Saturday, January 22, 1972: The Black Sleep (1956) / The Brute Man (1945)

Synopsis: Dr. Gordon Angus Ramsey (Herbert Rusley) has been convicted of murder. On the eve of his hanging, he is visited by one of his old medical school professors, Sir Joel Cadman.  Ramsey swears to Cadman that he didn't commit the crime, and Cadman seems sympathetic. He gives Ramsey a vial of powder and instructs him to mix the powder with water and drink before dawn on the morning of his hanging.  This, Cadman promises, will put him in a such a state of torpor that he will not be aware of the hanging at all. He also assures Ramsey that his body won't be turned over to the medical college for dissection, as is normally done with convicts' bodies; instead, the body will be turned over to Dr. Cadman himself.

When the guards come for Ramsey the next morning they find his dead body lying in the cell.  The body is transferred to Dr. Cadman, who once back at his lab gives it an injection.  At once the body goes into convulsions; minutes later, Dr. Ramsey has come back to life.

This, Dr. Cadman tells an astonished Ramsey, is the work of an ancient drug known as the Black Sleep; it perfectly simulates death; and as long as the antidote is given within 24 hours, the patient can be revived. A grateful Ramsey agrees to assist Dr. Cadman with his brain research.

While at the Cadman estate, Ramsey witnesses young Laurie (Patricia Blair) being attacked by a wild-eyed patient, Mungo (Lon Chaney, Jr). Mungo seems deranged and is apparently carries a visceral hatred for Laurie.  Ramsey tells Cadman that Mungo reminds him of someone he once knew, Professor Monroe, who was one of his instructors in college.  Cadman tells him that Mungo is indeed Professor Monroe; moreover, Laurie is his daughter.

Dr. Ramsey assists in experimenting with the brain of a cadaver when he notices cerebral fluid running down the surface of the brain.  How can this happen on a cadaver? he asks Cadman.  It isn't a cadaver, Dr. Cadman replies.  The man they are experimenting on is alive, kept in a state of suspended animation by the Black Sleep.

When Dr Ramsey protests, Cadman tells him that this is the only way to conduct the research that will benefit all mankind.  He reminds him that Dr. Monroe will benefit when he is able to unlock the mysteries of the human brain; so will Dr. Cadman's wife, who has been in a trance-like state since a brain injury.

But little does Dr. Ramsey know that Cadman was the one who arranged for him to be tried and convicted of murder, in order to recruit him as an assistant in his ghoulish experiments....

Comments: This is the second showing of The Black Sleep on Horror Incorporated. I'm not really sure why I dislike this indie production as much as I do; maybe it's because I suspect that it isn't so much paying homage to Universal's old horror stars as it is exploiting them for its own purposes. The movie is decidedly exploitative to start with, and seeing Lugosi and Chaney muddling through their non-speaking roles is painful. Neither actor was capable of memorizing much dialogue by this point in their careers (that is to say, the end of their careers), but I suspect the real reason they don't speak is that there wasn't enough money in the budget to allow it.

  It may be that all the actors involved were happy just to pick up a paycheck under any circumstances, but at the same time it must have been humiliating, and I don't like seeing people humilated. To the movie's credit, it does offer perfectly respectable production values (though not as good as those at Hammer, which really knew how to make a penny scream) , and boasts two very good actors in key roles: Basil Rathbone as Joel Cadman, and Akim Tamaroff as the gypsy. 

The problem with this movie (as with most bad movies)  is rooted in the script. The Black Sleep is dreary, derivative, and unforgivably talky.  Joel Cadman's motivation for experimenting on innocent people -- including his own colleagues --  is silly and impractical, and even worse, it's entirely unoriginal.   Cadman is willing to engage in any sort of unethical medical practices needed in order to get what he wants, and his tactics are so extreme that they become risible.   His throwaway motivation has more in common with the ramshackle productions of Monogram and PRC than the horror films of Universal, a studio that could at least provide character motivations that held up for the length of a feature film. 

The aforementioned Basil Rathbone and Akim Tamiroff do very well in their roles, but the other actors in the ensemble are surprisingly bland and forgettable. Herbert Rusley and Patricia Blair turn in workmanlike performances but they serve as a reminder of how brilliant Hammer was at casting. Hammer always had a keen eye for talent and could reel in young up-and-comers and build them over time into a surprisingly solid repertory company.  And they knew too how to get the most from established talents as well, something that seems to have eluded the producers of The Black Sleep.




 The Brute Man

Synopsis: The city is being terrorized by a spine-snapping brute called The Creeper (Rondo Hatton), a grotesque character who prowls the streets at night and seemingly kills at random. The police are under enormous pressure to capture him, but so far they don't have a name, or even a clear description.

One night the killer strikes again, and this time his victims are a professor at Hampton college and a woman named Joan Bemis, whom the Creeper seems to know.

The police manage to corner their suspect in an apartment house; in order to escape, the Creeper enters the apartment of a young woman named Helen (Jane Adams). Because Helen is blind, she isn't repelled by his appearance. He asks for her help, and she agrees, saying that she has a gift of sensing a person's true nature.  When the police knock on her door, she tells them that she hasn't seen anyone suspicious in the area.

Helen knows only that she's met a man who is in some sort of trouble, and she is certain that he is innocent of whatever he's been accused of.  For his part the Creeper is glad to know someone who doesn't scream and run away when he enters the room, and a rather unlikely friendship ensues.

Soon enough the Creeper has murdered a delivery boy who brought groceries to the waterfront storage shed he's been living in.  Here the police discover an old newspaper clipping of three college chums, circa 1930: Clifford Scott, Virginia Rogers and Hal Moffat. 

When the police look for Clifford Scott and Virginia Rogers they discover the two are now married; and that the third person in the photo, Hal Moffat, was Clifford's college roommate as well as a rival for Virginia's affections. The late Joan Bemis was also a close friend of the trio. A star athlete, Hal's face was hideously disfigured in a lab accident.  The accident seems also to have affected his "glands and nerves", not to mention his mind; because all these years later Hal has decided to get revenge on all those who spurned him in college.

Meanwhile, learning that Helen needs $3,000 to pay for an operation to cure her blindness, Hal decides to get her the money -- even though he knows that she will be repelled by him if she's able to see him.  Nevertheless, he goes to Clifford and Virginia and demands money.  Clifford gives him a box of expensive jewelry, but manages to put a couple of .38 slugs into him before he's murdered himself.

Wounded, Hal delivers the jewelry to Helen, determined that she go ahead with the operation. But when the police find her and tell her who she's befriended, she agrees to help them find their quarry. Angered at her public betrayal, he decides that Helen too must die....

Comments: The Brute Man marked a sad end to Universal's lengthy dominance of the horror genre.  The studio hadn't been eclipsed by a rival  (rival studios in Hollywood never did more than dabble in the genre anyway, and the embryonic Hammer wasn't doing horror films yet); rather, Universal's  increasingly cheap and crass products seemed exhausted, and more importantly didn't yield the financial returns they once did. As a result the studio made a conscious decision to hang it up.  The Brute Man  suffered the ignominy of being sold off to PRC shortly after Universal's merger with International Pictures.  William Goetz, the newly-minted head of production at the newly-minted Universal - International had resolved to clean up the studio's act and get it to behave like a respectable outfit. That meant the trips to the boneyard were, for the time being, over and done with.

It's easy to see why UI decided to sell off the property.  The Brute Man would have been an embarrassment to any major studio's release schedule.  It suffers from a general seediness typical of the poverty-row cheapies, and Rondo Hatton, whose Creeper character had lurked in the background of three previous Universal outings, was now pushed into the forefront of the picture.  Hatton was the least-talented actor to appear on a Universal one-sheet since Acquanetta, and the script is particularly unsavory stuff.  Hal Moffat kills with little provocation and even less remorse; yet we, like Helen, are supposed to feel sorry for him, and imagine that he is in some sense a good but misunderstood man. But even with the Creeper's improbable origin story, he isn't even close to the tragic monster that Frankenstein and the Wolf Man were.

Ben Pivar produced this opus, as he had the previous Creeper vehicle House of Horrors, the Inner Sanctum series of programmers starring Lon Chaney, Jr. and the mummy films of the 1940s.  His indifference to quality suited the film-factory mentality of the times, but he might have been a bit too indifferent with The Brute Man.  Pivar's busy career was pretty much at an end. He would only produce a few more movies over the next decade, collaborating once again with the workmanlike Jean Yarborough on a Bulldog Drummond programmer and a thriller called The Creeper (1948). But the titular Creeper here bore no resemblance to Rondo Hatton.
 

Interlude: Piecing It All Together

Faithful reader Bill (who watched Horror Incorporated from Apple Valley back in the day, and currently resides in Elk River) wrote to let us know that he used to record the show on his cassette recorder as a kid.  And as if this weren't awesome enough:

I found a few of the tapes in my garage. I see you are at 1972 currently on your blog and these may be from that year. I would have been 9! As you can see, there are tapes from Ghost of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, King Kong, Deadly Mantis, Giant Claw and Dracula. Now I need to locate my cassette player!

Isn't Bill great? He promises to forward whatever audio he recovers from the tapes.  This is particularly exciting for me, because with enough uninterrupted audio, we can piece together the original clock, and locate some of the ads that were broadcast with the show.  With luck, we'll be able to reconstruct an entire episode of the show from beginning to end. I promise to post that on the site if and when that happens.

In the meantime, if you have any material from the show -- audio, video, printed material -- send it my way and I'll post it here.

Saturday, January 15, 1972: Night Creatures (1962) / Bury Me Dead (1947)

Synopsis: In 18th-century Dover, the British navy is trying to shut down a  smuggling ring that is illegally importing and distributing French wine. Captain Collier (Patrick Allen) believes the ring is centered in the small seaside village of Dymchurch.  His search of the town turns up nothing, but he begins to suspect that the local vicar, the Reverend Doctor Blyss (Peter Cushing), knows more than he is letting on. One reason he suspects this is that despite Blyss' assurances of cooperation, every villager claims they have no room to accomodate Collier's men. Furthermore, Blyss had arranged for a Christian burial for the notorious pirate Captain Clegg, who died while imprisoned in Dymchurch; Collier doesn't believe Clegg deserved any sort of burial, but Blyss says that Clegg had confessed his sins on his deathbed and therefore was awarded a proper burial.

One of Collier's men had once been a member of Clegg's pirate crew. He had attacked Clegg's wife and paid a terrible penalty: his tongue was cut out, his ears were cut off, and he was tied to a tree on an island, left to die.  This crewman is now something of a dogsbody / mascot to Collier's crew, but he has a tendency to get drunk and attack people.  Upon seeing Dr. Blyss, he leaps upon him and tries to kill him.

 Stories abound in the village of the "Marsh Phantoms" -- ghostly horses and spectral riders who look like scarecrows, who sometimes kill people who wander too far into the marshes.  One of Collier's men is killed, allegedly by the phantoms. Collier, who doesn't believe such nonsense, is determined to find out just who or what is lurking out in the marshes.

Meanwhile, it becomes clear that the smuggling ring is indeed centered in the town of Dymchurch, and that virtually everyone in town is part of it; Dr. Blyss is the mastermind behind the entire organization, the local coffin-maker keeps the liquor hidden and arranges transport, and the squires' son Harry Cobtree (Oliver Reed) is Blyss' right hand man.  Cobtree is engaged to young Imogene (Yvonne Romain) who doesn't know that she is the daughter of the late Captain Clegg. We also learn that Blyss, wearing scarecrow garb, is the leader of the Marsh Phantoms. But when one of Blyss' men is captured by Collier he is forced, under threat of torture, to take Collier and his men to the secret hideout hidden in the marshes....

Comments: Hammer is best remembered, obviously, for its horror output but it actually toiled in a number of genres over the years and produced several ripping pirate yarns. Night Creatures was one of them.  Its British title was Captain Clegg, and it was based on the popular Russell Thorndike swashbuckler Dr. Syn: A Tale of Romney Marsh. 

So why was it called Night Creatures in the U.S.?  This was the title chosen for Hammer's planned adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend.  When that film was scrapped, American theaters (having already been promised a Hammer film with that title) got this one instead.

Being an American, I can't really talk about this movie without bringing up The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, which premiered (in serial format) on the anthology program Disney's Wonderful World of Color in 1964.  That adaptation of Thorndike's novel starred Patrick McGoohan as Dr. Syn, pious vicar by day and leader of a band of masked outlaws by night.  I remember being enthralled with the serial as a kid (Disney brought it back to TV regularly) though as an adult I was surprised to find I had misunderstood the entire story.  No doubt due to the numerous tricorn hats in evidence, I'd assumed that Dr. Syn led a band of rebels against the British in the American Colonies.  In fact, while the British navy is the antagonist, all the action takes place on the southern coast of England.

The whole production has that sumptuous look that Hammer  pulled off so effortlessly in spite of modest budgets, and we have some familiar actors from the Hammer repertory company on hand.  Peter Cushing, Patrick Allen, Michael Ripper, Yvonne Romain and Oliver Reed were all veterans of the studio's horror yarns and they do quite well here, and Cushing in particular is splendid as the Scarlet Pimpernel-esque character, peering out from behind his spectacles as the fussy, querulous vicar, then pivoting as the film progresses to Concerned Father, Reformed Crook, Steely-Eyed Action Man and even Fantastically Persuasive Extemporaneous Speaker. It's great fun. 



Bury Me Dead

Synopsis: A funeral is being held for Barbara Carlin (June Lockhart), a woman killed in a stable fire on her family's estate.  But almost as soon as this fact is established, we learn that Barbara isn't dead at all.  She attends the funeral hiding behind a black veil, musing that her husband Rod Carlin (Mark Daniels) doesn't seem very broken up about her death.  When the graveside service has concluded, Barbara approaches the family attorney, Michael Dunn (Hugh Beaumont) and reveals to him that she's still alive.  She tells him that she believes someone started the fire in an attempt to kill her, but got the wrong person; the body recovered from the horse barn was burned beyond recognition and identified only by a diamond necklace that belonged to Barbara.

Barbara is particularly troubled  by the question of who was actually killed in the fire, because she thinks it might be her younger sister Rusty (Cathy O'Donnell).  Rusty has a history of mental illness and often disappears for extended lengths of time. But she finds Rusty safe and sound, though still embittered that she was cut out of her father's will because she was adopted. With Rusty eliminated as a possible victim, she goes to confront Rod, who claims to be delighted that Barbara is still alive -- even though he has been carrying on with goodtime girl Helen Lawrence (Sonia Darren), who had previously told Rod that she'd like to be the next Mrs. Carling. 

Barbara had had a dalliance of her own with dim-witted palooka George (Greg McClure), who'd previously been seen around with Helen. Rusty still harbors a grudge against Barbara for stealing the big lug away from her, but it might be that Barbara was trying to save Rusty from a bad situation. 

Barbara finds there are plenty of people who might have wanted her dead. But not only does she not know who committed the murder, she still doesn't know who the victim was....

Comments: Bury Me Dead is a a remarkably threadbare effort from PRC, a studio that routinely produced threadbare efforts.  This one looks worse than a Monogram programmer, and that's saying something.  This film is so dreadfully chintzy that when the Carling family butler opens the front door it nearly bumps into the grand staircase. Barbara's funeral scene is unintentionally humorous because the number of mourners was apparently limited to the principal members of the cast; there was clearly no money in the budget for extras. This greatly undercuts Barbara's impish desire to see her own funeral.  Considering the turnout, it probably would have been better for her to have stayed home.

But of course Barbara has to attend her own funeral, because this is the man-bites-dog gimmick upon which the whole movie is based. It is, quite frankly, all downhill from here, because once the gimmick is deployed, a story has to be built around it, and one plot contrivance is piled atop another.

Bury Me Dead is usually categorized as a noir, but it clearly isn't one; apart from the post-war release date and the fact that it's a story about murder it really doesn't have any trappings of the genre.  It also has an odd, uneven sense of humor, at times making us think it's veering toward farce.  But it keeps moving grimly back to the task at hand, with pointless flashback scenes padding out its (68 minute) running time.

This movie probably wouldn't have been released on DVD at all were it not for the fact that its two leads, June Lockhart  and Hugh Beaumont, are both remembered for their television careers.  Both do just fine here -- Lockhart was 22 years old when she made this picture and she carries the movie as gracefully as the script will allow.  Beaumont is quite convincing as the sober attorney and family friend. The rest of the cast is pretty solid: Cathy O'Donnell is actually quite good as the tormented sister Rusty, and I found myself liking Sonia Darrin's performance as Helen Lawrence as well.  

This release came on a two-movie disc from VCI Entertainment (the other film being The Chase). It's an interesting disc because rather than a bare-bones release, this one comes with a commentary track for each film by Jay Fenton (credited as a "film restoration consultant"), as well as bios, image galleries and even a Superman cartoon! A nice job all around, and clearly a labor of love.

Saturday, January 8, 1972: Cat People (1942)

 

Synopsis: Nautical engineer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) meets a young Serbian woman, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) one afternoon at the zoo.  Irena is sketching a black panther as it paces in its cage.  The two hit it off in a meet-cute sort of way, and Irena allows Oliver to walk her home.

Irena, it turns out, lives alone in a large and tastefully-furnished apartment nearby, and seems grateful for Oliver's company.  She tells him that she hasn't made any friends since moving to the city.  Oliver ends up staying well past dark, and as he leaves he asks to see her again the next day and she agrees.

Feeling she needs a companion, Oliver buys a kitten for her at a local pet shop, but when he gives it to her the kitten spits and backs away fearfully.  Irena tells him that cats don't like her.  He trades the kitten in for  a bird, and this seems to please her, but when she reaches inside the cage the bird panics and quickly dies.

Before long, Oliver and Irena are engaged. On their wedding day they have dinner at a local restaurant with Oliver's co-workers, including Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) who acts like one of the guys in spite of being young, pretty and apparently available. The general mood is quite jovial, but a strange woman approaches their table and speaks to Irena briefly  in Serbian, calling her "sister".  Irena is shaken by this encounter.

Returning home that night, she confides to Oliver that she isn't able to consummate the marriage right away -- she speaks vaguely of being frightened by an old family curse and asks him to be patient.  Oliver, who has  "nice guy" written all over him, agrees.

But weeks pass and nothing changes.  Oliver gently suggests that Irena see a psychiatrist, and she agrees; but after only one session with the oily Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway) she stops going. When Oliver finds out that she's abandoned her sessions he is angry.  Irena is angry in turn at all the time Oliver is spending with Alice, and angrier still when she learns that Oliver has revealed to her Irena's reluctance to consummate the marriage.  What she doesn't know is that Alice has also confessed to Oliver that she has always carried a torch for him.

Irena reluctantly goes back to see Dr. Judd, and the nature of her affliction becomes clear: she believes that if she becomes sexually aroused, she will turn into a deadly panther. Judd decides he's going to dissuade the beautiful Irena of this notion by seducing her, not knowing that the curse is real....

Comments: Cat People was producer Val Lewton's first horror film, and it was a huge hit when it was released in 1942. It spawned any number of imitators, some of which we've already seen on Horror Incorporated.

The Lewton style emphasized spooky atmospherics over out-and-out shocks.  There were no wolf men jumping out of the trees, no Frankenstein's monster lumbering around in graveyards. Instead, the menace is always creeping somewhere off-screen, just as psychological and spiritual as it is physical.  It is fascinating to watch how much suspense Lewton wrings out of scenes that end in nothing much happening at all: Alice scared and vulnerable in the swimming pool, first panicking and then feeling foolish when everyone rushes in to her rescue; and the scene in which she is stalked by Irena on along a nighttime street, finding refuge on a city bus.

The film is quite unusual for its time, with a very heavy dose of pop psychology overlaying it. Early in the film Irena's malady is realistically depicted as a delusion built up around her own sexual anxieties,  and the relationship between Irena and Oliver is also quite convincing; in spite of Oliver's best intentions his patience with Irena wears thin and he begins to pivot toward Alice; as a result, fearing she will lose him, Irena returns to Dr. Judd against her better judgment, setting the stage for the mayhem that follows.

While the Freudian tropes seem a little obvious by today's standards,  there is still a certain elegance in the panther at the zoo being the symbol of Irena's repressed libido.  It paces ceaselessly in its cage, while Irena spends much of the day sketching it.  From her apartment she can hear the panther's screams and growls.  At night she has dreams of stealing the key from the zookeeper and releasing the animal from its cage.  All the Victorian fears of female sexuality are on display here, and it's handled quite deftly.  These themes are helped rather than hindered by the censorship rules at the time, because Irena's malady operates largely on the subconscious level and Lewton is an unusually subtle and intelligent filmmaker.  By contrast, the 1982 remake was loud and lurid and about as subtle as you'd expect a Paul Schrader film to be. The nudity and blunt dialogue ultimately wound up sinking that picture, though it does have its defenders -- mostly people who have never seen the original.

Simone Simon projects both a playful sexiness and a touching vulnerability as Irena, and Jane Randolph is quite winning as Alice; this is a rare movie of the time where the female leads get a little more to do than look pretty and get rescued.  Kent Smith is quite convincing as the decent but somewhat unimaginative Oliver.  But the most interesting performance might be from Tom Conway as the unprincipled Dr. Judd.  Conway starred as debonair crime-fighter The Falcon in a series of programmers from RKO, taking over the role from his real-life brother George Sanders (the two were depicted on-screen as brothers as well, appearing together in The Falcon's Brother (1942)). Conway reprised his role of Dr. Louis Judd  -- oddly without explanation -- in a later Lewton film, The 7th Victim (1943).

Saturday, January 1, 1972: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) / The Island Monster (1954)

Synopsis: Called home early from a medical conference, small-town physician Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) meets his nurse Sally Withers (Jean Willes) at the Santa Mira train station.  Sally tells him that there are an unusual number of patients waiting at his office.  All of them urgently insist on seeing Bennell personally, and none of them want to see the doctors who have agreed to take Miles' patients in his absence.

As Miles and Sally drive into town they narrowly avoid hitting a local boy named Jimmy Grimaldi, who charges into the road, fleeing from his own mother.  Jimmy is distraught and takes off into the woods. His mother says the boy doesn't want to go to school.  Miles notices that the Grimaldi family vegetable stand, usually thriving at this time of the year, is shuttered.

At the office, Miles discovers that all of the patients who had been so insistent on seeing him have cancelled their appointments.  But one person does come to visit him: Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), a high school sweetheart who, like Miles, has been recently divorced.  Becky asks Miles to talk to her cousin Wilma Lentz (Virginia Christine), who seems to be suffering under the strange delusion that her uncle Ira is an imposter.

Later that afternoon, Jimmy Grimaldi's grandmother brings the boy to Miles' office.  Jimmy is suffering from a similar delusion; he believes that his own mother is not his mother, and he becomes hysterical whenever anyone suggests she be called.  Miles tells the grandmother to keep the boy at her house for a few days, and prescribes sedatives to keep him calm.

Bothered by the similarity between the two stories, Miles decides to go to Wilma's house directly and talk to her.  Wilma seems perfectly rational -- except for the fact that she is certain Ira isn't her uncle.  Miles tries to reason with her, pointing out that even if Ira were an imposter, there would be countless differences that friends and family could easily spot.  She concedes that the man seems like Ira in every way, and even knows things that only Ira could know.  Nevertheless, she says, this person is an imposter who possesses no emotions - -only, she says, the pretense of emotions.

Puzzled, Miles keeps a dinner date with Becky.  Arriving at the restaurant the two bump into Miles' friend Danny Kaufman, a psychiatrist.  Miles mentions that he has two patients he'd like to refer, and Kaufman immediately guesses that they are people who believe close relatives are imposters.  Over the last two weeks, Kaufman says, there has been an epidemic of such cases in Santa Mira.

Minutes later Miles' answering service tracks him down with an urgent call from Miles' friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan), asking Miles to come over right away.  Miles and Becky arrive to find there is a body lying on the Belicec's pool table; but it doesn't appear to be a dead body.  Rather, it seems to be a body that was never alive.  The face is blank and featureless, and there are no fingerprints.  Miles speculates that if he were to perform an autopsy all the internal organs would be in perfect order, as if they had never been used.

Jack's wife Teddy (Carolyn Jones) asks Miles to estimate the body's height and weight.  Miles says that the man on the table is perhaps 5 foot 9, and about 140 pounds.  Teddy replies fearfully that Jack too is 5 foot 9 and 140 pounds.

Miles tells the Belicecs to keep an eye on the body, with instructions to call the police if nothing happens by morning; if however the body changes in any way they should call him.  Miles takes Becky home, where she is surprised to find that her father has been working unusually late down in the cellar.  Meanwhile, at the Belicic house, Jack falls asleep while sitting at the bar -- just as the body on the table opens its eyes....

Comments: This was the first of four screen adaptations of Jack Finney's 1954 novel The Body Snatchers.  It is by far the best, largely because of its willingness to follow Finney's original novel, or at least the first two-thirds of it.  Most effective is the edgy paranoia that results from having all the advantages of small-town life turned against you. The comforting network of people who know you and look out for you unexpectedly becomes a sinister army of strangers who know all about you and where to find you. Everything that Miles finds secure is suddenly cut out from under him, and it's a disorienting change for us as well as for him. On that level the movie works just as well today as it did the day it was first released.

All three later versions pulled the story out of its small-town backdrop. Philip Kaufman's 1978 version set the story in San Francisco, which was appropriate to the more topical themes of the film -- personal alienation from society and cultural paranoia surrounding institutions (the police, the medical profession, the government, corporate America, etc)  that had seemed, until recently, to be solid and reassuring.The film's bleak ending was appropriate for its era as well.

Abel Ferrara's 1993 version was set on an Army base, and the spread of the pod-like duplicates mirrored that of an infectious disease. The protagonist was a young girl who couldn't convince anyone that what she suspected was true.  The 2006 version took place in Washington D.C., again because a small-town setting was apparently just too -- well, small.   That film tried to build a more conventional narrative, with the wily humans finding a way to fight back against the invaders.  But the film as a whole seemed oddly labored, lacking the narrative momentum that seemed so effortless in the Siegel production.

The ending of Finney's novel was happy enough but quite contrived, and none of the film versions have attempted to use it. A happy ending of sorts was grafted onto the Siegel version by use of a framing device.  The frame starts with psychiatrist Dr. Hill (Whit Bissell) visiting Bennell in the psych ward, where he has been hospitalized.  Through the framing narrative Bennell is able to tell his story of the last few days in Santa Mira.  At the end of the story Hill reluctantly concludes that Bennell must be delusional, but then he happens to hear a report about a truck accident that spilled "great big seed pods" on the roadway.  Dr Hill, realizing that Bennell's story is true, quickly alerts the Army and the state government of the danger.  The institutions that had suddenly seemed unreliable are now restored to their proper place.

While this tinkering with the original structure of the movie has been criticized over the years, I think the framing device actually works quite well.  Siegel's original ending was clever, with Bennell frantically yelling his story to cars passing him by on the highway, as the pod people note with satisfaction that Bennell will be pegged as a lunatic and no one will ever believe him.  But it is simply too bleak an ending for the kind of story that had just been told. The framing device gives the viewer hope, but in a sneaky way. We may well conclude -- as Miles seems to --  that Hill's quick action has saved the day.  But we don't know for sure.




The Island Monster

Synopsis: Italian police detective Mario Andreani (Renato Vicario) is assigned to an interdiction effort on the island of Ischia, a fashionable tourist spot identified by the police as a hub of drug trafficking. Andreani's wife Giulia (Jole Fierro) is the jealous type, and worries that the island's surplus of wealthy and attractive women will lead her husband astray.

Despite her misgivings, Mario seems quite devoted to his wife and his young daughter Fiorella. Even so, the island's police chief tells Mario that the most promising informant on the island is the beautiful lounge singer Gloria (Franca Marzi), and that since Andreani is such a handsome galoot, he should have an easy time seducing her and gaining her confidence.

Andreani's task force carries out a number of successful raids against the local drug cartel. The cartel's head,  Don Gaetano (Boris Karloff) decides that he's been inconvenienced long enough.  Using his cover as a wealthy philanthropist who runs a free hospital for sick children, he befriends Andreani and his wife, learning their habits as well as their weaknesses.  One night, while Andreani is out on a raid, Giulia receives an anonymous phone call.  Her husband, the caller says, is at a local night club with another woman.  Alarmed,  Giulia goes to the nightclub, leaving her daughter asleep in bed.

The moment she leaves the house, Don Gaetano enters and kidnaps the child.  Giulia, finding no sign of her husband at the nightclub, returns home and is stunned to discover that Fiorella is missing.

Soon a representative from the cartel calls, demanding that Andreani resign from the task force.  If he doesn't comply, his daughter will be killed.  As Andreani struggles to do the right thing, Gaetano stays close to the family, offering them his friendship and his counsel....

Comments: The title of this Italian production fooled me completely: I figured we'd have a tropical island, a tentacled monster living in a swamp, and a glowering Karloff plotting to take over the world.  Instead, we have a  Italian crime melodrama notable only for its threadbare production values. The general cheapness of the movie is underlined by the worst English dub of a foreign film I've ever seen. Your average karate movie is a masterpiece of dubbing compared to what we have here.

The titular monster is Don Gaetano, presumably because he not only deals drugs, but kidnaps children and threatens to kill them -- though it should be noted that Fiorella isn't presented as being in any particular danger.  A real monster would have no compunction about harming the child, or even cutting pieces off her and mailing them to her parents, just to get their attention and persuade them to see things his way.

But the kidnapping plot doesn't make a lot of sense in the first place. It seems unlikely that Mario is such a critical piece of manpower that he couldn't be replaced (perhaps it's stated or implied in the Italian-language version that Mario is the only cop who Gaetano can't buy, but there's no evidence of that here). Forcing a detective to step down by threatening his family is possible, but only if the police brass is so corrupt it will look the other way. Again, there's no evidence of that in this film.  From what we can see, the Italian police is made up of loyal, honest do-gooders who doggedly stamp out criminal activity wherever it occurs. And in those circumstances, kidnapping a policeman's daughter would get you all the wrong kinds of attention from the authorities.

Dubbed movies often sport peculiar dialogue, and I often wonder whether we should blame clumsy translators or mangled line-readings by the voice talent.  Nevertheless, in The Island Monster we're presented with dialogue so eccentric it sounds as though it were written by an alien who had only been observing human behavior for a few months.  Here, for example, is a scene in Gloria's nightclub. She has just finished her song and heads over to the bar to flirt with Mario:

GLORIA

Don't you like our floor show?

MARIO

For right now, no.

GLORIA

That means you did like my song.

MARIO

Yes, you sing very well.

GLORIA

I must return your compliment. You're quite a guy.

MARIO

I'm about to blush.

GLORIA

I don't think that you're the type.

(A WAITER approaches)

WAITER

Gloria, a customer wants to see you.

GLORIA

In just a moment.

(she hands Mario her drink)
You might just as well take this.  A present until we meet again somewhere.

 The only actor who is well-cast is Karloff himself, who was playing criminals long before he was playing monsters, and he can switch between avuncular grandpa and steely-eyed mob boss in the wink of an eye.  Renato Vicario seems to be trying to channel David Niven, to judge by his curious mustache.  I was similarly vexed by Franca Marzi's clown-like eyebrows.  I can't say the thing about young Fiorella's performance, since her voice sounded as though it were dubbed by a 50-year-old cleaning lady.

Saturday, December 25, 1971: The Lady and the Monster (1944) / Night of Terror (1933)

Synopsis: Dr. Patrick Cory (Richard Arlen) is a scientist working for Professor Franz Mueller (Erich Von Stroheim) at Mueller's residence / laboratory, a fortress-like place called The Castle.  The two are doing experiments on keeping brain tissue alive separate from the body.  So far they have only worked with animal test subjects, and while the results have been encouraging things are progressing a little slowly for Dr. Mueller.  Like many scientists in these sort of movies, he's obsessed with vindicating his line of research, and he isn't above some ethical monkeyshines to get things moving. More than anything, he wants to test his procedure on a human brain, though the chances of his getting an opportunity to do so seem remote.

Cory and Mueller's assistant Janice Farrell (Vera Ralston)  have fallen in love, but unbeknownst to them, Mueller has a yen for Janice himself.  Janice and Cory talk of leaving the Castle and running off together, but Mueller excels at manipulating others, and he manages to keep them both on hand and under his control.

One evening a private plane crashes nearby and Mueller transports a critically injured man back to the Castle.  He calls Cory back from his date in town with Janice and bullies both of them into assisting him.

The patient dies, and Mueller sees his chance.  He removes the man's brain and puts it in a solution of brine; soon, he and Cory are able to verify that the brain is still alive independent of its body.

Mueller and Cory learn that the man who died in the crash was a powerful industrialist named W. H. Donovan. When the coroner comes to the house Mueller tells him that Donovan had suffered a severe head injury and that he and Cory had operated in hopes of saving his life.  However, the absence of a brain in the man's head is difficult to conceal and even more difficult to explain, and Mueller employs a little sleight-of-hand to get the death certificate signed and the body taken away.

As the brain marinates Mueller predicts that this is the dawn of a new age; human minds might be able to be indefinitely preserved after death.  The knowledge and wisdom of the ages might be able to be stored and accessed at will.  Meanwhile, Cory begins to have strange dreams; he can hear a voice repeating the name "W. H. Donovan" over and over again.  Mueller speculates that the brain, freed from the body and floating in an electrolytic solution, has become more powerful and has made a psychic connection to Cory.

Janice becomes increasingly alarmed by Cory's behavior.  With greater and greater frequency, Cory falls into a fugue-like state, acting like another person entirely.  Soon she and Dr. Mueller realize that Cory's body is being possessed by Donovan's brain, that he is being forced to act according to Donovan's will.  Cory begins traveling into town, withdrawing large sums of cash from various banks under dummy accounts and spending large amounts of money in efforts to get a convicted murderer sprung from prison.  But what is Donovan's connection with the man?  And -- what will Donovan's brain do in order to keep Cory's body under its control?

Comments: Curt Siodmak scripted a number of successful horror films in the 1940s, most of which we have already seen on Horror Incorporated.  But he's probably best known as the author of the bestselling novel Donovan's Brain,  first published in 1942.  It was adapted for the screen several times, most successfully in a 1953 version starring Lew Ayres (interestingly, the radio anthology series Suspense also did a two-part adaptation in 1943, with Orson Welles playing Cory).  The Lady and the Monster was the first attempt to bring it to the screen, and while it isn't as good as the better-known Lew Ayres version, it's not bad.

In this version Cory works for an older and somewhat creepier scientist named Mueller, who is played with teutonic sternness by Eric von Stroheim.  There's no clear reason why this character was added.  Perhaps it was felt a romantic triangle would provide a human element to the wacky brain-in-a-glass-jar plotline, or that Cory couldn't make the questionable ethical decisions he made in the book and still retain the sympathy of the audience; or maybe the screenwriter reasoned that a disembodied brain bobbing around in an aquarium didn't make the best antagonist.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to this approach.  On the minus side it dilutes the story somewhat, and makes Cory, who is supposed to be the protagonist, a less active agent than he is in the novel and in the 1953 version.

On the plus side we get to see Eric von Stroheim in front of the camera, and he's always great to watch.  He glowers and murmurs ominously, and adds a good deal of menace to the goings-on at the Castle.  But in the end he isn't really necessary.  W.H. Donovan -- at least as he's refracted through the brain and into Cory's body -- is antagonist enough, and there is a real sense of mystery and menace surrounding it, enough to set this opus apart from the other poverty-row efforts we've seen recently, all of which seem to involve scientists trying to extend life beyond its normal limits.

The Lady and the Monster is often singled out for ridicule thanks to the presence of Vera Ralston (nee Hruba), a European figure skater whom Republic Pictures head Herbert J. Yates tried to develop as a movie star. The fact that Yates and Ralston were romantically linked shouldn't come as a surprise, especially when you see Ralston act.  Like Marion Davies before her, Ralston's conspicuous lack of talent made her something of a punchline in the movie industry; but in fact, while Ralston isn't great, she isn't terrible either.  She does not embody an Acquanetta-level amateurishness, but is in fact on a par with a moderately talented but forgettable college thespian. She does all right as Cory's worried girlfriend, but seems somewhat out of her depth as a lab assistant, flailing around in a flustered sort of way every time Dr. Mueller shouts for a gigli saw -- which he does quite a lot.


Night of Terror


Synopsis: A knife-wielding serial killer known as the Maniac is terrorizing the countryside, and the police, led by the clueless Detective Bailey (Matt McHugh) are unable to catch him. Each of the Maniac’s victims is found with a newspaper headline pinned to the body (as befits a Columbia picture, these headlines are in 42-point font, saying things like MANIAC STILL ON THE LOOSE!).

Meanwhile, at the Rinehart mansion, Dr. Arthur Hornsby (George Meeker) is working late on a chemical formula that will place a person in a state of suspended animation. To demonstrate that his formula works, he plans to inject himself with the serum, then have his body placed in a coffin, buried in the backyard, then dug up eight hours later and revived. A number of skeptical scientists will be on hand to witness the experiment. 

 Hornsby’s experiment is worrisome to his fiancée, Mary Rinehart (Sally Blane), and she is frustrated that he pays more attention to his experiments than to her. In spite of the fact that she and Hornsby are engaged, Mary is being aggressively courted by brash newspaper reporter Tom Hartley (Wallace Ford) , who is covering the Maniac killings. While Mary chides Hartley about his advances, it’s clear that she is flattered by the attention – attention she isn’t getting from Hornsby.

The servants at the Rinehart estate are as quirky as its other inhabitants. Ethnically indeterminate butler Degar (Bela Lugosi) seems to be carefully guarding a secret or two, and mystical maid Sika (Mary Frey) believes that various omens from the spirit world are pointing toward ghastly fates for all in the Rinehart household. 

When family patriarch Richard dies under mysterious circumstances, the will reveals that everyone in the household -- including the servants -- shares in the inheritance. What's more, should any of the inheritors die, that portion of the estate will devolve to the others. So when members of the Rinehart family start to turn up dead, the question is obvious: are they victims of the Maniac, or each other?


Comments: Night of Terror has proven to be something of a second-feature staple on Horror Incorporated.  I don't imagine it gets seen much at all these days; like a lot of titles from this era, it has pretty much dropped from obscurity into oblivion since broadcast TV quit showing old movies.  But I see it on a fairly regular basis.  To be honest,  it's not a film that benefits from repeat viewing. 

One of the most puzzling things about this film - indeed, a number of horror films of the 1930s and 1940s -- was the use the studio made of Bela Lugosi.  If you look at the poster above, you see Lugosi's face prominently displayed, and his name (BELA "Dracula" LUGOSI) is given top billing.  Yet Lugosi is not only in a supporting role, but a fairly small one.  As we've noted in the past, he functions as a red herring.  

His prominence in the promotional materials seems tacit admission of his status as a bankable star; but the uses to which he's put in movies like this indicate that there was a lack of trust in his ability to actually carry a movie. This is the sort of paradox that provides ammunition to both the pro-Lugosi and anti-Lugosi film writers.  And they aren't shy about sniping away at each other.

Universal Horrors, the influential Brunas and Weaver overview of Universal's golden age, never missed an opportunity to skewer Lugosi as a dreadful ham unfettered by any discernible talent. But the authors were at a loss to explain why Lugosi's infrequent starring roles (e.g., Return of the Vampire) kept making money.

I've always been fairly agnostic on the question.  Lugosi was unquestionably a ham, but the early sound era favored acting styles that we think of today as overly broad. While he was a fairly limited actor who made poor career decisions, he did have a certain appeal and the studios knew it. Whatever doubts they harbored about Lugosi were in spite of, rather than because of, his performance at the box office.

The truth is, while dollar signs are the big persuader in Hollywood, they don't always overcome personal opinion.  That Lugosi's star turns made money no doubt carried some weight, but his films evidently didn't make enough money to burn through the prejudices that were already in place.

William Goldman once observed that in Hollywood, "nobody knows anything". But of course the decision-makers in Hollywood think they know everything. The execs were all certain that Lugosi's films couldn't make money.  When they didn't, that was taken as evidence that they were right.  And when they did -- well, they just decided not to spend much time thinking about that.