Friday, June 16, 1972: The Woman Who Came Back (1945)

Synopsis: Lorna Webster (Nancy Kelly)  is returning to her New England hometown of Eben Rock, Massachusetts after spending several years away.  The bus she is riding on stops along the road to pick up an elderly woman (Elspeth Dudgeon) who has flagged the driver down.  It is late at night and the driver is reluctant to take the woman on, and refuses outright to take the woman's dog.  The old woman agrees to leave the dog on the side of the road and boards the bus.

The woman sits by Lorna, and seems to know her by name.  She says that Lorna is the descendent of Elijah Webster, a judge who 300 years ago sentenced a number of witches in the town to be burned at the stake.  She tells Lorna that she herself is Jezebel Trister, a 300 year old witch who had been condemned by Judge Webster, which greatly startles and alarms Lorna. Almost immediately, the bus plunges off a steep embankment into a lake.

In  the town, Lorna stumbles into the local tavern, and it's clear that no one in the place had expected her to arrive, including her ex-fiancee, local doctor Matt Adams (John Loder).  When Lorna tells of the bus accident, the authorities go out to the lake.  They pull a number of bodies from the water; but Lorna is the only survivor.  Moreover, none of the bodies matches the description of the old woman Lorna describes.

As the local physician, Matt nurses Lorna back to health.  He is pleased to see her, even though she had stood him up at the altar years before.  The other townspeople are not so forgiving, particularly Ruth Gibson (Ruth Ford).  Ruth resents what she had done to Matt, and remembers that bad luck always seemed to follow Lorna, that everything she touched seemed cursed.  The bus accident is only the latest proof of this: how is it possible that she walked away without a scratch, when everyone else was killed?  

Matt gives Lorna a black shawl that she'd had with her after the accident.  Lorna is alarmed -- she knows it isn't hers, but Jezebel Trister's.  Matt says that can't be possible.  Lorna, he says, must have imagined meeting Jezebel Trister, since no old woman was found among the bus accident casualties.  Uncertain, Lorna tries on the shawl after Matt leaves, but when she looks in the mirror, she sees the face of Jezebel Trister appear over her own.

Lorna tries to resume a normal life, but she finds it difficult.  She is staying at Ruth's tavern, and Ruth reveals to her that she herself has been carrying a torch for Matt, and this seems to be fueling at least some of Ruth's resentment.  When Lorna feeds the fish belonging to Ruth's daughter, the fish almost immediately die.  She learns that she fed them rat poison by mistake.  And she finds herself being followed by a sinister-looking dog, the same dog that had accompanied Jezebel Trister....

Comments: Tonight we have the second broadcast of The Woman Who Came Back, a Republic feature with an interesting cast and a spooky atmosphere that's marred somewhat by a clunky, explained-away ending.  This modest programmer seems to have come and gone pretty quickly from theaters on its initial release in December of 1945, but it turned up regularly on TV schedules through the 1960s and there's little question that viewers of Horror Incorporated would have been familiar with it.

The Woman Who Came Back was made at a time when explained-away endings were enjoying something of a renaissance in horror films, maybe because Val Lewton was dominating the genre at the time. Lewton made atmospheric horror fare with a strong psychological undercurrent; Cat People, his best-known film, pitted ancient tribal fears against the modern science of psychiatry in order to make us question just what we believe, and in fact the question of whether the Cat People's curse itself is real or just a sexually repressed woman's delusion isn't revealed until the final minutes.  While Lewton wouldn't have gone for something as crass as an explained-away ending, his imitators often did, and films like this one, The Beast With 5 Fingers, The Soul of a Monster and She-Wolf of London all went the same route. This was an especially tempting cheat for filmmakers who were uncomfortable making genre movies; they could reassure themselves -- and the audience -- that their film was grounded in safe, respectable reality.

A number of scenes strive for a spooky Lewtonesque vibe, as when Ruth (Ruth Ford) walks from the church, along the streets of Eben Rock at night, slowly realizing that the mysterious dog is following her. Such attempts always lack Lewton's indefinable spark, but they do indicate the filmmakers were paying attention.

The Woman Who Came Back has a strong and eerie opening sequence which ends with Lorna being the sole survivor of a bus crash. And the movie has an ominous atmosphere that's aided by some decent day-for-night shooting. But the film is rather talky and drags in places where it should be building suspense. And the explained-away ending leaves some gaping plot holes behind it; if Lorna isn't cursed, how did the fresh flowers Matt brought wither and die by the time he gave them to her?  How did the woman on the bus (whom we learn wasn't Jezebel Trister) find Lorna, and how did she know her name?

Director Walter Colmes only directed a handful of films, and this was probably the best-known of them. His work is straightforward and unimaginative. But he has at his disposal some very good actors: John Loder, whom we just saw last week in The Brighton Strangler, Otto Kruger from Dracula' s Daughter and Ruth Ford, who lost her marbles in The Man Who Returned To Life.  This is the only film I've seen Nancy Kelly in, but does quite well as the tormented Lorna.

Saturday, June 9, 1972: The Brighton Strangler (1945) / The Walking Dead (1935)

Synopsis: Celebrated actor Reginald Parker (John Loder) has just completed a successful run on the London stage with the hit play The Brighton Strangler.  The theater manager ruefully notes that he could easily run the show for another year, and he's sorry that Parker has decided to hang up the role.  So arresting is Parker's performance that there's no thought of bringing in another actor to play author-turned-murderer Edward Grey.  For audiences Parker is the Strangler.

It is December 23rd, and after wishing the cast and crew a happy Christmas, Parker prepares to leave the theater and rejoin his fiancee, who is also the author of the play.  But German bombers are making a nighttime raid on London.  Numerous bombs hit the neighborhood and the theater is destroyed.  Parker staggers away from the ruined building.  He's gotten a nasty knock on the head and he is in a daze.  Has he forgotten who he is?  Not exactly; he remembers that he's Edward Grey, and he heads to Victoria Station and buys a ticket to Brighton.

At the station he meets beautiful young April Manby (June Duprez), a WAAF heading home for Christmas.  Seeing that Parker -- or rather, Grey -- is injured, she helps daub a bit of blood off his forehead.  On the trip to Brighton she confides in him that she has secretly married her sweetheart, an American soldier named Bob Carson (Michael St. Angel).  Upon arriving, April is met by her parents, respected physician Dr. Manby (Gilbert Emery) and his wife (Lydia Bilbrook). They invite Grey to come over and celebrate Christmas Eve at their house the following evening.

The next night, Grey leaves his hotel room and walks to the Manby house.  Along the way he encounters the mayor of Brighton, Herman Brand (Ian Wolfe).  Grey accuses the kindly mayor of being the barrister who had betrayed him -- a charge which puzzles Brand but which we know is taken from the play The Brighton Strangler.  Reaching into his pocket, Grey produces a silk cord, which he'd kept in his pocket after the show closed. He uses the silk cord to strangle Brand, and then proceeds to the Christmas party as though nothing has happened.

Late that evening, Chief Inspector Allison (Miles Mander) arrives at the Manby house.  Everyone is shocked to hear of the murder of the mayor. The following day, the police interview all new arrivals in town, including Grey.  Like the character in the play, Grey is outwardly pleasant and charming.  He says that he is staying in town to write a book, and that he is a friend of the Manby family.  Soon he is crossed off the list of suspects.

April is surprised to learn that Bob is able to join her in Brighton for a few days.  But because of the mayor's funeral, she isn't able to meet him at the station, and she asks Grey to meet him for her.  Grey meets Bob, and takes him over to the hotel.  But as Bob checks into his room, Grey goes to his own room and falls asleep.    He dreams that he is confronting Inspector Allison, who is now another of his persecutors from the play. 

As Bob goes over to his new friends's room to knock, he overhears Grey talking angrily in his sleep -- vowing revenge, and threatening to kill an unseen someone.... 


Comments: This enjoyable wartime programmer clocks in at only 67 minutes, and uses its time quite efficiently, but even so we are still able to see the seams and the plot holes. The most obvious one is rooted in the premise. Even people who have only lived for a short time on this planet know that a knock on the head doesn't turn innocent people into murderers, but the conceit here is that Reginald Parker hasn't entirely been himself lately -- for the last year he has also been living the life of Edward Grey on the stage -- and Grey just happens to be a serial killer.

One can only imagine the hijinks that would have ensued if Parker had instead been playing Mortimer Brewster or Algernon Moncrief at the time of his accident; that would, in fact, have made a pretty good Ealing Studios comedy.

 The device of having someone hit in the head and losing their memory is a common one in film and television. It is something that actually can happen (it's called organic retrograde amnesia), but it is rare, and unless there is permanent brain damage the victim regains the lost memories within hours.* Parker, of course, goes on to believe he is someone else entirely, an even rarer condition known as a dissociative fugue, a condition triggered by a psychological breakdown - it can't be caused by a blow to the head. 

Nevertheless the idea of not just losing your memory but assuming an entirely new identity was probably too tempting for the screenwriters to resist. I'm sure there were a number of movies and TV shows that used this device, but I can only think of one off the top of my head -- a TV movie from 1976 called Return of the World's Greatest Detective, in which a Sherlock Holmes-obsessed motorcycle cop (played by Larry Hagman) gets hit on the head and wakes up believing he is Holmes. Oddly enough he is magically endowed with Holmes' legendary ability to solve crimes (as well as his ability to play the violin).  It was clearly the pilot for a TV series that never got picked up, so we didn't find out if someone else wound up getting hit on the head and came to believe he was Professor Moriarty. 

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Of course, Return of the World's Greatest Detective was meant as a little confection, nothing that you should linger over and analyze. Similarly, The Brighton Strangler was designed to be nothing more than an evening's diversion for war-weary moviegoers. And on that level it works very well indeed. So let's not be too hard on it, okay?
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*Interestingly, in movies and TV shows people are routinely knocked unconscious with a single punch to the head, and once out they stay that way for 20 minutes or so. In real life, it's actually fairly difficult to knock someone unconscious, and if they remain out for more than a minute or so they've probably suffered a serious brain injury.



The Walking Dead

Synopsis: Mob attorney Nolan (Ricardo Cortez) is dead certain he's got Judge Shaw (Joe King) scared -- so scared that he's sure to acquit Nolan's underworld client.  But to his surprise, Judge Shaw doesn't knuckle under, and the man is sentenced to ten years at Sing Sing.

For the mob, this is intolerable. Shaw has to be taken care of, or future mob threats won't carry any weight.  The trouble is, any action against Shaw will implicate Nolan and his associates. 

A solution is found in one John Ellman (Boris Karloff) a quiet man who's just finished a stretch in prison, thanks to Judge Shaw. Mob fixer Loder (Barton MacLane)  arranges for Trigger (Joe Sawyer) to bump into Ellman, strike up a conversation, and offer him a job. Posing as a private detective, Trigger tells Ellman that Shaw's wife, suspicious of an affair, has hired him to shadow the judge. He wants Ellman to stake out Shaw's house and take notes on his comings and goings.

This, of course, establishes Ellman's presence outside the judge's house for several successive nights.  And on the last night Ellman returns to his car to find a body lying in the back seat -- that of Judge Shaw.  But as luck would have it, a young couple -- Nancy (Marguerite Churchill) and Jimmy (Warren Hull) are passing by and witness the shady characters planting the body in Ellman's car.

Soon Ellman is on trial for Shaw's murder -- and just to make sure he's convicted, Nolan himself is representing the unlucky ex-con.

Nancy and Jimmy debate whether to get involved in the case, knowing that the reach of the mob is quite long.  In the end they decide to come forward with what they know -- but it's too late, and Ellman is executed for the crime.

But the young couple's employer Dr. Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) himself steps forward with a radical suggestion: with the experimental technique Beaumont has developed, Ellman can be brought back to life....

 
Comments: The Walking Dead is an early attempt to fuse the old genre of horror with the embryonic one of science fiction, and on the whole it works pretty well. Ellman's journey back from the beyond would, in an earlier age, have been accomplished through black magic or voodoo; and in fact the Ellman who comes back from the dead is more like a zombie than a resuscitated human. He also has preternatural abilities that he apparently picked up in the afterworld that allow him to mete out a just punishment to those responsible for his death, making his revival more supernatural than scientific. But it should be noted that, thanks to James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), what scientists did to push the boundaries of knowledge was pretty much limited to reanimating corpses -- at least, it's something we see scientists doing again and again throughout the decade.

The two underlying themes -- "crime doesn't pay" and "there are some things man was not meant to know" were both common ones under the Hayes code in 1936, and probably already a bit shopworn, but they are deployed deftly and perhaps a little sneakily here. Warner was pretty good at showing the glamour and excitement of gangster life even while carefully arranging for the bad guys to get their comeuppance in the last reel. And significantly, the forbidden knowledge that Ellman acquires dies with him, even though the nosy Dr. Belmont works hard to pry it out of him.

Karloff had a pretty good run through the 1930s, and The Walking Dead is one of his better roles in this period. He'd excelled at playing gangsters and crooked ex-cons in his early career, so he slips into the role of the tormented Ellman easily enough; the first third of the movie is really a conventional Warner-ish crime drama. It pivots quite quickly to science fiction in the second act, and then horror at the end.

Ricardo Cortez, always delightful, is quite engaging as the slick mob lawyer Nolan. We get to see Marguerite Churchill, who is a welcome presence just as she was in Dracula's Daughter, even though she doesn't get quite as much to do. We are also lucky to have the avuncular Edmund Gwenn on hand as the unorthodox Dr. Belmont; the kind of character he played never varied much from film to film but his quiet, genial manner serves as a nice counterpoint to the crooks and swindlers we encounter earlier in the movie.

Friday, June 8, 1972: Bury Me Dead (1947)

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: I've written about Bury Me Dead once before, and as often happens I felt more charitable toward the film after a second viewing.

Don't get me wrong. The movie has plenty of flaws; it's cheap and a bit dreary, its second act is muddled and a lot of plot points appear to have been thrown in simply to pad its 65-minute running time. 

But it does have a few things going for it. June Lockhart, who seems a good deal older than her 22 years, effectively anchors the film as Barbara, and Hugh Beaumont is convincing as the buttoned-up family attorney Michael Dunn. I've written favorably in the past about Cathy O'Donnell's portrayal of Rusty, and I also liked Sonia Darren, who didn't have a huge role but still managed to stand out as Helen.

The movie also gets off the blocks quickly with the fire that supposedly kills Barbara. It's an exciting way to start a movie and the central mysteries -- who started the fire, and who died in it? -- are raised in the first few minutes, and for a poverty row quickie, that's a definite plus. Don't look too closely at the stock footage used for the fire, though -- it's clear that the structure that's burning is a house, not a barn.

Something that strikes me as a little unusual for a film from this era is its understated but unmistakable sexual politics. Barbara's estranged husband Rod is carrying on with Helen -- not an unusual plot point in a movie from this era -- but what is unusual is that Barbara gives as good as she gets, engaging in a fling with George. The fact that George is Rusty's boyfriend at the time makes her seem all the more wanton by the standards of 1947. Also, Barbara is not only the protagonist but an active agent throughout, which wasn't the case in Lockhart's starring role in She Wolf of London -- a film in which the woman presented to us as the protagonist had almost no influence on the events around her.

A full restoration of this film would be nice, but is probably unlikely to ever happen. John Alton's compositions are intriguing and were no doubt perfectly lit, but you can't tell that from the muddy prints used to strike the DVD copies.

Saturday, June 3, 1972: Dr. Renault's Secret (1942) / Three Strangers (1946)

Synopsis: Dr. Larry Forbes (Shepperd Strudwick) arrives in a remote French village to see his fiance, Madelon Renault (Lynne Roberts) and to meet her father, the renowned scientist Dr. Robert Renault (George Zucco). Forbes stops at an inn near the village, where he is supposed to meet someone who will take him to the Renault house. But he learns that they will have to cross over a bridge that has been washed out; and as a result he is stranded in the town overnight. He meets Renault's gardener Rogell (Mike Mazursky) and another of Dr. Renault's servants, a strange taciturn man named Noel (J. Carrol Naish).

Noel says he is from Java, and he seems gentle and sensitive, but also uncomfortable, apologizing repeatedly for his behavior, even when he's done nothing wrong. But he becomes enraged when a drunk inn patron makes a remark that Noel sees as insulting to Madelon. Noel grabs the man and seems ready to attack him. But Larry calms him down and the situation is defused.

When he goes up to retire that night Larry finds the drunk has stumbled into his room by mistake and is snoring away on the bed. Larry, amused, goes to sleep in the drunk's unoccupied room next door. But in the morning the drunk is found murdered, strangled by a very powerful assailant. The police question everyone closely, particularly Rogell, who has a criminal record, as well as Noel, who was seen to argue with the murder victim a few hours before the crime.

The police are unsure of whether the intended victim was the drunk or Larry himself, who was after all sleeping in the wrong room. Nevertheless, Larry, Rogell and Noel head out to the Renault estate. Noel drives, and as the car reaches a bend in the road, he abruptly slows the car down to a crawl. To Larry's astonishment, as they proceed around the curve they see a dog crossing the road. Had Noel not slowed down he would have hit it. But how did he know it was there?

Larry seems to find a kindred spirit in Dr. Renault, who has a keen and curious mind. But something bothers Larry about Noel, and he can't put his finger on what it is. Noel seems gentle and kind, extremely loyal to Madelon, but can fly into a murderous rage if provoked. Animals don't seem to like him, and he doesn't seem to like them. He has enormous strength -- more than any one man ought to have. He has senses much keener than any human. And it comforts him greatly when the barber in town gives him a good close shave....

Comments: This Fox production is more than a little silly, and we're not particularly surprised when we learn the titular "secret": Noel is a surgically altered and extensively manscaped gorilla. At least it's a change of pace from the Universal horror standards and the poverty row cheapies that we've been seeing lately. This is only the second time we've seen Dr. Renault's Secret on Horror Incorporated, and I'll admit I felt a bit more kindly to it this time. One reason is that knowing the big reveal in advance means we're not going to snort in derision when it arrives. Another is the performance of J. Carrol Naish, who really commits himself to a role that probably doesn't deserve it. We are meant to feel pity for Noel, since he didn't ask for what happened to him, and Nash does the best anyone could reasonably have done with it; nevertheless the premise is so absurd that it's hard to take any of it seriously.

But here's a question: why should this particular premise strike us as ridiculous? After all, you and I have been sitting up late at night, week in and week out, watching movies about monsters made of sewn-together corpses, and people who transform into bats when they're not drinking blood and sleeping in coffins, and guys who turn into wolfmen, and mummified corpses that spring to life and chase people around. What does this movie ask of us that the others don't?

Perhaps the problem isn't that the premise is too broad; perhaps it's too narrow.  We can imagine black magic or alchemy turning a gorilla into a man; it's hard to imagine any amount of surgery (not to mention shaving) that could accomplish such a feat. After all, surgery could conceivably alter a gorilla to resemble a man in some fashion, and it might even grant the gorilla the physical attributes needed to speak, but it seems extremely unlikely that an ape's mind could be similarly altered to resemble that of a human (however, if the latter were possible, that feat alone would be a Nobel-worthy discovery). It's never clearly explained why Dr. Renault wants to undertake such a project in the first place (he apparently hasn't published anything he's learned from these experiments), except to simply prove that he can make a gorilla pass for a man. But it doesn't really make sense; it would be like someone trying to surgically alter a camel so that it can pass for a horse. Even if it's possible, what's the point?

Motive was always a weak link with movies like this. I'm sure it made mad scientist movies easy to write; motive was built into the character. If anyone asks, "Well, that's silly. Why would he do that? What's the motive?" the answer is always the same: "Well, he's a mad scientist.  That's what they do". The same tactic is used these days for serial killer movies.  "Um, why does Jigsaw kidnap people and force them to take part in ghastly, sadistic games?" "Hey listen, he's a serial killer. That's what they do."

Three Strangers

Synopsis: London barrister Jerome K. Arbutny (Sydney Greenstreet) is walking along the street when he meets beautiful Crystal Shackleford (Geraldine Fitzgerald). After a bit of flirtatious small talk, she invites him up to her apartment. Once there, he is dismayed to find another man already there, a cheerful tippler named Johnny West (Peter Lorre). Johnny was lured up to her apartment with the same come-hither glance that roped in Arbutny.

Crystal reveals the reason for bringing the two men to her apartment. Crystal has in her possession a statue of Kwan Yin, the Chinese goddess of good fortune. According to legend, Crystal says, if three strangers make a wish over the statue at midnight of the Chinese new year, the wish will be granted. If there is one wish they can agree on, they can all share in the good fortune provided by Kwan Yin.

Johnny has an Irish sweepstakes ticket, and he suggests they all wish for it to be a winner, then sign an agreement to divide any winnings from the ticket.

The others quickly agree to this, and a contract of sorts is hastily written up. The clock strikes midnight as the strangers concentrate on their wish, and it seems for a moment that the statue is smiling at them; but soon the moment is gone and the three go their separate ways.

We then follow the strangers in turn and discover that each one has arrived at a moment of crisis in their lives. Crystal's estranged husband David (Alan Napier) has fallen in love with a Canadian woman and wants a divorce, but Crystal refuses to grant one. Arbutny has made a series of disastrous investments with money entrusted to him by the widowed Lady Beladon (Rosalind Ivan). Facing professional ruin when the secret gets out, he has recklessly decided to propose marriage to her in order to conceal his financial mismanagement. Meanwhile, Johnny has fallen in with a rough crowd, and he is currently being sought for a crime he didn't commit. His only hope for redemption lies with his girlfriend, the devoted Janet (Marjorie Riordon).

Johnny ends up in the hospital, and only by chance discovers that the Irish sweepstakes ticket won. But unbeknownst to him, Arbutny and Shackleford have each decided, for their own reasons, that Johnny need never know about the money....

Comments: John Huston co-wrote this gentle fantasy about a magical statue and the lives it changes at midnight of the Chinese New Year. The presence of two of Huston's alums from The Maltese Falcon have led to speculation over the years that it was written as a sequel -- or perhaps a prequel -- to that film, with Mary Astor originally intended to play Crystal. But I have a hard time believing this. The characters in this film don't really resemble The Maltese Falcon's Mr. Gutman, Joel Cairo or Bridget O'Shaughnessy; so it seems more likely that this was just an attempt to bring some familiar screen pairings together in a completely different story. This had already happened once with Casablanca, which reunited Bogart, Greenstreet and Lorre. One big advantage of the old studio system was that you really could create a repertory company that audiences felt familiar with.  That might not have helped box office to a great extent, but I'm sure it didn't hurt.

Anyway, this is somewhat more light-hearted fare than we usually see on Horror Incorporated, and it's lovely to see Greenstreet and Lorre together. Greenstreet's portrayal of the fussy attorney Arbutny is quite winning, and Lorre plays to perfection the part of the good-natured loser who has a chance to be redeemed by the love of a good woman. Geraldine Fitzgerald is quite convincing as Crystal, who's willing to bet on the supernatural in order to keep the man she loves from leaving her. 

Yeah yeah, it's not horror. So what? We've seen a lot of stuff that doesn't qualify as horror on this show. Three Strangers is a nice movie, okay? We'll get back to drinking blood and sewing together corpses next week.

Friday, June 2, 1972: Behind the Mask (1932)

Synopsis: A Sing Sing inmate named Quinn (Jack Holt) is plotting an escape. His cellmate Henderson (Boris Karloff) advises against it, claiming that powerful friends will spring both of them soon if they are patient. But seeing that Quinn will not be deterred, Henderson tells him how to get in touch with his associate on the outside, a man named Arnold (Claude King).

Quinn’s escape is successful and he travels to Arnold’s mansion in the country. Arnold seems afraid to assist Quinn, but is too frightened of his employer, the mysterious drug kingpin Mr. X, to refuse. He employs Quinn as his chauffer, and Quinn becomes enamored of Arnold’s beautiful daughter Julie (Constance Cummings).


Soon enough Henderson is released and makes contact with Dr. August Steiner (Edward Van Sloan), who runs the Eastland Hospital. We learn that Steiner is also an agent of Mr. X , and he tells Henderson that Mr. X arranged for him to be incarcerated so long because he was displeased with him.

Henderson suggests Quinn as the perfect man to deliver the next drug shipment for the organization. But as soon as Steiner sees Quinn he knows the man is an undercover federal agent. Henderson is shocked and angered by this revelation.

But the plan to have Quinn to pick up the shipment via seaplane goes forward. After Quinn delivers the drugs to a ship at sea, Henderson instructs Quinn to take off and then bail out – the boat, he says, will come to his location and pick him up. Quinn, sensing that this is an attempt to dupe him, quickly “rigs a dummy”, attaches it to the parachute and tosses it overboard so that Henderson will think it’s him.

But before long Steiner captures Quinn himself. He plans on disposing of the federal agent in his usual manner – by getting him admitted to his hospital and subjecting him to an unnecessary – and fatal – operation….

Comments: After years of laboring as an extra or a walk-on in Hollywood movies, Boris Karloff won a prominent role in Howard Hawks' 1931 drama The Criminal Code. This led to a couple of other substantial roles, including the monster in James Whale's Frankenstein. Karloff worked on Behind the Mask after shooting on Frankenstein wrapped but before it was released. Frankenstein's success greatly changed the trajectory of the 44-year-old actor's career. His sudden stardom allowed the lanky Englishman to appear, improbably, as the lead in a number of films, often billed simply as "Karloff". In the case of Behind the Mask the horror elements were played up in the promotional material, and Karloff himself was hyped far more prominently than his role warranted (in fact most of the movie posters feature a glowering Karloff, suggesting that he -- and not Everett Van Sloan -- is the film's antagonist). This is a time-honored cheat that movie studios engage in -- it happened to Lugosi all the time, really -- and the tactic isn't employed too egregiously here.

Of course the most infamous use of this trick was the dismal Dudley Moore comedy Best Defense (1984); hoping to cash in on the sudden stardom of comedian Eddie Murphy, who had a small role, Paramount's marketing campaign strongly insinuated that he and Moore were co-stars. In fact the Murphy scenes were quickly shot and tacked on after the film had tested poorly with audiences, making the deception that much worse.

Karloff actually does have a fairly large role in Behind the Mask, though the character he plays, Henderson, is simply a lackey of the mysterious Dr. X. One interesting thing about the film is that it gives us a pretty clear picture of what Karloff's career would have looked like had he never been offered a role in Frankenstein: he would have played endless variants of the Henderson character. Karloff would have been remembered -- if he was remembered at all -- as a character actor who specialized in underworld middle-men, gaunt crooks in cheap suits, and half-smart grifters. In the end, he ended up playing the mad scientist over and over again; but at least he was a leading man in such films.

Saturday, May 27, 1972: Chamber of Horrors (1966) / The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)

Synopsis: Late one night in turn of the 20th century Baltimore, a lunatic named Jason Cravatt (Patrick O'Neal) forces a minister at gunpoint to perform a marriage ceremony. We quickly discover that the bride is a corpse, her glassy eyes open, and as soon as Cravatt has tied the knot, he takes the woman's body away, lovingly placing a wedding band on her finger.

It turns out that Cravatt is a serial strangler with a weakness for statuesque blondes, but this time the police arrive quickly enough to capture him. In handcuffs, he is taken away to stand trial.

But before he can be delivered into the hands of the judicial machine, Cravatt manages to chop off his handcuffed hand and vanish. With money and a suave demeanor he is able to elude police and make friends, most of whom are statuesque blondes.  He also has a wooden cover made for his mutilated wrist, which can accommodate a hook, a meat cleaver, a knife, and other attachments.

The police, having lost the trail, turn to the proprietors of a wax museum dedicated to chronicling the most lurid murders in history.  Anthony Draco (Cesare Danova) and Harold Blount (Wilfrid Hyde-White) are regarded as experts on the criminal mind, and they act as consulting detectives on the case. But can they guess the killer's next move in time to save his next victim?

Comments: Before we dive into this cinematic oddity, I need to make a small confession. I don't always have 100% confidence that the movie listed in the newspaper is the same movie that was broadcast on Horror Incorporated.

Last-minute substitutions were always a possibility, and without any actual records from the television station itself there's no way for me to independently verify what was broadcast. Fortunately for us, out-and-out substitutions occurred very infrequently and we can be fairly certain that a movie called Chamber of Horrors played on the night of Saturday, May 27, 1972.

The problem is that there are a number of movies with the title Chamber of Horrors; and the TV station itself didn't write the description that appeared in the newspaper.  Newspapers in those days (and even these days, I suppose) subscribed to a TV listing service.  These services gave one-sentence descriptions of movies and TV episodes that newspapers could plug in to their daily schedule. It's a system that works pretty well, assuming the description you have at hand is for the right movie.  But if Horror Incorporated played the 1940 movie with that title, or the 1962 movie with that title (as they did previously), we will never know.

So, with that caveat, let's take a look at this particular Chamber of Horrors.  It was directed by Hy Averback, a producer who worked mostly in television and who went on to have a very successful career with shows like F Troop and  M*A*S*H.  This film was originally conceived as a pilot for a TV series called House of Wax. Draco and Blount were the ostensible leads, using their encyclopedic knowledge of the history of crime to solve the bizarre murders that baffled the Baltimore Police Department.

Most pilots, of course, never get picked up as series, and this was no exception.  Though quite tame by today's standards it was probably considered a bit too ghoulish for network TV of the time. It's clear that some additional scenes were shot to pad the running time (Tony Curtis, a big star of the 1950s who was scraping bottom by the middle of the next decade, appears in a pointless cameo), thus making the film suitable for theatrical release. Also added was a zany, William Castle-esque gimmick -- the "fear flash" and the "horror horn".  This was breathlessly promoted as an aid to the more nervous members of the audience -- when the screen began flashing red and the horror horn started honking, faint-of-heart viewers were encouraged to look away because something really, really, gruesome was about to happen.

The problem with the gimmick is that nothing gruesome is ever shown on screen. For example, the screen starts flashing red and the repetitive tone starts bonging before Cravatt hacks off his own hand in order to escape.  But all we see is a closeup of Cravatt's deranged face as he does the deed, and no actual blood or viscera is shown.

Hammer films were a whole lot bloodier, and they were in theaters a decade before Chamber of Horrors.  But we should make allowances.  This was originally shot for network TV, and in 1966 the networks still held strongly to the idea that when someone turned on a television, they were inviting a guest into their home; and presumably guests aren't supposed to use foul language or start spurting blood all over the place.

But in many ways Chamber of Horrors is reminiscent of the movies that Hammer made in its salad days. For something intended for TV it has pretty impressive production values, and the whole thing is beautifully photographed. The 19th-century backdrop is so well rendered we could imagine Terence Fisher directing it.

The cast is interesting, if not uniformly solid. Patrick O'Neal seems to be enjoying himself as Cravatt, and Wilford Hyde-White's Blount is very reminiscent of a Hammer films character, as is Cesare Danova's Draco.  Somewhat weaker is Wayne Rogers as a Baltimore detective, and the other characters are rather flat and forgettable. It's all rather messy as a feature film, and we can't fault the TV networks for passing on it. All the same, the overall look is quite impressive. 

The Man They Could Not Hang

Synopsis: Dr. Henryk Savaard (Boris Karloff) is a brilliant doctor as well as a great humanitarian. He has designed a machine that will keep the blood circulating in a patient's body even when the heart has stopped. This is used in tandem with a coffin-like chamber that chills the body. With the body thus in a state of suspended animation, doctors can operate on a patient at their leisure.

With the assistance of his friend Dr. Lang (Byron Foulger), Savaard enlists his lab assistant Bob (Stanley Brown) to test the machine. Their plan is to stop Bob's heart, use the machine to circulate his blood for a time, then restore him to life. But the police burst in during the experiment. Finding Bob's heart not beating, the coroner declares him dead and Savaard is arrested for murder.

At his trial Savaard tries to explain his methods, but the jury is unimpressed. He is convicted and sentenced to hang. Embittered, Savaard vows to take vengeance on the judge, prosecutor, defense attorney and all twelve jurors .

On death row, Savaard arranges to have his body turned over to Dr. Lang after the hanging.



The prison chaplain makes a final visit to his cell in the hours before his execution, but Savaard seems unconcerned, even haughty, about facing death. Within the hour Savaard is hanged and his body is handed over to Dr. Lang.

Months later, a reporter notices something peculiar: six of the jurors in the Savaard case have apparently committed suicide. Soon he learns that the surviving jurors -- as well as the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney -- have been invited to a mysterious house. Going to investigate, the reporter learns that he and the invitees are trapped inside. Dr. Savaard's voice comes over a hidden loudspeaker, telling his guests that they will die one by one, every fifteen minutes. Moreover, no one will ever suspect Savaard because he has the perfect alibi: he's already dead....

Comments: The Man They Could Not Hang was one of a number of mad scientist pictures starring Boris Karloff that Columbia made between 1939 and 1940.  They were formulaic movies, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about them is how similar they are to one another. In each of these films, Boris Karloff played a kindly scientist whose important research is upended by a pack of paternalistic busybodies; as a result his line of research is ruined and he decides to take revenge on the parochial ninnies who thwarted him. In this picture, the police intrude on an experiment in suspended animation. The cops think the test subject (Savaard's own lab assistant Bob) is dead, and they remove him from the cryogenic tank. This results in Bob's actual death, for which Dr. Savaard is put on trial.  Embittered, Savaard swears vengeance against the judge, jury and prosecutor who rule against him.




We can infer that the decision to make Bob the fiancee of Dr. Savaard's daughter Janet is designed to up the emotional ante, to make his death more of a blow to Dr. Savaard personally. But this decision is undercut somewhat by Dr. Savaard's use of Bob as the test subject in the first place. For all his confidence in the procedure, Savaard had to know that something could have gone wrong; and in fact something did go wrong. He might choose to blame the meddling police and the small-minded doctors who pronounced Bob dead in the cryogenic chamber, but Savaard still bears some measure of responsibility.

But we need to go easy on the screenwriters here, because they have a pretty difficult task placed before them. Kindly humanitarians aren't easily turned into stone-cold killers out for revenge --- especially when the targets are guilty not of malice, but simple ignorance.

The best revenge stories put their heroes through Job-like punishments and when the victims finally decide to launch their vendetta we are right with them.  We root for Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo not because we're into payback, but because he has been so cruelly and thoroughly betrayed that we want the injustice to be righted and the perpetrators to be punished. In The Man They Could Not Hang we are supposed to buy into Dr. Savaard's anger just enough to believe that he feels payback is warranted.  At the same time, we're also supposed to understand that what he is doing is wrong and hope that he doesn't succeed. Any movie built on such a wobbly foundation isn't going to be entirely successful. But to its credit, the movie runs it by us so quickly that we don't have a lot of time to think about it.

Friday, May 26, 1972: The Black Sleep

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 third broadcast of The Black Sleep on Horror Incorporated, and I don't really have much more to say about it than in my previous posts on the film.  I looked up external reviews on IMDB to see if I could find a contrary opinion that I might argue with, but there seems to be a drowsy consensus on this mid-50s indie production: it's seen as a clear homage and throwback to Universal's golden age of horror, but nevertheless a rather dreary production that comes up short on delivering the goods.

Dave Sindelar notes its similarity to The Unearthly, which also featured  John Carradine and Tor Johnson; he also expresses a dislike for Akim Tamiroff's performance, which he called "a little over-the-top", which is quite an accomplishment for someone in the same movie as John Carradine.

Richard Scheib found it "talky and static", allowing that the early scenes "create a (relative) sense of medically grounded realism" but that before long the movie is undermined by its own cliches - "the ethically-challenged scientist; a madman (Lon Chaney, Jr) in the house; a mute retainer (Bela Lugosi); deformities of failed experiments kept in the cellar; a scientist's innocent daughter needing saving; laboratories improbably hidden beneath swiveling fireplaces in the library."

The only participant who gets away relatively unscathed is Basil Rathbone, whose authoritative delivery made him a natural for these late-period mad scientist pictures; one can imagine him stepping into one of Hammer's Frankenstein productions had Peter Cushing been unavailable. In fact, Scott Ashlin does imagine it, saying:

[I}t’s too bad Rathbone got pigeonholed so early on as Sherlock Holmes. He had a commanding elegance about him akin to that later displayed by Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and which nobody else on the 30’s and 40’s horror scene could match. Lionel Atwill and John Carradine came close on occasion, but Atwill was always a little too foppish and Carradine a little too homespun to play the depraved Old World nobleman with Rathbone’s authority; neither of them would have been up to the challenge of Tower of London's Richard III, for example. As Joe Cadman, Rathbone simultaneously prefigures the Cushing Frankenstein, and hints at all the brilliant mad movie scientists that might have been if only Rathbone hadn’t been so busy chasing Nazi agents all over the English moors during the years of the second Hollywood horror boom.

Interestingly, Scheib claims that Lugosi worked on The Black Sleep after Ed Wood shot his home-movie-esque footage for Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959); I'm not sure of the timeline myself, but either way it seems clear that this was Lugosi's last screen role, and not Plan 9, as is often claimed.