The Horror Incorporated Project

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Saturday, February 13, 1971: Son of Frankenstein (1939) / The Invisible Man (1933)

Synopsis: Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) travels from America with his wife and young son to take possession of his late father's estate. He is met at the train station by the citizens of Frankenstein village, only to find that his ancestral name is hated by all who live there. Wolf, believing that his father's work was unjustly maligned by superstitious yokels, tries to convince the people that his intentions are good, but to no avail.At the family estate he is visited by the local chief of police (Lionel Atwill), who warns him to lay low, since the locals are convinced that no good can come from another scientist named Frankenstein carrying out more weird experiments during raging thunderstorms.

Frankenstein opines that over time the locals no doubt exaggerated the stories of his father's "monster"; but the chief politely disagrees. The stories, he says, are all true. He points out his own wooden arm, saying that when he was a boy, the rampaging monster tore his arm out by the roots. Later, Frankenstein is inspecting his estate when he discovers an odd character skulking near the ruins of his father's laboratory. This, we learn, was the late doctor's assistant Ygor (Bela Lugosi). Ygor had been hanged for a number of crimes including grave robbing, but survived; his neck did not heal properly and his head is tilted at an odd angle. He tells Frankenstein that the monster had been his friend and that he wants to see it restored to life. He takes Wolf to a chamber where the monster still reposes in a kind of suspended animation. Excited by this discovery, Wolf is determined to vindicate his father's work by bringing the creature back to life...

Comments: It's our good fortune to have another top-notch double feature this week, starting off with 1939's Son of Frankenstein. This was the last film Basil Rathbone worked on before starring in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), which vaulted him permanently onto the Hollywood A-list. Up until this point Rathbone had been a splendid supporting player, cast most effectively in villainous roles (Tybalt in the 1936 production of Romeo and Juliet, and Sir Guy of Gisbourne in Michael Curtiz's The Adventures of Robin Hood), but he also excelled as fellows who were at least partially sympathetic -- Major Brand in The Dawn Patrol, and the French pirate Levasseur in Captain Blood.

But Rathbone was not seen as leading man material. In spite of his Shakespearean pedigree and obvious strengths as an actor he didn't project the same warmth as his contemporaries Errol Flynn and David Niven.

This would not matter when he donned the deerstalker cap and became for decades the embodiment of Sherlock Holmes in the public imagination. Holmes was always a difficult character to cast, or perhaps more accurately an easy character to miscast (Roger Moore, Frank Langella and Matt Frewer being only three of many actors to make idiots of themselves in the role). What makes Holmes such difficult territory is that he isn't a conventional hero and is strangely immune to screen adaptations that try to make him one. Over the years many filmmakers have tried to domesticate him: prettying him up, giving him a love life, making him warm and accessible. Those adaptations invariably fail. The only successful Holmes adaptations have kept him as both more -- and less -- than human*.

This is a big reason why Rathbone was so successful with the role. He couldn't do warm or romantic the way Niven and Flynn could, but those actors could not match the icy determination, the cerebral coolness, that Rathbone projected.

For the same reason he is perfect as Wolf. Frankenstein père was depicted as little more than a simpering neurotic, who loses all agency once the monster is created. We are happy to discover that Wolf is made of sterner stuff. Even when events spiral out of control he manages to keep his head, and he regains the upper hand in the end. And unlike his father or the sinister Pretorious, Wolf's intentions remain good. He is motivated primarily by his desire to erase the graffito found on Henry's casket: Maker of Monsters. And he wants to erase that sobriquet not just from the casket, but from the hearts of the people of Frankenstein, and from his own guilty conscience. His circumstances are outsized, but Henry's impulse -- to redeem the reputation of his father -- is almost Shakespearean in its ambition and in its ubiquity.

Wolf's also motivated by a surprisingly honest desire to expand the frontiers of knowledge. In reviewing the notes in the laboratory he realizes that his father did not fully understand the implications of the lightning that he was using to give life to the creature. In fact, Wolf concludes, it was cosmic rays, not lightning, that gives the monster its titanic strength and near invulnerability. At this point the monster ceases to be "just" an undead creature stitched together from corpses and reanimated with electricity. "He cannot die," says Ygor. "He lives for always". Accidental exposure to cosmic rays must have seemed a fairly novel explanation in 1939, but audiences would soon get used to it : by the 1950s radiation would be a one-stop shop for Universal's screenwriters. It could cause any problem and become every solution.

This is movie that wears quite well on repeated viewing. Bela Lugosi is simply delightful in this movie, and made me with Ygor had turned up in a few more of these pictures.

The Invisible Man

Synopsis: A stranger walks along a country road into the small English village of Iping. The man wears a coat and hat to protect himself from the late winter snow, but he also wears tinted goggles and his head is wrapped in bandages.He enters an inn and rents a room. There he works feverishly on some sort of medical experiment. Meanwhile, Dr. Cranley (William Travers) , his daughter Flora (Gloria Stuart) and his assistant Kemp (William Harrigan) are trying to understand what has become of Dr. Cranley's underling, Jack Griffin. Griffin had been experimenting on his own with a dangerous chemical called monocaine, a substance which, when injected into animals, bleaches them white -- and drives them mad. Back at the inn, a crazed and paranoid Griffin causes havoc whenever he is disturbed, and he is soon ordered to vacate the premises.

Refusing to do so, a group of townsfolk and the local police attempt to evict him. Griffin begins removing the bandages on his head -- revealing himself (or perhaps not revealing himself) to be an invisible man. Causing considerable property damage and bodily harm, he removes the rest of his clothing and flees the scene. At first, the people of Iping are held up as laughingstocks by the police and the media; but soon enough the reports of an invisible man on a rampage are confirmed. That evening Kemp is visited at home by Griffin, who tells him that he had indeed discovered a monocaine derivative that causes complete invisibility. However, Griffin can't reverse the process and he wants to use Kemps's laboratory to work on a solution. But Griffin has more than a simple problem of chemistry on his mind. He has clearly been driven mad by his formula, and when he isn't imagining how can "make the world grovel" at his feet, he is delighting in the chaos and destruction an invisible man can cause...

Comments: Our second feature is another mad scientist picture, perhaps the best ever put to film. James Whale directed The Invisible Man two years after Frankenstein and two years before its sequel Bride of Frankenstein. The director's wry sense of humor is more in evidence here than it was in Frankenstein, particularly in Una O'Connor's periodic spasms of over-the-top shrieks and a wonderful scene where a disembodied pair of trousers skips merrily along a country lane.

But a good deal of credit for the film's success should go to Claude Rains, who successfully conveys the full range of Griffin's madness to the audience. Rains is often criticized for an over-ripe performance in this picture (with some justification) but when you consider how much of the movie relies solely on his voice, it's easier to understand why he makes the choices he does.
One of the best scenes in the film is when Griffin meets with Flora (played by the dreadful Gloria Stuart), and inside of a minute he caroms between affection, regret, contempt and outright megalomania. It's the sort of thing an actor can easily botch, but Rains sells it, allowing us to pity Griffin even as we despise the creature he has turned into. Like the H.G. Wells novella it's based upon, The Invisible Man has a somewhat unusual structure in that the closest thing we have to a protagonist is Griffin himself. Since he's also the antagonist, Rains has to make us root for him and against him at the same time. That's a very difficult job, but he pulls it off -- as the clip below will demonstrate.

Skip ahead to the 5:00 minute mark and try to imagine another actor in the role. Even covered head to toe Rains commands your attention. It's one of the best film performances of the 1930s.

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*To any list of successful adaptations I'd include Guy Ritchie's 2009 Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey, Jr. While the screenplay takes considerable liberties with its source material, the essentials of Holmes' character remain: he is a brilliant detective but something of a washout as a human being, and it isn't hard to figure out why he has exactly one friend.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Interlude: Jimmy Sangster, 1927 - 2011

Jimmy Sangster has always been one of my heroes, and I was saddened to hear of his recent passing. I actually heard the news a few weeks late (he died on August 19) but that’s only appropriate, since I saw his films a bit late as well -- two or three decades after their release, in fact.

Sangster was by far the best screenwriter in the Hammer stable, with credits like X the Unknown, The Horror of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Crawling Eye and many others. He wrote quickly. His output was consistently good. And he was an all-arounder, which is surprisingly rare in his profession. His scripts were well-plotted and suspenseful, his characters believable, his dialogue whip-smart.

In later years he turned to television, scripting episodes of Ironsides and Banecek and Movin’ On, giving even the most mediocre assignments far more than they deserved. And unlike some television writers (I’m looking at you, Harlan Ellison) he never tried to make a show conform to his own sensibilities. He was a master craftsman who knew exactly what the script required, and provided it.And when given the opportunity, as with "The Spanish Moss Murders" episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Sangster showed that he was still bubbling over with ideas. He ran circles round the other guys, and he made it look easy.

When I grow up, I want to be Jimmy Sangster.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Saturday, February 6, 1971: Dracula (1931) / Night Monster (1942)

Synopsis: Renfield (Dwight Frye), a young attorney from London, arrives at a small Carpathian village. His fellow travelers are staying in the village overnight but he insists on continuing on to the castle of a local nobleman, Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi).

The villagers turn pale at the very mention of the name, and beg him not to go. But Renfield is there on business, and insists on completing his journey.

After an unnerving trip to the castle, Renfield finally meets the count, who signs documents to complete his purchase of Carfax Abbey in England. It is to England, Dracula says, that he will go the very next morning.

Later, a ship drifts into an English harbor, all aboard her dead -- save for Renfield, who is now a stark, raving lunatic.

Several crates from the ship are delivered to Carfax Abbey. From one of them emerges Count Dracula, who soon insinuates himself into London society, befriending Dr. Seward, owner of the Seward Asylum where Renfield is confined. The asylum, we learn, adjoins the grounds of Carfax Abbey. Dracula meets Dr. Seward's daughter, Mina (Helen Chandler); her fiancee Jonathan Harker (David Manners), and their friend Lucy (Frances Dade).

Meanwhile, a string of bizarre murders has caught the interest of Dr. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), an unorthodox scientist and student of the occult. Two small puncture wounds, he finds, were on the necks of each victim, including young Lucy.

When Mina relates a dream of a man coming into her bedroom and biting her neck, Seward is surprised to see that Mina has been hiding two small puncture wounds herself. But Van Helsing is not surprised. He insists that a vampire is attempting to make Mina its slave by visiting her over a series of subsequent nights.

Mina can only be protected, he says, by locking her in her room, and sealing the windows with wolfbane and crucifixes, which vampires find repellent.

Meanwhile, Count Dracula pays a visit to the Seward home, and Van Helsing quickly realizes that Dracula himself is the vampire they seek. A battle of wits ensues, with Van Helsing battling Count Dracula for Mina's very soul....

Comments: This is Horror Incorporated's fourth broadcast of Dracula in fifteen months, easily making it the program's most frequently-seen film. I've already written about it here and here, so for this go-round -- at reader kochillt's suggestion -- let's take a look at the Spanish-language version, filmed and released at the same time.

For many years, distributing Hollywood movies to foreign markets was easy. That's because films were silent. If you were shipping Safety Last! to Madrid or Rome or Budapest, you needed only to swap out the English inter-titles with ones translated into Spanish or Italian or Hungarian. But once the sound era began, things got messy.

Inter-titles weren't enough anymore, because stories were no longer 90% visual; now characters stood there and gassed on, scene after scene, for the whole length of the movie.

While the studios eventually settled on the idea of adding subtitles and dubbing in dialogue with foreign actors, in the early days of talkies it wasn't entirely clear what the best solution was. One thing the studios tried was lensing shot-for-shot remakes of the same film, using a foreign cast on the same sets.

And that's how we happen to have, essentially, two nearly identical versions of Dracula. The Spanish version, directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villerias as Dracula and Lupita Tovar as Mina, was filmed on the Dracula sets each night, after the English-language version had wrapped production for the day.

For years it's been fashionable to insist that the Spanish-language Dracula is superior to Tod Browning's English-language version.

And there are good reasons to think this. The Spanish version can claim more sophisticated camera work, and therefore doesn't seem quite as stagebound as Browning's movie. The Spanish version also contains about 20 minutes of material cut from the American version.

But the two Draculas, filmed on the same sets using the same script at the same time, must come down ultimately to their respective performances, and it is here that Browning's version wins out. Watching Carlos Villerias' performance really gives you an appreciation for Bela Lugosi's otherworldly portrayal. Villarias portrays Dracula in a relatively straightforward way. He presents the count as a charming, handsome stranger with a sinister agenda, and this is fine -- it is, in fact, exactly what the script calls for.

But it was Lugosi who did something more than what the script demanded, selling the Count as an embodiment of ancient evil, an entity that has spent so many centuries away from human society that even masquerading as human now requires a constant effort. And for all of the criticism of Lugosi's hamminess, Villerias is far worse: his portrayal is, quite simply, acting for the stage. He makes no adjustment for the demands of film, and his mannerisms are far too broad to be taken seriously.

The crucial role of Dr. Van Helsing is taken up by Eduardo Arozamena in this version, and while I have been critical of the stiffness of Edward Van Sloan's portrayal, I have to say that Van Sloan turns in the better performance as well. This is probably not the fault of Arozamena, who projects a warmth that Van Sloan does not. Rather, the problem is that warmth is a quality Van Helsing shouldn't possess. Van Helsing is an obsessive, a perpetual outsider, an expert in things most respectable people regard as nonsense. But Arozamena comes across like a gentle family physician.

In one critical scene, he overhears Mina (rebranded "Eva" in the Spanish-language version) relating a dream she had about a man entering her room and biting her neck. Van Helsing approaches her and asks when she had this dream. He then asks to see her neck. She refuses, and her father steps forward, gently undoing her wrap to reveal the bite marks on her throat.

In the English-language version, however, Van Helsing himself opens her wrap to reveal the bite marks even after Mina refuses. This is a small but critical difference, showing that Van Helsing isn't interested in Eva's embarrassment or concerned with her modesty. His only concern is hunting the vampire that is hunting her.

The third critical role is that of Renfield, and I must admit to liking Pablo Alvarez Rubio in the role, despite my great regard for Dwight Frye. And it isn't even because Rubio is better in the role -- I'm not certain that he is.

We know that any actor playing Renfield is going to go over the top -- the role begs for it -- but Rubio goes over the top and then climbs on a platform over Over the Top and then gets on a motorcycle, Evel Knievel style, and jumps 16 buses of Over the Top, making Dwight Frye look like a department store mannequin and Charles Manson look like a composed, sensible fellow. It's impossible to tell if Rubio's performance is good or bad. But he certainly gets your attention.

Lupito Tovar is far better than Helen Chandler as Mina (Eva in the Spanish version) but the part is so thinly-written that there is little an actor can do with the role, either for good or ill. Chandler belongs to the Gloria Stuart school of acting, which means she delivers every line with a high, tremulous uncertainty, as though trying to make up her mind whether to scream or faint.

One of my favorite moments from the English-language Dracula is missing from the Spanish-language version. In Tod Browning's version, Dr. Van Helsing reveals that Mina has been bitten on the neck. "What could have caused this?" Harker demands. Then we hear a voice say "Count Dracula". Everyone turns to see Count Dracula standing in the entrance of the drawing room, and it is only then we realize that the maid is announcing his arrival.

And while the Spanish-languge version does better with the business about the mirror in the cigarette box (Van Helsing looks in the mirror and sees Eva holding her hand up for Dracula to kiss, with Dracula nowhere to be seen) it's more effective for Dracula to simply knock the cigarette case out of Van Helsing's hands, as Lugosi does, rather than smash it to pieces with the cane, as Villarias has him do. Sometimes, even in horror films, less is more.

Night Monster

Synopsis: The Ingston mansion lies near the Pollard Slough, a swamp in rural New England, miles from the nearest town. It's gloomy enough in the daytime, but at night it's really creepy. That's when the fog rolls in and weird things start happening.
Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan) is the wealthy old recluse who lives there, along with his crazy sister Margaret (Fay Helm) and a gaggle of creepy domestics. In fact the only one in the house who isn't a weirdo is the maid, Milly (Janet Shaw), but she hasn't been there long and has decided to quit. She is creeped out by the place and by its inhabitants. She also thinks that someone from the Ingston house is responsible for a murder that happened nearby, and that there might even be a connection between the murder and a hulking creature seen roaming the area at night. The local constable, however, isn't buying it.

About the time Milly is leaving, a number of visitors are showing up at the house: Agor Singh (Nils Asther), a mystic who has gained the confidence of Kurt Ingston; Dr. Lynn Harper (Irene Hervey), a psychologist that a desperate Margaret had sent for; Dick Baldwin (Don Porter), a local mystery writer who is a frequent visitor to the estate. And Ingston has invited three doctors to pay a visit -- King, Timmins and Phipps -- the same three doctors whose botched surgery left him paralyzed.

Singh demonstrates his mystic powers by making a skeleton appear in the room -- apparently real, and when he makes it disappear there is a pool of blood left on the carpet where it appeared.
Before long, the body of young Milly is found in the slough nearby. This brings the local constable to the Ingston Mansion. But that doesn't prevent the brutal murder of the three doctors. Harper and Baldwin begin to suspect Kurt Ingston -- after all, he had a motive for wanting the doctors dead, and perhaps he wasn't quite as paralyzed as he let on. But how could Ingston have committed the murders when it is revealed that he has no arms or legs?

Comments: We turn now from Bela Lugosi's greatest screen role to one of his most forgettable. Inexplicably cast as the butler despite his top billing, Lugosi handles his minimal duties as well as he can, trying to be spooky and somber despite having almost nothing to do. Nevertheless, Night Monster works well enough thanks to a well-paced script, an extremely professional cast and the sure hand of director Ford Beebe, a man who spent most of his career working on westerns and serials. How he wound up holding the reins on this production isn't clear, but he never seems out of his element. Of course, there is nothing particularly tricky about evoking rural New England ("A-yep, somethin' spookay goin' on over in Pollahd Slough") but all the same he does just fine shepherding us through this trip to the boneyard.

Seeing this right after The Black Cat makes notable the presence of a certain type of horror movie character who we've now seen for two weeks in a row. It's the Mystery Writer On Holiday, played last week by David Manners and this week by Don Porter, The main function of the Mystery Writer On Holiday seems to be to stand in for the audience member, marveling at the strange goings on around him, and to observe that a) his friends will think this is just one of his crazy tales when he gets back home! and b) this crazy tale will be the makings of a crackerjack mystery story when he gets back to his typewriter! This doesn't seem to have festered into a horror movie cliche, necessarily, but I have seen it now and then when we're introduced to ensemble horror movie casts (the character of Bob Jenkins in Stephen King's novella "The Langoliers" was a mystery writer as well, played in the TV adaptation by Dean Stockwell.)

Overall, Night Monster kind of dazzles me every time I see it. This is the kind of movie that could only have come out of the studio system: modest in ambition, craftsmanlike in execution, designed to breeze in and out of movie theaters at the bottom end of a double bill. And best of all it works, which is more than you can say for most horror films released today, regardless of budget.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Saturday, January 30, 1971: The Black Cat (1934) / House of Horrors (1946)

Synopsis: Mystery writer Peter Allison (David Manners) and his newly-minted wife Joan (Julie Bishop) are honeymooning in eastern Europe. On a train trip east, they are unexpectedly asked to share their compartment with a stranger, Dr. Vitus Werdergast (Bela Lugosi). Werdegast tells them that he had been in a Russian prison camp until recently, but now he is on his way to visit an old friend. The man seems haunted by Joan's beauty, telling her that she reminds him of his own late wife.
At their destination, Werdegast and the Allisons agree to share a taxi. The driver entertains the newlyweds by telling them that the area they are driving past was the site of an old fortress, where 10,000 men died in a fierce battle with the Russians during the Great War. To the couple this is mildly interesting history, but Werdegast stares out the window darkly, and it is clear that for him this story is all too personal.
Suddenly part of the rain-washed road gives way and the taxi plunges down an embankment. The driver is killed in the crash, and Joan is knocked unconscious. Werdegast, his manservant and Peter take her to the futuristic house built on the ruins of the old fortress.
This is the house built by Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff), one of the world's greatest architects and the man whom Werdegast has traveled so far to visit. Poelzig had once commanded the fortress the house was built upon, and it quickly becomes clear that Werdegast's visit is not entirely a social call. During the war, Poelzig had allowed his men to be taken captive by the Russians in exchange for his own safe passage. And Poelzig had taken Werdegast's wife Karin with him. He had told her that Werdegast had been killed so that he could marry her and raise Werdegast's daughter as his own.
Wedegast treats Joan's injuries, telling Peter that she will be all right after a good night's sleep. He gives her a sedative. Peter and Werdegast are talking to Poelzig when Werdegast sees a black cat. Werdegast becomes hysterical and kills it. Poelzig explains to Peter that Werdegast has always suffered from a debilitating fear of cats.
Joan comes downstairs. She seems different than before -- more somber and sharp-eyed. When Peter takes her back upstairs she kisses him hungrily. Wedegast explains that the narcotic he has given Joan is known to cause incidents of expanded perception, even second sight.
Later that night, Poelzig tells Werdegast he will take him to Karin. The two go into the lower levels of the house, which are built upon the old fortress ruins. Poelzig leads him to a glass case, where Karin is kept. Poelzig tells him that she died of pneumonia shortly after the war. But he has kept her body perfectly preserved so that he may always look upon her beauty. The child, he tells Werdegast, died about the same time.
Enraged, Werdegast draws a pistol, but Poelzig mocks him for his "childish" and "melodramatic" impulses. Realizing that this isn't yet the proper time to exact revenge, Werdegast stands down.
Returning to his bedroom, Poelzig tells the woman lying next to him that he wants her to remain hidden from the visitors in the house. It is only then that we see the woman looks exactly like Karin -- she is, in fact, Werdegast's long-lost daughter....

Comments: Tonight we are treated to a top-notch double feature -- the best, in fact, that Horror Incorporated has offered to date. First up is Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat, a florid and highly stylized thriller that makes great use of its two stars, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. From the very beginning, the movie is out to buck convention. It is a horror film set not in a crumbling castle but in a gleaming modernist house; while most films of the era had almost no music, this one has few moments without it; and while most horror films of this type were set in the distant past, this one is set in modern times, with a revenge subplot rising from the blood-soaked battlefields of the Great War.

The mood it creates is very effective, and while modern viewers are likely to see it as tame stuff, in its day it was seen as having an unsavory focus on torture and cruelty. "Clammy and excessively ghoulish," complained the New York Times when the film premiered in May of 1934. "'The Black Cat' is more foolish than horrible. The story and dialogue pile the agony on too thick to give the audience a reasonable scare." Time Magazine groused, " A dismal hocus-pocus which seems to confuse its actors as much as it fails to frighten its audience.....cinema's two outstanding blood-curdlers deserve a better vehicle than The Black Cat".

Variety, as you might expect, had the funniest take on the movie, writing "Clash of the two eyebrow-squinting nuts involves an American bridal couple temporarily caught in the manor. It is the playful notion of nasty Karloff to make the bride Exhibit A in a devil cult of which he is the head, and it is the revenge of Lugosi to torture his enemy by skinning him alive". Ah, good times.

As often happens, audiences ignored the wisdom of the film critics, and The Black Cat was a hit at the box office. It's regarded as a classic of the horror genre, and rightly so -- not only does it successfully create an atmosphere of wonder and foreboding, it successfully captures the spirit of Poe even as it entirely discards the story it's ostensibly based upon. Heavy on mood and imagery and short on plot, this is the sort of film I can imagine Poe falling in love with, going to see again and again.

I like to think that Poe would have been a great fan of the movies. He was just born a hundred years too late.

House of Horrors

Synopsis: A spectacularly unsuccessful sculptor named Marcel De Lange (Martin Kosleck) is dining on bread and cheese by candlelight. It's bread and cheese because he doesn't have anything else to eat; and it's by candlelight because the electricity in his loft has been shut off. But he is in good spirits because a wealthy patron of the arts is coming over soon to buy his latest creation for $1,000.

But when the patron arrives, he is accompanied by a supercilious art critic named F. Holmes Harmon (Alan Napier) who insults the work and implores the buyer not to go through with it. The sale is ruined.

Despondent, De Lange walks down to the river bridge. He is about to throw himself in when he sees a half-drowned man surface near the riverbank. He goes down to help the large, ungainly fellow out of the water, and returns to the loft, where he nurses him back to health.

He sees this man as "the perfect Neanderthal" and is inspired to create a new sculpture of his primitive cranium. It turns out that the stranger is an escaped murderer called The Creeper (Rondo Hatton), and his m.o. is to snap his victim's spines. The police believe he is dead, and at first it isn't clear to De Lange what sort of man he's taken into his home.

But it becomes clear soon enough: The Creeper murders a streetwalker in the neighborhood (because "she screamed", as the Creeper succinctly explains), and when De Lange angrily reads Harmon's snarky write-up of his foiled sale, The Creeper gets up and leaves.

Meanwhile, reporter Joan Medford (Virginia Grey) visits her colleague F. Holmes Harmon. She is upset that Harmon plans to write a savage review of her boyfriend Steven Morrow (Robert Lowery) and his planned exhibit of commercial illustrations (pinups, which appear to be Morrow's speciality). Harmon finds pop art in general to be contemptible, and Morrow's work particularly vulgar; he is determined to ruin Morrow with another poison-pen letter to the art world.

Enter the Creeper. He kills Harmon and slips away. Because Harmon was working on a hit piece against Morrow when he died, police suspicion falls on him.

De Lange realizes that all he need do is express contempt for an art critic -- or anyone, really -- and hey presto, he reads that person's obituary in the next day's paper. Bringing the Creeper into his life has given him an incredible feeling of power, and if that weren't enough, his sculpture of the Creeper is going well -- in fact, we suspect it's the first decent piece of art he's ever created.

As the body count rises, Medford visits De Lange's loft. She says she is looking for a story for her Sunday column -- but is she? Why does she steal a sketch of the Creeper that De Lange has hidden? And what will happen to her when he --and the Creeper -- find out?

Comments: It's hard to imagine a more interesting counterpoint to The Black Cat than Jean Yarbrough's House of Horrors, coming as it does from the end rather than the beginning of Universal's "golden age of horror". Ulmer's film benefited from lavish production values, a tone borrowed from the German expressionist films of the 1920s and the presence of Karloff and Lugosi, two actors then at the peak of their careers. House of Horrors had no stars, and was shot in the most straightforward and pedestrian way possible, and its overall look and feel suggests the lowest of low-budget Universal features of the time.

And yet House of Horrors is in its way just as lurid and disturbing as the better-known Ulmer classic.

Perhaps this is due to the presence of Rondo Hatton himself, whose acromegaly is displayed for the paying audience in a way that reminds us too keenly that all horror films are freak shows in sanitized packages: we're separated from the grotesques by a glowing screen, but all the same we lay down our money and can't stop gawking. And perhaps part is due to the fact that the Creeper, casually presented to us as the logical successor to Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, isn't anything like them. The Creeper claims no supernatural origin, nor does he have any claim to our sympathy.

Sympathy is what we must feel for the great screen monsters, sooner or later; they have become what they are through no fault of their own, and we can imagine a time when these creatures were like us.

We should have no such illusions about the Creeper. It's difficult to imagine a time when he wasn't a remorseless killer.

In his place we have Marcel DeLange, a talent-free sculptor whose failures and humiliations have led him to the brink of suicide. The Creeper arrives just in time to give him a reason to carry on -- providing him not only with an artistic muse, but with a vehicle for revenge. The moral choice in this film is assumed entirely by DeLange, and he does not hesitate: his rage and bitterness, strong as they were, were never stronger than his moral cowardice. But the Creeper gives him a way to exact revenge, and DeLange clearly believes that he needn't pay the moral price because he never explicitly asks the Creeper to commit murder -- he simply wishes openly for the death of someone in the presence of the Creeper, and the deed is as good as done. He's off the hook!

But DeLange is wrong. He is on the hook, all the way on, and the moral price always gets paid. We know this because we're watching a horror film, and horror films have rules, but DeLange is unaware of the rules.

DeLange's ignorance, of course, his greatest liability -- just as Werdegast and Poelzig's greatest liability is their too-great knowledge of the moral precipice they have reached. Werdegast and Poelzig had each clearly made a decision - long before the events of the movie began - that when the time came he would take the other guy with him. That's great dramatic stuff, but for House of Horrors it never occurs to either character to take the other guy with him. Not until it's too late.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Saturday, January 23, 1971: House of Frankenstein (1946) / The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

Synopsis: In Neustadt prison, mad scientist Dr. Niemann and his hunchbacked assistant Daniel are unexpectedly freed when a wall of their cell collapses during a violent thunderstorm. The two happen upon Lampini's traveling horror show, which boasts as its main attraction the skeleton of Count Dracula. Neimann and Eric quickly murder Lampini and his driver and take their places. Niemann has been obsessed with proving the genius of Dr. Frankenstein and he sets out to the village where the Monster was created.

Niemann discovers that the skeleton of Dracula is authentic when he removes the stake that had been thrust through the vampire's heart. The skeleton promptly transforms into the Count. Threatening to replace the stake if Dracula doesn't do his bidding, Niemann sends the vampire out to kill the three men who had him imprisoned: Strauss, Ullman and Hussman. Dracula kills Hussman but dies before he can dispense with the hated Strauss and Ullman.

Reaching the village of Vasaria, they encounter a band of gypsies. Seeing a gypsy woman Ilonka being abused, Daniel saves her and, smitten with her, asks her to join them.

Later, examining the ruins of Frankenstein Castle, Neimann and Daniel discover the frozen bodies of Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf Man. Niemann realizes that the Monster can be revived, and he plans to place the Monster's brain in Lawrence Talbot's body; Talbot's brain in Strauss' body, and Ullman's brain in the Monster's body. But discovering that the Ilonka has fallen in love with Lawrence Talbot, Daniel wants his own brain placed into Talbot's body....

Comments: Almost exactly thirty minutes after House of Frankenstein begins, the movie abruptly ends.

Well, sort of. Dr. Niemann and his assistant Daniel realize that the authorities who are pursuing them don't really want Lampini's carriage, which they've stolen. Nope, they are after Count Dracula, whom Niemann has sworn to protect. So Niemann jettisons Dracula and his coffin from the carriage. The count is caught out in the open, and can't climb inside his downed coffin quickly enough (morning comes quickly in the Carpathian mountains, you know) and he is destroyed by sunlight.

At that moment, Dracula's ring falls off the finger of young Rita Hussman, and she and her husband hold each other close and stare off into the distance together. The music swells, we see a shot of Lampini's carriage winding away into the distance, and we fade to black.

A moment later we fade in to find Lampini's carriage rolling along toward that hard-luck village of Vasaria. It is here that we'll meet the gypsy girl Ilonka and return again to the ruins of Castle Frankenstein. But it is this first, false ending that gives us the strange feeling that we're seeing a "compilation film", that is, a film cobbled together from episodes of an old TV series.

It would have been amusing if that were true -- a movie assembled, Frankenstein-style, from the corpses of other movies.

Truth is, House of Frankenstein would have made a pretty interesting TV series - each week Niemann and Daniel would travel to a different Carpathian village, meeting up with a new monster every week. Niemann, besides wanting revenge on Ullman, Hussman and Strauss, would always be looking for an opportunity to replicate Dr. Frankenstein's research; meanwhile, Daniel wants love, and / or a new body. Each week they would come thiiiis close to success but it would always elude them. Sort of Wagon Train meets Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

I would have made one hell of a TV executive.

Unfortunately, it's supposed to be a movie, no matter how much my mind keeps trying to twist it into a TV show. So we have to judge it on that basis, and on that basis it doesn't work very well. I generally dislike the Universal monster rallies, and this one is probably the most disagreeable of them all.

The Invisible Man Returns

Synopsis: At the Radcliffe family estate, a grim vigil is being kept for young Geoffrey Radcliffe (Vincent Price), who has been convicted of the murder of his brother Michael. The family is certain that Geoffrey is innocent; nevertheless he has been convicted of the crime and is sentenced to be hanged at 8:00 am.
Geoffrey's cousin Richard Cobb (Cedric Hardwicke) is trying to console Geoffrey's fiance Helen (Nan Grey) but she is despondent until the arrival of Dr. Frank Griffin (John Sutton). Learning that Cobb's last-ditch appeal for a reprieve has failed, Griffin hurries to the prison to meet Radcliffe one last time.

Shortly after Griffin's visit, Radcliffe mysteriously disappears from his cell, even though it is closely guarded. The prison officials are baffled, but as soon as Inspector Sampson (Cecil Kellaway) of Scotland Yard hears the name Frank Griffin, he is certain he knows what has happened.

An invisible Geoffrey moves through the woods some distance from the prison, finding a suitcase that has been left for him. He pulls clothing from it and proceeds to a safe house arranged by Frank Griffin.

Visiting the lab on the grounds of the Radcliffe family's coal mine, Sampson shows Griffin a police file of his brother, John Griffin, who nine years earlier formulated a chemical that could turn a man invisible, and then tested it on himself with disastrous results. But Griffin insists he has nothing to do with his brother's work.

Reunited with Helen at the safe house, Radcliffe rests for a while. But the house owners's dog barks ceaselessly, attracting the attention of the police, and Radcliffe is forced to flee.

Discovering that hapless mine employee Willy Spears (Alan Napier) has suddenly been promoted makes Radcliffe suspicious, especially when Spears tells Griffin that the lab will soon be shut down. Radcliffe uses his power of invisibility to track down the ones who framed him for murder, while Griffin desperately seeks an antidote to the invisibility drug -- knowing that if he fails, Radcliffe will go insane....

Comments: The Invisible Man Returns is so much better than House of Frankenstein that I spent some time wondering why it turned up as the second feature on Horror Incorporated, and not the first.

It seems pretty obvious that, on a creature feature, you want to present your best picture first, because your peak audience will be with you at the start of the show, slowly draining away as the night wears on.

Of course when these movies were first released in theaters, the opposite was true: the less desirable "B" picture was seen first, forcing the audience to stick around for the "A" picture at the end.

This had been the rule since the dawn of the talkies and it continued until 1948, when two earthshaking events conspired to end the era of the theatrical double bill.

The first was the landmark Supreme Court decision United States V. Paramount Pictures, which essentially decided that the vertically-integrated movie industry held too much control over its distribution channels. Direct studio ownership of theater chains was outlawed as a result, and so was "block booking" -- the practice of forcing theaters to book a movie they didn't want in order to get a movie they did. Block booking was not only how most "B" pictures got into theaters, it was to a large extent their raison d'etre. United States V. Paramount was also designed to prevent studios from discriminating against independently-owned cinemas.

Of course, the decision didn't do much to solve the problems the Court thought it was solving at the time (today, block booking still happens, though not as blatantly as it once did; theaters are owned by giant chains that are all in bed with the studios; and independent cinemas are still discriminated against by the studios). But the decision was at least partially responsible for the unraveling of the vertically-integrated studio system.

I say partially because the second earthshaking event was happening right around the same time. This, of course, was the advent of television. After decades of experimentation, a national technological standard for TV broadcasts was established in 1941. World War II froze the planned rollout of television and it wasn't until 1947 that sets were being manufactured and purchased in significant numbers.

The existence of this giant new entertainment pipeline forced the film industry to become more efficient; double bills were one of the first casualties (for the next couple of decades, some small producers like AIP were able to continue offering double features for distribution, but only because they could make two movies for a lower price than the major studios could make one.

Which brings us right around again to the late 1950s, the Shock! package and the advent of the late night creature feature.

The Invisible Man Returns stands up very well today; this is partly due to the intelligent, suspenseful script, and partly due to an extraordinarily talented cast and the sure hand of veteran director Joe May, a grouchy German expat who gave Fritz Lang his start in the business. May wasn't well-liked by the casts he worked with, but you can't argue with his results -- this is a great little film.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Saturday, January 16, 1971: The Black Room (1935) / The Man With Nine Lives (1940)

Synopsis: In a Tyrolean fiefdom, a baron anxiously awaits the birth of an heir. But he is greatly distressed to learn that his wife has given birth to twins. An old family prophecy holds that one day twins will be born to the family, and that the younger twin will murder the older in the onyx-lined "black room" of the castle. Fearful of the prophecy, the baron orders that the entrance to the room be bricked up.

Some forty years later, we find the older twin Gregor ruling as baron. He is a cruel and dissolute tyrant, hated by his subjects, and he is suspected in the disappearances of several young women. But the local authorities turn a blind eye to his activities.

The younger twin Anton (Boris Karloff) is a nice but somewhat ineffectual fellow, and has been away since his brother's rule began. At Gregor's invitation, Anton returns home.

At first Anton refuses to believe the rumors about Gregor, but it soon becomes clear to him that his older brother is every bit as cruel and despotic as the locals allege.

When Gregor is implicated in the disappearance of Mashka, a gypsy serving girl, the townspeople rise up. They storm the castle and demand Gregor be handed over to them.

To everyone's surprise, Gregor tells the townspeople that he will relinquish his authority immediately and turn it over to his younger brother Anton. This mollifies the crowd and Anton becomes the new baron.

While acquainting Anton with his new duties, Gregor shows him an interesting trick: inside the huge fireplace in the main hall there is a secret passage that leads into the Black Room. Gregor reveals that he has been there many times, and that there is a pit beneath the room. When Anton looks down into the pit, he sees a number of bodies that have been thrown down there -- including the body of the missing girl Mashka. Gregor strikes Anton and tosses him down into the pit as well.

As Anton dies, Gregor taunts him. He reminds him that, according to the prophecy, Anton was supposed to kill Gregor in that room. "The prophesy will be fulfilled!" Anton insists. "From the grave?" Gregor asks sarcastically. "Yes," Anton says as he dies. "From the grave!"

Emerging from the Black Room, Gregor now assumes the identity of Anton, able to rule again while being absolved of all his past crimes. Yet Anton's dying words keep coming back to him...

Comments: Horror Incorporated returns to the Saturday evening schedule with an interesting pair of films that Boris Karloff made for Columbia Pictures. The first was released in 1935, when the Englishman was still enjoying the astonishing career reboot that Frankenstein had made possible. No film actor, with the possible exception of the great Morgan Freeman, has managed such a stunning late-career turnaround*: practically overnight he went from being an obscure middle-aged character actor to over-the-title top banana, for a time credited at Universal simply as KARLOFF, his surname alone enough to sell tickets; billed in advertisements as "Karloff the Uncanny", hailed as the second coming of the great Lon Chaney himself.

And like many who struggled in their early careers Karloff didn't take fame for granted. He worked hard and tried to demonstrate his range as an actor. And in The Black Room his efforts pay off handsomely.

It's really a treat to watch Karloff at work here. His portrayal of the sociopathic Gregor is utterly convincing -- we grasp quickly that the man is cruel and ruthless, but as the movie goes on his behavior evinces something much darker; that he is, quite simply, a monster. He will literally do anything to get what he wants. Karloff wisely doesn't try to underline this with a lot of theatrical mugging. His Gregor is clearly watching everything around him, sizing up everyone else and constantly searching for an advantage. This is a smart, understated film performance that works because it isn't transparently showy.

The screenplay sometimes works too hard to point up the differences between Gregor and his twin. The soft-spoken, dandified, snuff-taking Anton is even given a paralyzed arm in order to make him appear more ineffectual. But Karloff's body language -- always the most powerful weapon in his actor's arsenal -- is even more important than vocal mannerisms or costume in telling the two apart. Even when Gregor is standing still Karloff imbues him with a lithe, lupine energy, always watching for an attack from an unseen angle; while Anton's manner is flat-footed, trusting, utterly unsuspecting. As a showcase for Karloff's strengths you could hardly do better.

And as a commercial vehicle it would have been a good bet too, mixing three popular genres of the 1930s -- gothic horror, costume drama and royal melodrama -- together in one appealing package.

Karloff is assisted by a clever screenplay that leads us inexorably to Gregor's final comeuppance, and though the final act gets a bit muddled it remains a smart and sharply-focused thriller.

Of course, some of the credit needs to go to director Roy William Neill, something of a master craftsman behind the camera. Neill started his career working in silent pictures, and did a lot of work for Universal in the 1940s, directing most of the studio's Sherlock Holmes pictures as well as the Shock! package mainstay Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. The Black Room is a good example of his ability to make the most of limited time and money, and it's one of the prolific director's best efforts.

The Man With Nine Lives

Synopsis: Dr. Tim Mason (Roger Pryor) is conducting ground-breaking research in cryogenics. In a public demonstration, he lowers the body temperature of a patient until she is in a coma-like state. Five days later he brings her out of it, and after the procedure her chronic pain has diminished considerably.

After the demonstration, Dr. Mason tells his fiancee, nurse Judith Blair (Jo Ann Sayers) that his results are encouraging, but not what he had hoped. He reveals that most of his experiments are derived from the work of a mysterious Dr. Leon Kravaal (Boris Karloff), whose book on the subject of cryogenics hinted that he was in possession of a mysterious process that allowed the body to be completely frozen. Laboratory animals exposed to this process would completely recover from the freezing. Moreover, cancer cells in test animals disappeared after prolonged treatment, because the body's immune system was still working while the cancer cells were suspended. Mason is fascinated by these revelations, and would love to get more of the details of the procedures from Kravaal; but the scientist vanished ten years earlier.

The hospital administration disapproves of all the meddlesome publicity Mason is generating and they force him to take a leave of absence. Seeing an opportunity to track Kravaal down, Mason and Blair drive up north to Kravaal's last known address. This turns out to be a spooky old house on a small island.

The place had been abandoned since the disappearance of Kravaal, the county sheriff, county prosecutor, town doctor and two other townspeople.

Exploring the house, Dr. Mason and Judith discover a passage from the basement that leads to an abandoned laboratory, and beyond that, an icy underground cavern. In this cavern Dr. Kravaal is discovered. Using the techniques he's developed to revive hypothermic patients (i.e., warming them with blankets and pouring hot coffee down their throats) Kravaal eventually comes around. He's astonished to find that he has been in suspended animation for ten years. Then he reveals that in a second chamber, behind the first, there are four bodies.

In a flashback sequence, Kravaal explains that the elderly Jasper Adams had come to him in hopes that frozen therapy might cure his cancer. Adams' nephew became suspicious, and the county prosecutor brought Kravaal in. In the prosecutor's office the town doctor avers that he had previously examined Adams, and it was clear the man's cancer was terminal. Kravaal scoffs at the doctor's hidebound pronouncements, but under duress he agrees to take the men to see Jasper Adams during his treatment.

Kravaal takes them, along with the county sheriff, to the island and the underground cavern. Seeing Adams' frozen body, the doctor declares him dead, and the sheriff places him under arrest. Kravaal uses a beaker of chemicals to render his captors unconscious, but in the process places everyone -- including himself -- in a state of suspended animation.**

After relating this amazing story, Mason and Judith help Kravaal revive the others, all of whom are astonished that ten years have passed and that they have all probably been declared dead.

When Jasper Adams' loud-mouthed nephew destroys the formula used to put them in suspended animation, Kravaal kills him. He then tells the others that he must now reconstruct the formula, and he must use them all as his guinea pigs....

Comments: The Man With Nine Lives arrived in theaters only five years after The Black Room, but seeing them back to back makes the gap seem more like fifty years, or five hundred. While Karloff's career hadn't exactly hit the skids in the interim, there is no question that things had changed. No more single-name-on-the-marquee nonsense, no more "Karloff the Uncanny" hype, no more costume dramas. No more demonstrating his range. No more pretending that he's a man with a thousand faces. For the most part he now had one face, one that audiences would see again and again -- the face of the mad scientist.

At the end of the day he couldn't outrun those bushy eyebrows and that brooding demeanor: sooner or later he was going to be -- gulp!-- typecast. If I had lived in those days, and had to bet on it, I'd wager that Karloff was destined to be typecast as a brains heavy, sending his muscle-bound minions out to kidnap the girl, or rub out the hero, or steal the nuclear secrets.

I would have lost that bet, of course ( I'd be a terrific gambler if I wasn't wrong so much of the time). Nope, Karloff's fate was to be cast again and again as the demented guy with the Erlenmeyer flask in his hand.

To be typecast is not the worst thing in the world, as Peter Falk often said. But it's important to be typecast in the right sort of role, and Karloff made a good living playing what turned out to be a good fit for him.

Nevertheless, tonight's vehicle suffers from a number of fatal flaws, which I previously enumerated here. Seeing it again hasn't improved my opinion of it.

The truth is, Dr. Mason and his bony girlfriend have to carry the movie for a long time until Dr. Kravaal shows up, and it just doesn't work. At first I suspected the screenwriters were hoping that the conspicuously absent Karloff would haunt the first third of the picture the way Gene Tierney did in Laura, or Orson Welles did in The Third Man, but neither of those films had been made yet. So scratch that idea.

Scott Ashlin at 1000 Misspent Hours insists that The Man With Nine Lives is actually a significant improvement over its predecessor, The Man They Could Not Hang. Go ahead and give it a read; Ashlin's a talented writer and I can't find any flaw in his argument. Except, of course, that it's wrong.

_______________________
*Morgan Freeman's stardom came relatively late in his career, but he still wasn't catapulted to fame the way Karloff was. For many years Freeman was a bread-and-butter character actor best known as Easy Reader on the PBS series The Electric Company. After a five year run, he found it hard to be taken seriously as an actor due to his association with the show. It wasn't until he was in his 50s, when he appeared in 1987's Street Smart that he received the first real acclaim of his career. Suddenly the scripts he was being offered improved dramatically, and within two years he was an honest-to-peaches movie star.

**Oops!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Interlude: The Now Explosion

For all we know, the good people at Horror Incorporated may have been planning a knockout Halloween show for the evening of Saturday, October 31, 1970. That would have been cool. But we'll never find out.

The show vanished from the schedule for 13 weeks beginning on October 17, replaced by a high-concept syndicated program called The Now Explosion.

This show was the brainchild of producer Bob Whitney, who imagined a sort of top 40 radio station on your TV. An unseen dj would introduce the latest chart-toppers from the Rolling Stones, CCR, Edwin Starr, The Fifth Dimension, etc, accompanied by images designed to enhance the audio track.

What sort of images? Dancers wearing groovy outfits of various types were popular. Bands were sometimes recorded lip-synching their hits, and on some occasions dancers were photographed outside of the studio. You can see a 30-minute sampling of The Now Explosion's video efforts here. But I should warn you: the segment built around The Fifth Dimension's Up, Up and Away may cause migraine headaches, hypertension, suicidal thoughts or death.

Four decades on the video techniques look fairly laughable -- you could easily do better with your laptop at home today -- but in terms of raw technology this was the best 1970 could offer. But that only partially excuses The Now Explosion's shortcomings. The producers were clearly trying to find a way to mesh the images with the audio, to make the two belong to each other, but they were never able to figure out how. They had little time to experiment, and very little money.

The mammoth video tape machines, state-of-the-art Grass Valley Series 1400 production switcher and 2-inch video tape were all quite expensive, and in spite of its chintzy look The Now Explosion had a financial burn rate that doomed it from the start. The show hung on as long as it could, moving its operation from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale after its first flight of 13 episodes, and closing up shop at the conclusion of the second.

The Now Explosion's web site lauds the show for being the forerunner to MTV. But in fact, that honor belongs to Michael Nesmith, who essentially invented the modern music video for his late-70s Nickelodean show PopClips. MTV was built directly upon the foundation that PopClips had laid . Show 'em how it's done, Mike:

Perhaps the kindest thing we can say about The Now Explosion is that it didn't outstay its welcome. Horror Incorporated was back on the schedule by January 16.

So let's reconvene in 1971, at the usual place. See you there, gentle reader.