayal of evil and a damn fine one of kindness. Why was this guy never nominated for an Oscar? Oh yeah, because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences wouldn’t know art if it bit’em. This was the same year he starred in The Bride of Frankenstein, so the year belonged to him.

Of course when one man so rules a picture, everyone else pales, partly due to comparison, and partly due to lack of time spent on and development of their characters. This is a 68 minute film, so there’s only a few minutes for anyone else. Marsh was excellent in Svengali, but she’s just another interchangeable damsel here. Allen wouldn’t be noticeable at all except Lt. Lussan is a bit of an ass. Lieutenants really shouldn’t burst into their senior’s study, nor should they make wild claims about the future of their Colonel’s daughter. Apparently military discipline was a bit lax. His behavior didn’t put me on his side. Luckily Karloff knows how to make you hate him, so while I’m not with Luccan or the Hassels, I’m against Karloff.

The intensity does wane in the final act. I wanted more dastardly deeds, but things just soften up. I’m not here to see Karloff calmly and reasonably pull off his plan; I’m here for the Grand Guignol. The horror aspect dries up and the melodrama takes over. Since it is so predictable, it needed that edge.

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