PURSUIT (1935)

Tight, fast-paced film which provides a nice showcase for one of my favorite B-leads, Chester Morris. He plays a pilot who is being paid to deliver 6-year-old Scotty Beckett (one of the Little Rascals), a child in the middle of a nasty custody battle, to Mexico to stay with his birth mother. Along with Beckett for the ride is Sally Eilers, who is working for middleman C. Henry Gordon, but they never make it up in the air after the prop plane takes off with the kid in it alone and Morris has to jump in and crash it into a barn to save the kid. The three take off in a car for Tijuana and have a series of mostly comical misadventures, some of which involve getting handcuffed to each other and being followed by snoopy Henry Travers, who is out for some reward money. They dress the boy up as a girl to throw Travers off the track, and a pregnant dog named Perfume provides other diversions. Once they get near the border to meet Gordon and the mother (Dorothy Peterson), Gordon tries to pull a double cross to get the reward money, which is substantially more than he'll get from Peterson, but there's a happy ending in store involving the trio dressing in blackface and driving across the border in an old jalopy in full view of Gordon. Normally, I prefer some decent characterization and backstory, but here the fact that we are given very little background about the characters works well with the short timeframe (the hour-long movie takes place over just 2 days time). Morris and Eilers work up some good B-level chemistry, the kid is fine, and Erville Alderson does a nice comic turn as a befuddled cop. [TCM]

DAVID AND BATHSHEBA (1951)

As Biblical epics go, this one is too serious to be campy fun like Cecil B. DeMille's renowned films, and it's not "epic" enough to be compared to THE ROBE, so it winds up occupying a not terribly interesting middle ground. The narrative begins with King David (Gregory Peck) and the Israelites at war with the Ammonites. After a successful battle, David returns home, leaving his trusted captain Uriah (Kieron Moore) at the front; despite having a number of wives, David lusts for Uriah's wife Bathsheba (Susan Hayward) after he sees her bathing from his balcony. Soon they are in the midst of a heated affair and Bathsheba gets pregnant, which is a problem since her husband has been gone for over a year. Since the penalty for adultery is stoning the woman to death (the man appears to get away scot-free), David devises a plan to get Uriah back for at least one night so that her condition will not be suspicious. However, despite a kind of consciousness-raising talk from David about keeping his wife happy, Uriah instead spends the night sitting up and waiting for his next battleground orders. David then issues secret plans to have Uriah isolated in the forefront of the fighting so he'll be killed, then David can marry his widow. The plan works, but when sandstorms and drought hit Israel (and Bathsheba's baby dies soon after its delivery), holy man Nathan (Raymond Massey) interprets the events as signs of God's displeasure with David's sins, and the people rise up to demand the death of Bathsheba. In the climax, David spends a dark night of the soul communing with God before the Ark of the Covenant, and we see flashbacks to some of his legendary deeds, including the defeat of Goliath. Finally, David leans forward to touch the sacred Ark--an act that we have seen can cause death--and instead of David being struck down, drenching rains bring an end to Israel's suffering, and David and Bathsheba live happily ever after, one assumes. Peck is handsome and, when he appears toward the end in a scruffy beard and sackcloth, he's actually kinda sexy. Hayward is appealing, Massey has an appropriate fire-and-brimstone attitude, and Jayne Meadows, whom I know mostly from her appearances on "What's My Line?" does a surprisingly good job as one of David's conniving wives. George Zucco and Francis X. Bushman have small roles. The production, though not exactly opulent, is satisfactory; the print I saw on Fox Movie Channel was murky and in need of restoration. [FMC]

DON'T TURN 'EM LOOSE (1936)

Just a few days ago, I dissed Bruce Cabot as the leading man in SINNER TAKE ALL. Now I have to note how much I liked him as the lead in this B-crime movie with a unique propaganda twist: it's basically an anti-parole movie. The film opens at a parole hearing for convict Cabot. His sad-looking wife shows up with a baby in tow and helps convince the board to free him, but we find out that the woman is an actress and the baby is rented. Cabot is whisked off to his mistress (Grace Bradley) and continues his life of crime by robbing a dairy company and killing a guard in the process. Then he spends a few weeks visiting his small-town family who think he's an important traveling businessman (Cabot has his henchman Frank Jenks send them postcards from foreign countries to strengthen the illusion). While visiting, he pulls off a jewelry store robbery to get a bracelet for Bradley, and cop James Gleason, who has been after Cabot all along, figures out what's what. He finds Bradley and blackmails her (with incriminating phone calls to another lover) into helping catch him. Cabot winds up behind bars again for possessing a gun while on parole, but pulls off a clever escape, just long enough to gun down Bradley in cold blood, then sneaks back to prison where eventually he comes up for parole again. The twist this time is that his father, Lewis Stone, is now a member of the parole board. When his son comes before him (under an assumed name), he is shocked. Cabot gets Stone to agree to let him off in exchange for never contacting the family again, but the son returns to town for one last heist, on the eve of his sister's wedding. The finale is appropriately vicious and satisfying. Cabot is convincing both as a brutal thug and as a nice all-American boy. Stone and Gleason are fine as usual. Betty Grable is Cabot's sister, Louise Latimer is his almost homely small-town girlfriend, John Arledge is Grable's fiance, and Nella Walker is Stone's wife. This little B-gem has been ignored by Maltin and Halliwell, but it's worth catching the next time it crops up on Turner Classic. [TCM]

BILLY THE KID (1941)

An almost completely fictionalized version of the last days of notorious outlaw William Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. The real-life Kid was only 21 when he was killed, and Robert Taylor, who plays him here, was 30 at the time, and looked even older, but if you put out of your head any idea that this movie has anything in common with history, you can enjoy it. It's established early on that Billy's father died from being shot in the back, and Billy now has a something of a mania about that. We first see the Kid break his Mexican buddy Pedro (Frank Puglia) out of jail in a small frontier town. The two wind up in the middle of a local brouhaha. Town big shot Gene Lockhart runs not just the saloon and the general store, but also the puppet sherrif (Cy Kendall) and judges, and he is trying to stop British cattleman Ian Hunter from selling his cattle to the Army and undercutting his own prices. First, Lockhart hires Billy on his side, but during a nighttime cattle stampede, Billy runs into Brian Donlevy, a childhood friend, who is working for Hunter and soon Billy is, too. This doesn't sit well with Lockhart and his men, who kill Pedro to prod Billy into a rash act. Donlevy talks him into acting with caution, but when Hunter, who has just been named marshal, is shot to death (and in the back), the Kid can't be stopped, leading to a predictably sad ending. Most critics think Taylor was too old and too glossy for the part, but if you take this as just a movie about an outlaw anti-hero and forget that it's supposed to be based on fact, I think Taylor is fine, as is Donlevy, and neither of them is usually a favorite of mine. The supporting cast standout is Lockhart, as he so often is. Also present are Henry O'Neill (fine as a reporter who stands with Hunter and Taylor) and Mary Howard (colorless as Hunter's sister, and briefly, Taylor's love interest). Familiar faces in smaller roles include Chill Wills, Ethel Griffes, Lon Chaney Jr., Joe Yule, and Grant Withers. The film was nominated for an Oscar for color cinematography, and it does indeed often look ravishing, with some scenes shot on location in Utah's Monument Valley. Even though the studio scenes can't match that, as a whole the movie looks quite good. [TCM]

LADY OF SCANDAL (1930)

Although the title promises a titillating pre-Code movie, this is really a tame drawing room comedy of manners which is quite fun until it takes a turn toward rather drippy melodrama in its last 15 minutes. A British family of lords and ladies is thrown into disarray when they read in the papers that young son Ralph Forbes plans on marrying musical comedy star Ruth Chatterton. It's already bad enough that a cousin, Basil Rathbone, has been carrying on with a married woman who feels she can't leave her invalid husband, but this latest development threatens to send Lord Willie (Herbert Bunston) and assorted relatives through the roof. The family meets Chatterton and, assuming she's a gold digger who has tricked Forbes into a proposal, decides to test her: they say they will OK the marriage if she retires from the stage and comes to live with them for a few months, hoping that Forbes will tire of her during that time. What they don't know is that Forbes is the one who forced the marriage issue by planting an item in the press; Chatterton herself isn't as gung-ho as the family thinks, and even her own father doesn't want her to leave the stage. Over a few weeks' time, she wins most of the family members over, even Lord Willie, but also finds herself falling for Rathbone. The two plan to run off together, but when Rathbone's mistress's husband dies, plans change for everyone.

This has all the strengths (nice set, good writing) and weaknesses (awkward scene transitions, flubbed lines left in) of the early sound MGM movies. The cast is especially good here, even the usually weak Forbes. Bunston (Dr. Seward in the 1931 DRACULA) does a nice job as a pompous fuddy-duddy who slowly warms to Chatterton's charms, even doing an ass-slapping dance to a jazzy gramophone record. Fredrick Kerr is quite funny as Lord Trench, the most snobbish but also the funniest of the family, especially when he gets drunk on "gully washers." His best line (among many candidates) is when someone suggests that, when Chatterton enters, "we all look horrified," to which he replies, "That won't be hard with my wife in the room." McKenzie Ward is the effete cousin Ernest whose breathing exercises are always bothering someone. Though not a musical, the movie does begin and end with Chatterton in a fancy production number. This film is more evidence that Chatterton has been unfairly forgotten by today's audiences. [TCM]

SINNER TAKE ALL (1936)

An MGM B-mystery without much to recommend it aside from a rare screen appearance by real-life reporter (and "What's My Line" panelist) Dorothy Kilgallen, who has about 2-1/2 lines as a "girl reporter" who lends a hand to our hero at the climax. The plot involves a former reporter (Bruce Cabot) who now works as an assistant to lawyer George Zucco, who himself works for the Lampier family, who own the paper for which Cabot used to work. When the family starts getting death threats, the editor of the paper (Stanley Ridges) re-hires Cabot, leaving him working on the case from two perspectives. Two of the sons are killed, one by poison and one in a car crash (though at least one of them may still be alive but in hiding), and suspicion falls on the daughter (Margaret Lindsay) who seems to have the most to gain financially with the others out of the way. Another suspect is Joseph Calleia, shady owner of the Green Lantern night club, who may be having an affair with the editor's wife. If that's true, then the editor is also a suspect. And the final suspect is Zucco, who is almost always a suspect in any movie he's in. The outcome of the mystery plays out nicely, but the film's effectiveness is undercut by the wooden performance of Cabot. Lindsay, Zucco, and Calleia are fine, and it's interesting to see Charley Grapewin, kindly Uncle Henry in WIZARD OF OZ, playing a rich old man with a nasty disposition. The highlight of the movie is a scene near the end in which we see a shadowy figure hiding on top of an elevator in order to sneak into Grapewin's room and throw the old man off a balcony. Not a bad movie, but one that would have been much better with a more charismatic male lead. [TCM]

BLACK NARCISSUS (1947)

This is often cited as one of the most beautiful looking films of all time, and it definitely is a feast for the eyes. As a drama, it has its moments, though the story of repressed passions is not far removed from typical Hollywood psychological melodrama. Deborah Kerr is a young nun who is made Mother Superior of a new nunnery in the Himalayas, in a small castle high up on a cliff overlooking a village. The property has been donated by an Indian general so that the sisters will run a school and hospital, and we find out early on that the place was once a palace for royal courtesans and that a previous group of priests that had been stationed there didn't last long. The British agent in the area (David Farrar) predicts that Kerr's nuns won't last, either. The building is filled with huge open windows and a chilly wind is constantly blowing through, day and night. Things start off well when the natives show up en masse, the adults at the hospital and the youngsters at school, but Kerr is disappointed to find out that they have been paid to do so by the general. Over time, the nuns become more or less undone by the various distractions of the sensual atmosphere. Flora Robson, in charge of the garden, winds up planting lovely flowers rather than the utilitarian vegetables that were planned. Both Kerr and the younger Kathleen Byron are attracted to Farrar (who frequently dresses in skimpy khaki shorts and a shirt open to his stomach) which leads to tensions between the two. A young native woman (Jean Simmons) who is in danger of getting a reputation as a harlot is brought to the sisters by Farrar, and she begins a romance with the Young General (Sabu), who is taking classes with the children. The natives turn hostile after one nun attends to a sick child who dies soon after. Eventually, Byron goes a little mad from her repressed desires, leading to a climax that, in use of sound, music, and visuals is very much like the climax to Hitchcock's VERTIGO.

As most critics note, the movie looks ravishing from first moment to last, and it's all the more astonishing when you realize that it was all shot on studio sets. It never looks studio-bound, and it achieves its atmospheric effects with more artistry than today's computer-generated tricks. The characters are a little underdeveloped; of the nuns, only Kerr gets any kind of backstory, and what’s there is slight--we learn through a handful of flashbacks that she came to her vocation after being jilted by a man whom she had loved for years. Farrar looks nice without a shirt, but the character suffers from a lack of background or a consistent personality. Byron wins acting honors for her descent into madness, but Kerr is good as well. I especially like her in the beginning, when her Mother Superior tells her she is getting charge of the new nunnery--we can't tell if she's happy or angry or excited or frightened; we get a strong sense of a woman trying very hard to repress her feelings. May Hallatt provides some weird comic relief as the native caretaker, but her acting style is overblown and her dialogue sounds dubbed in by someone else, which is a bit distracting. I've only seen this movie twice, and I suspect it's the kind of film that would richly reward repeated viewings. There are some bad video prints out there, so try to get the Criterion DVD or see it on Turner Classic Movies. [TCM]

MYSTERY STREEET (1950)

You could say that this movie was 50 years ahead of its time, as it plays out a little like "CSI: Boston," or as my partner put it when he saw me watching this on Turner Classic Movies, "CSI: TCM." It does a nice job of balancing the genres of police procedural and film noir. The opening segment is pure noir: a blonde bad girl comes to no good end. Trampy Jan Sterling is in a jam with her rent money (and, as we find out later, she's also pregnant) and after she calls her married lover to arrange a meeting to get some money, she promises nosy landlady Elsa Lanchester she'll get the money the next day. However, at the Grass Skirt bar, the lover doesn't show, so Sterling picks up drunken Marshall Thompson, a poor slob whose sick wife is in the hospital having just lost her baby. He takes her out to Hyannis where she ditches him, stealing his car to confront her lover (Edmon Ryan) who promptly shoots her dead and dumps her and the car into the water. Some time later, Sterling's skeleton washes up at Cape Cod and police detective Ricardo Montalban has to find out who she is and who killed her. He solicits the help of Harvard forensics professor Bruce Bennett who uncovers clues from the bones of the victim. A web of circumstantial evidence begins to tighten around Thompson, who is arrested on suspicion of murder, but landlady Lanchester puts 2 and 2 together first and tries to blackmail the real killer. All this leads to an exciting chase at a train station with justice prevailing in the end. Montalban is quite good in the lead, and Lanchester steals all her scenes playing against her usual dithering type as a greedy and fairly cold-blooded schemer. Sally Forrest, second billed as Thompson's wife, doesn't have much to do until toward the end. Willard Waterman has an amusing bit as a mortician and old pal of the deceased. The issues of race and class are brought up briefly when the rich blueblood Ryan casts aspersions on the "upstart" Hispanic Montalban; it's a short and subtle but effective scene. I have no idea how the title fits in. Recommended. [TCM]

SON OF THE GODS (1930)

A strange example of the "exotic" romantic melodrama, quite popular back in the day. When it was released, it was probably seen as a lesson in tolerance, but now its message comes off as somewhat offensive, though it does make for an interesting viewing experience. Richard Barthelmess, an actor without a drop of exotic "otherness" in him, plays Sam Lee, a young Chinese man who can pass for Caucasian. After getting dissed by some college girls when they find out that he is Chinese, he leaves school and goes back home to San Francisco and his father, successful businessman Lee Ying (E. Alyn Warren), who counsels him that only tolerance can combat prejudice. Sam goes out on his own, works below deck on an ocean liner, is befriended by author Claude King, and winds up assisting him on a book. Living a relatively high life in France, he meets soap heiress Allana (Constance Bennett) who takes a shine to him, until she finds out he's Chinese, when she whips him across the face with a riding crop in public at the Casino Royale (a scene similar to one in Clara Bow's CALL HER SAVAGE. Sam winds up back in San Francisco to take over the family business when his father dies. Allana wants him back but he'll have nothing to do with her, so she drowns her sorrows in a life of dissolution. Eventually Sam finds out that he was actually a Caucasian foundling who was adopted by a Chinese couple. That leads to a theoretically happy ending for the two, though the resolution--as long as he's white, he's alright--will leave a bad taste in modern viewers' mouths. There's a flashback scene which was filmed in Technicolor, but in the Turner Classic print, it looks like it's tinted pink. Frank Albertson plays the potentially interesting character of Ticker, Sam's college buddy, though he vanishes after the first 15 minutes. Mildred Van Dorn, as the father's secretary, gives Sam a Catholic scapula (saying it can't hurt to mix religions) and uses the worst come-and-go Irish accent ever. As far as I can tell, there is precisely one Asian actor with a speaking role (King Ho Chang as Sam's assistant) though the experience must have traumatized him as he never appeared in another movie. The direction is stagy and awkward though some of the sets are cool, especially a huge round door in Sam's house. Neither lead is at his or her best: Barthelmess is way too old to play a college-age boy and Bennett is rather lackluster except for her brief whipping scene. [TCM]

DANGER: DIABOLIK (1968)

In my youth (late 60's-early 70's), I was a rabid comic book fan, with hundreds of them stacked around the basement, in order by title and issue number (and they're still there--thanks, Mom!) and I remain fascinated by what is referred to as the Silver Age of comic books. Comic book movies get made regularly now, with huge budgets and big stars, but back in the 60's, they were few and far between, were usually low-budget affairs, and were, in line with the zeitgeist, quite campy and not to be taken seriously. BARBARELLA is probably the best known comics-related film of that era, but this one is much better. It certainly does the best job replicating the comic-book reading experience on screen of any film until the recent X-Men and Spider Man movies. Based on an Italian series, the main character is a super villain known only as Diabolik (John Phillip Law). The episodic narrative, which feels like a string of separate stories from a run of comic book issues, follows Law as he steals from the rich and gives to himself and his sexy partner (Marisa Mell). The opening segment has an armored car company attempting to thwart a possible hijackikng by substituting waste paper for 10 million dollars and sending the real money in a diplomat's Rolls-Royce, but Law manages to waylay the car (using psychedelic fog pumped out of his own Batmobile-type car), snatch it up in the air via magnet, and get the money. We then follow him through a long drive to his underground lair, like the Batcave but much cooler, where he and Mell have sex on a huge circular bed, on top of and covered by the money. This scene is probably the peak of the film in terms of camp appeal. Among the other "episodes": Law dons a skintight cat-burglar suit to scale a tower and steal a priceless necklace; Law and Mell attend a press conference by the Minister of Finance (Terry-Thomas in a brief comic-relief role) and let loose Exhilaration Gas (after taking Anti-Exhiliration Gas Pills) which leaves the whole crowd in helpless giggles; Law rescues Mell from gangster Adolfo Celi, then drops him mid-air from a parachute to his death; Law blows up lots of government buildings (in a scene reminiscent of the conclusion of Fight Club, and, of course, of the events of 9/11); Law steals all of the government's gold, melted down into a 20-ton ingot. In the end, Law's arch-enemy, police inspector Michel Piccoli, seems to get the upper hand when a spray of molten gold covers Law, and Piccoli leaves him for dead, but a last literal wink at the audience lets us know that a sequel could be forthcoming (though it never happened). The movie is lots of fun, and the comic-book style (lots of fast cuts and close-ups) adds to that, but the amoral nature of the anti-hero made me a little uncomfortable--Law is out for himself alone, and doesn't mind killing anyone in his way. Aside from that little moral quibble, this is great fun if you're in a 60's fantasy mood. [DVD]

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (1934)

I've never read the "Anne" books and I don't think I've ever seen a version of "Heidi" all the way through (though I have seen a couple of Shirley Temple films) so I'm not really an expert on the Orphan Melodrama, but this seems like a perfectly charming example of the genre. The actress Anne Shirley plays the orphan Anne Shirley (the actress's name was Dawn O'Dea but she changed it when this movie came out) who is adopted by Marilla (Helen Westley) and her brother Matthew (O.P. Heggie); they wanted a boy to help out around the farm, and when a whimsical little drama queen (she proclaims that her red hair is her "lifelong sorrow") shows up, they're not sure they want to keep her, but she soon wins them over. The rest of the episodic story follows her adventures living on Prince Edward Island. She has an amusing row with a gossipy neighbor (well played by Sara Haden), gets caught in a lie about being friends with a recent graduate, and, over the period of a few years, has a romance with fellow student Gilbert Blythe (Tom Brown). Their rocky relationship begins when she smashes a slate over his head because he makes fun of her hair. When she decides she wants to get his attention at a hayride, he ignores her, but later he comes to her rescue during a rafting mishap (she's floating along pretending to be the Lady of Shallot). They start seeing each other in secret because Marilla won't allow Anne to see Gilbert (many years ago, Matthew was jilted by Gilbert's mother and Marilla assumes that incident is his lifelong sorrow). Eventually, Anne is sent off to college, and just as she's about to graduate, she learns that Matthew is sick. She comes back home and arranges for Gilbert, now an assistant to a renowned heart doctor, to care for Matthew, leading to a happy ending all around. It's a sweet movie without being cloying or sentimental, and part of the credit for that goes to Westley and Heggie who both nicely underplay their roles. Shirley is fun, Brown is hunky in a mid-1930's way, and Haden does her usual spinster turn to a tee. [TCM]

DRACULA (1931)

This is the first horror movie I ever saw, somewhere around the tender age of 7, and it led me to become an avid "monster movie" fan: I stayed up late Friday nights for Chiller Theater, I subscribed to Famous Monsters of Filmland (back during its glory days in the mid-60's), and I started reading all the sci-fi and horror stories I could get my hands on. Made at the dawn of the sound era, the movie hasn't aged all that well, and I can understand most of the criticisms that are raised against it today by viewers and critics (too slow, too talky, too stiffly acted), but I remain quite fond of it, both as a period piece and as an occasionally genuinely creepy mood piece. The film is not taken directly from Bram Stoker's novel, but from a popular stage adaptation (which I saw performed by a local theater group when I was a pup), and this explains the staginess of most of the movie, in which people stand on a set and talk, and the camera moves slightly to keep people in frame. But the first 15 minutes or so are wildly different from the rest of it, and that part of the movie is what keeps me coming back again and again, every October, or any stormy night when I want to feel the same creepy thrills I did when I was 7.

The plot, the basic outline of which has been used in countless vampire stories over the century, probably doesn't need a detailed summary: lawyer Renfield (Dwight Frye) visits Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) in Transylvania to wrap up a deal to rent Carfax Abbey in London, but the count is a vampire who bites Renfield and turns him into an unwilling slave. In London, Dracula grows strong with the fresh blood of young women and he becomes friendly with Lucy (Frances Dade) and Mina (Helen Chandler). After Dracula begins supping on Lucy's blood, she wastes away and dies, but there are reports that she has returned from the dead, walks at night, and feeds on young children. Mina shows similar symptoms, but her fiance (David Manners) and Dr. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) do research on vampires, conclude that their new neighbor Count Dracula is to blame, and fight him for Mina's body and soul. There is no denying that by the halfway point, the film has become slow and talky, though there is some pleasure to be had seeing Chandler, in her semi-vampiric state, trying to sex up Manners, and watching Lugosi and Van Sloan in their brief battle of wills. In the Transylvania segment, however, a spectacularly spooky atmosphere is set up thanks to several elements: the fabulous sets, not just the cobweb-filled castle but also the roadside inn and the wild landscape of Borgo Pass; the fluid camerawork by Karl Freund (later the director of THE MUMMY); the relatively minimal use of dialogue; and the mannered acting of both Lugosi and Frye. Lugosi, with his almost otherworldly accent and inflections, and his brightly lit, theatrical glare, created a character type which is still the default (for re-creation or re-invention) for anyone playing a vampire. Frye's wild lunatic after-the-bite Renfield is so well remembered that it comes as a bit of a shock to see how ordinary he is before the bite, and I might add that the most horrific moment of the film for many is the shot of Frye, laughing insanely, down in the hold of the death ship which carries Dracula to London. I suspect Tod Browning wasn't really a very good director--though I like this and his later FREAKS, both are good almost in spite of some of his problematic directorial choices. Still, at the moments when it all comes together, the horror genre doesn't get any better. The Universal DVD print looks OK but is not as pristine as one would wish; however, it does have has a fantastic audio commentary by David J. Skal, author of a couple of great books, "V is for Vampire," and "The Horror Show." This is the movie I'll be watching tonight after the trick-or-treaters have left (and then maybe a chaser of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT). [DVD]

THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933)

A sub-B-grade horror movie with a B+ cast. In a German village, people are dying in the night, drained of blood, with bite marks on their necks. The Burgermeister and other town officals believe the deaths are the work of either a human vampire or one of the bats that flock (is that the right word for bats?) about the village, in a clip of what I assume is stock footage that we see over and over again. Policeman Melvyn Douglas, however, assumes a deranged human is at work. Could it be village idiot Dwight Frye? Could it be kindly scientist Lionel Atwill? Could it be his lovely assistant (Fay Wray), who is sweet on Douglas? [Spoiler ahead!!] Frye is the obvious choice for a while, given his spooky demeanor and his habit of keeping a live bat in his coat pocket and petting it occasionally, and in fact he does get hunted down by the torch-wielding villagers, but of course it's really Atwill; he has created a blob of living tissue and needs human blood to keep it alive, so he sends his brutish assistant Emil (Robert Frazer) out to gather the blood. A few critics, relying on faulty information, write that the movie is about a scientist trying to invent a blood substitute (it isn't), and that Wray does her usual screaming (as far as I remember, she doesn't scream once, though a few other folks do, including Atwill's meddling aunt, Maude Eburne). The first ten minutes or so of the movie are nicely done, with bats and shadows and scared villagers, but soon the low production budget becomes too obvious, although the actors all go through their paces nicely. Frye is essentially playing a variation on his Renfield from DRACULA (with a bit of Lenny from "Of Mice and Men," which hadn't been written yet) and he is the most colorful cast member. Aside from the shots of the flocking bats, the most memorable shot is one that begins as a close-up on the pulsating sponge-like tissue and pans out to show us Atwill's latest victim strapped to a table to be drained of blood. Overall, not a bad choice for an October evening, even if winds up being more a mystery than a horror film. [TCM]

MUMMY'S BOYS (1936)

I've enjoyed most of the Wheeler & Woolsey comedies I've seen so far; this one is perhaps the least funny but it still has its moments. It plays out very much like an Abbot and Costello movie, and, for all I know, may have been one of the inspirations for the A&C horror spoofs from the 40's and 50's that I grew up on. Despite the title, there isn't much here involving mummies until the last few minutes. One by one, the members of a archeological team which was involved in the excavation of the tomb of King Pharmatine are dying, supposedly because of a curse, so Prof. Browning (Frank M. Thomas) and his associate (Moroni Olsen) decide to return their spoils to the tomb. Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey play ditch diggers who take a job with them, and along the way, Wheeler gets sweet on Thomas's daughter (Barbara Pepper, looking a lot like the young Sally Struthers). When they get to the tomb, it turns out (of course) that there's a very earthly villain who is after a secret stash; once in the tomb, he wraps himself up as a mummy in order to scare away the others. That's it for the plot, and it's a shame, because the twist here of an attempt to return tomb spoils is interesting and might have led to a good horror/action film. The two leads do their usual shtick, with maybe a little less energy this time around. Wheeler has a condition that involves him constantly forgetting things, and needing to take a nap in order to remember; Woolsey has the map of the tomb location tattooed on Wheeler's back because he keeps forgetting it. At one point, they don harem girl drag. Black comic Willie Best has a few good gags. Overall, it's a long 70 minutes. [TCM]

THE SMILING GHOST (1941)

Perfectly serviceable comedy-thriller, typical of the strong Warner Brothers B-movie output of the time. Wayne Morris is an engineer in financial trouble who takes an offer of a thousand dollars from rich dowager Helen Westley to pose as the fiance of her granddaughter (Alexis Smith). He thinks it's all a publicity stunt, but it turns out that four of Smith's previous fiances have all met with death or disaster (one, David Bruce, is still alive but relegated to living in an iron lung) and Morris is intended to be bait to draw the killer out in the open. With help from nosy reporter Brenda Marshall, Morris decides to launch his own investigation before he becomes bad-luck fiance #5. The elaborate "old dark house" setting is a plus, as are the leading performers who throw themselves into the hijinks with enthusiasm. Willie Best, as Morris's secretary (passed off as a valet at the mansion), manages to go through the often degrading paces of the scared black sidekick with some of his dignity intact. Alan Hale is good as a cocky butler and Lee Patrick and Charles Halton have some fun with their supporting roles. The villain of the title has a genuinely creepy appearance and generally the scares work better than the laughs, though the short film is no trouble at all to sit through, especially with the hunky Morris, the spunky Marshall, and the lovely Smith to watch. [TCM]

MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935)

Despite its title and the presence of Bela Lugosi in a small, almost totally silent role, this is not a horror movie as much as a fairly decent mystery with some spooky atmosphere, though with a running time of only 60 minutes, it isn't developed well enough to be truly satisfying. When Sir Karrell is found dead with bite marks on his neck, the villagers suspect a couple of vampires (Bela Lugosi as Count Mora and Carroll Borland as Luna, his daughter--great character names!). Not everyone believes this, but when Sir Karrell's grave is found to be empty, Prof. Zelen (Lionel Barrymore) goes into Van Helsing mode to save the life of Karrell's daughter (Elizabeth Allan). It turns out (Spoiler!!) that the whole vampire thing (combined with a far-fetched hypnosis trick) is a ruse to smoke out the real killer. I don't really mind that the vampires aren't real--although the movie cheats by objectively showing us some supernatural events which couldn't have possibly have happened (particularly good for its day is a shot of a flying bat transforming into Borland). What I mind are the plot loopholes and lack of characterization. It has its stylish moments, and Borland's look must have inspired Charles Addams when he created Morticia. Also in the cast: Lionel Atwill, Donald Meek, and Jean Hersholt. Tod Browning directed, and the script was based on his silent film (now lost) LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT with Lon Chaney. [TCM]

CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943)

This is the first of three movies featuring Paula, the Wild Woman, or the Ape Woman, or just Paula--I guess she never got popular enough for a catchy nickname like the other cool Universal monsters of the day. From what I've read, this is the best of the bunch. It's an OK way to pass an hour, but I can see why Paula never caught on. Mad doctor John Carradine, who works at a sanitarium where the weather always seems to be gusty and treacherous, performs experiments on a tame circus gorilla, using female hormones and, eventually, a brain, to turn the gorilla into a mute woman (Acquanetta, in one of the first of her handful of exotic roles in B-movies) whom he names Paula Dupree. She shows an affinity with circus animals and becomes an assistant to lion tamer Milburn Stone (of later "Gunsmoke" fame). Soon, Acquanetta's animal instincts get the better of her when she becomes jealous of Stone's girlfriend (another Universal B-queen, Evelyn Ankers) and begins "devolving" (years before Devo). The makeup on Acquanetta is good, and she does have an interesting presence, but little else about the movie is compelling. Footage of circus great Clyde Beatty handling lions is inserted occasionally, and since Stone does have the look and stature of Beatty, the substitution works well. In fact, this footage is really the highlight of the film. Ray Corrigan, a stuntman who became famous in a B-western series playing a version of himself called Crash Corrigan, is in the ape suit. Martha Vickers (the slutty sister in THE BIG SLEEP) and Fay Helm are two damsels in distress. This rather mild monster melodrama does not inspire me to seek out its sequels, but since I already own the second film, JUNGLE WOMAN, I guess I'll have to catch it some night. [VHS]

THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (1957)

There's been a lot of critical attention given to this fairly undistinguished grade-Z sci-fi film. It's perhaps a little better made than most of its ilk, and B-movie icon John Agar gives a decent performance in the lead role, but it winds up stuck between a rock and a hard place: not quite bad enough to be consistently campy fun, but not quite good enough to take seriously. After a strange explosion in the desert, nuclear scientist Agar gets abnormally high radioactivity readings near Mystery Mountain, so he and his young assistant (Robert Fuller) head out to see what's up. They find a new cave blasted into the base of the mountain and when they enter, a giant floating transparent brain with eyes kills Fuller and possesses Agar. The brain from Arous has a name, Gor, and its mission is the same old tedious one, to take over Earth. When Agar goes back home without Fuller and begins acting strangely (sometimes he's horny, sometimes he's got splitting headaches that cause him to double up in growling pain), his girlfriend (Joyce Meadows) suspects something's amiss and asks her father to help her find out what's wrong. The two head out to the mountain, find the dead assistant, and discover a second brain, Vol, this one a sort of cosmic-policeman brain (l'll just call them Good Brain and Bad Brain) which takes possession of Agar's dog (!) to keep an eye on him (assuming the dog will be in Agar's presence more than anyone else). Soon Bad Brain Agar calls a meeting of world diplomats to demand acquiescence, showing them his destructive power--he brings down a couple of planes and destroys houses just by looking at them. Good Brain Dog and his helpers eventually figure out a way to destroy the Bad Brain without harming Agar, involving taking an axe to the Bad Brain (at the "fissure of Rolando," an actual name for a spot in the brain--thank you, Google) when it materializes outside of Agar's body. Everything goes as planned, and Agar and Meadows are happy again, except that her dad has been fried by the Bad Brain, and the two start to make out next to Dad's corpse.

The basic filmmaking here is competent (directing, lighting, sets), but the special effects are terrible. The brains are mostly simply see-through double-exposures, and when Bad Brain becomes solid, it's a big helium balloon with ping-pong ball eyes sailing through the air on very visible wires. The plane crashes are also incompetently handled: a miniature model swinging against a black background bursts into flames and dangles from a wire. The destruction of property is courtesy the famous footage of houses that were destroyed in United States atom bomb tests. The one good effect is when Bad Brain Agar goes ballistic and his eyes become dark and shiny (contact lenses, I assume, like Ray Milland wears in the climax of MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES); that, combined with Agar's over-the-top grimacing and cackling, actually works. The movie starts out with very little exposition; I had assumed that Fuller was perhaps Agar's kid brother, or Meadows' kid brother, or someone's boy toy, and, hell, he might be any of those things, but as far as I could tell, he's just an assistant who maybe lives with Agar(?). I do like one of the opening shots, of serious scientist Agar talking to young Fuller, who's stretched out on a sofa reading a science-fiction magazine. A couple other cheap delights: 1) a nice shot of Agar's face distorted through a water cooler; 2) Bad Brain Agar calling earthlings "savages"; 3) when Meadows tells Bad Brain Agar that he might need psychological help from an expert, he shrieks at her, "Don't expert me!" Despite these occasional pleasures, the whole thing would play out much better as an Outer Limits episode. [DVD]

BLACK FRIDAY (1940)

An interesting take on the Jekyll/Hyde story; since it features Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, it was marketed as a horror movie, but it isn't really atmospheric enough to qualify as such (unlike a similar Karloff film, THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND, reviewed 10/9/2004). The science aspect is too weak to allow it to pass as science fiction, so perhaps it's best enjoyed as a fast-moving crime melodrama with elements of the fantastic. The real star of the movie is neither Karloff nor Lugosi, but British actor Stanley Ridges, in a dual role. We first meet him as mild-mannered English professor George Kingsley. In the middle of running an errand, he is caught in crossfire between mobsters and is seriously wounded in the head, and gangster Red Cannon (also played by Ridges) is hit and paralyzed. Surgeon Karloff, a friend of the professor, is riding in the ambulance with the two men and hears the dying gangster mumble something about a big stash of money which only he knows about. In the operating room, Karloff performs a "brain transplantation," apparently replacing the damaged part of the professor's brain with part of the gangster's brain. The result appears to be a dead gangster and a recovering professor, but actually the gangster's personality and memories are still "alive" in the professor, just needing a jog from Karloff. When the professor is in charge, he has messy hair and glasses, but when the gangster comes to the surface, he has slicked back hair and no glasses. It doesn't make much sense, but it does make it easy for us to tell who's who. Eventually, Karloff cannot control the gangster personality, which takes over the body for longer periods of time and begins bumping off the thugs who killed him, leading to chief thug Bela Lugosi. The movie is one long flashback, beginning with Karloff on Death Row for a murder which we don't learn about until the climax. Given the marketing, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't more horrific, but expectations aside, it's a fine little thriller. Ridges is quite convincing displaying two separate personalities as the split-brained man, and Karloff is his usual reliable self. Lugosi's role is fairly small and he isn't really able do much with it. [DVD]

THE BLACK CAT (1934)

This is considered a horror classic of its era, and many critics see it as the high point of director Edgar G. Ulmer's career. An American couple (David Manners and Jacqueline Wells), honeymooning in Hungary, meet up with Dr. Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) who is on his way to visit an old acquaintance, engineer and architect Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). Their relationship has a long and convoluted backstory, but essentially during WWI, Karloff betrayed his country by giving up a major fort to the Russians, causing the massacre of thousands. Karloff now lives in a huge art-deco house built on the grounds of the fort, which Lugosi calls the biggest graveyard in the world. Lugosi spent years in a POW camp and has come back to confront Karloff and find out what happened to his wife and daughter. During a heavy rainstorm, the bus that Lugosi and the couple are on crashes and the three take refuge at Karloff's home. At first, Karloff seems welcoming if a little stand-offish, but it turns out that he's a Satanist who is about to hold a Black Mass at the dark of the moon and he intends to keep Wells prisoner for use as a sacrifice. We also learn that, in Lugosi's enforced absence, Karloff, claiming that Lugosi had been killed in action, married his wife, and when she died, he married Lugosi's daughter (who, the few times we see her, always seems to be in some kind of doped-up haze). He has kept the embalmed body of the first wife suspended in an upright glass coffin, along with the bodies of other women (ex-wives or lovers? Satanic sacrifices? It's never, like many other plot elements, made clear). Lugosi, knowing Karloff's intentions, plays chess with him for the fate of the girl, but Karloff wins. During the Mass, Lugosi disrupts the proceedings, gets Wells and Manners on their way to safety, begins skinning Karloff alive, then blows up the entire house.

You may wonder about the title; it's borrowed from a Poe story, but aside from a briefly-used plot element about a black cat that skulks around the house, triggering Lugosi's dreadful fear of cats, this has nothing to do with Poe, which is fine. The real problem with the plot is that there is too much of it stuffed into a short (66 minutes) running time. Virtually every element, including the cat, the chess game, the Satanism (the Karloff figure was apparently inspired by the then-current headlines about real-life occultist Aleister Crowley), the embalmed women, and the backstory concerning the war, should have been developed more. The set design is fabulous, and much of the film has a great expressionistic look full of deep and angular shadows. The Mass is quite effective, as are the scenes of the weird wife/daughter (Lucille Lund, who also plays the dead first wife). Lugosi, whose acting is often slighted by critics, is very good here, getting a rare chance to play a sympathetic, fleshed-out character, and he's especially good in the early scenes on the train when he first meets Manners and Wells. While the couple nap, he reaches out and strokes Wells' hair, thinking she resembles his long-gone wife; the move could have come off as comic or perverted, but Lugosi makes the moment a moving one. Karloff is fine and Wells and Manners are OK--Manners, as usual, isn't given much to do as the passive beta male, even winding up out of commission during the exciting climax, but he does get a couple of comic relief lines; in the middle of his miserable honeymoon experience, he sighs, "Next time, I go to Niagra Falls!" The best line, and one that is widely quoted, comes from Lugosi in reply to a man who questions some "supernatural baloney" they're talking about: "Supernatural? Perhaps. Baloney? Perhaps not." Ulmer's directing style is awkward at times, with Karloff's first entrance and Lugosi's attack on the black cat both bungled by choppy editing--which, to be fair, may be the fault of Universal rather than Ulmer. There is also an unfortunate shot of a servant depositing an unconscious Wells on a bed; the camera is low and at the bedside and Ulmer may have thought it was an interesting angle, but it winds up being laughable. Still, despite my qualms about some aspects of the film, its atmosphere can't be faulted, and that is important in horror films. The Universal DVD print, released as part of a single-disc Bela Lugosi collection, is wonderful, not blemish-free, but in much better shape than I've ever seen it. [DVD]

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)

The name of producer Val Lewton is associated with a particular kind of horror film, usually psychological rather than supernatural, typified by a fairly subtle, low-key approach, necessitated at the time by the low budgets that RKO gave him. The films he made with various directors, primarily Jacques Tourneur, in the mid-40's are all considered classics and are finally available on DVD in a very nice boxed set from Warners. Though CAT PEOPLE is his most well known film, and definitely has some classic moments, this one, based loosely on "Jane Eyre," is more consistently enjoyable. Canadian nurse Frances Dee takes a job in the West Indies attending to Christine Gordon, the sickly wife of sugar plantation owner Tom Conway. Supposedly the wife came down with a tropical fever which damaged her brain and left her in a zombie-like state, able to walk and follow some simple commands, but with no will power; she lives like a sleepwalker. The native house servants and workers think that the wife is the victim of a voodoo curse. Dee soon winds up in the thick of family tensions: she harbors a crush on Conway, who still seems to be in love with his wife, and she learns that Conway's dissolute half-brother (James Ellison) had an affair with Gordon. In addition, there is the boys' mother (Edith Barrett), the widow of a missionary who, we find out, serves in secret as a voodoo priestess in order to get the natives to use modern medicine. Neither science nor voodoo seems to be able to help Gordon, and as long as she's around, Conway won't pursue a relationship with Dee. The ambiguous ending appears to endorse the voodoo theory, as the natives use a doll to summon Gordon, who is followed by Ellison, who decides that if he can't have her in life, he will in death.

Much about the narrative is oblique, maybe due to the Production Code, maybe due to the constraints of low-budget filmmaking, but maybe due to the intention of the directors and writers. At any rate, what makes the movie work is the atmosphere, and the fact that most of the important action occurs at night, in deep shadows. The scares are not of the sudden-shock variety, but of moody suggestive spookiness. The most memorable scene is of Dee taking Gordon through the sugar cane fields late at night to a voodoo ritual; the appearance of the towering zombie-like native Carrefour (Darby Jones) is genuinely creepy. Like Lewton's CAT PEOPLE and THE SEVENTH VICTIM, the overall tone of the film, despite what we assume will be a relatively happy ending for Dee and Conway, is grim. Early on, Dee remarks on the beauty of the ocean, and Conway replies that the water gets its luster from "millions of dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence; there's no beauty here, only death and decay." There is a hint that Conway may be a bit of a sadist when he admits that he was deliberately cruel to his wife. As far as the actors, the stiff Conway is the weak link (I just cannot imagine Dee going ga-ga over him so quickly); the rest are fine, with Ellison especially good as the loutish but still sympathetic brother and Theresa Harris doing a nice job as the house maid who slowly lets Dee in on the voodoo secrets. There is a wonderful sequence in which Dee hears a man (Calypso singer Sir Lancelot) singing a song on the streets about the situation between the brothers, which says more about their backstory than she would get from either of the men. [DVD]

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932)

I'm almost always extremely happy to have spiffy, restored DVD copies of old movies, but once in a while, cleaning up a movie just exposes its shortcomings and that's the case with this film, one that was, in my memory, quite scary and atmospheric, but which when cleaned up proves to be a rather lame and colorless attempt at a shocker. I suspect that Universal thought that the mere presence of their vampire hero, Bela Lugosi, would make the movie creepy, and Lugosi does as well as he can given the weak script which is supposedly based on a Poe story but actually uses very little of his work. Lugosi plays a scientist, Dr. Mirakle, who performs with an ape at a Parisian side show, claiming he can speak to and understand the ape. (The ape in question is Erik, the Ape-Man, who looks mostly like Erik the Normal-Looking Ape, but is sometimes played by a man in an ape costume.) His behind-the-scene experiments, intended to prove the theory of evolution, involve mixing ape blood and human blood, specifically the blood of lovely young women. We see him kidnap a streetwalker (Arlene Francis), strap her to an X-shaped cross, and draw blood from her, but once he gets it under the microscope, he finds that it's "dirty blood' and useless to him, and he dumps her dead body, Sweeney Todd-fashion, right from the cross through a trap door into the river. At the side show, the ape takes a liking to Sidney Fox, a "pure" young woman, and Lugosi sends the ape to kidnap her, but when the ape realizes that Lugosi has nefarious purposes in mind, he kills the doctor and races across the rooftops of Paris with the girl until her boyfriend, Leon Ames, comes to the rescue. The plot is just as ridiculous as it sounds; the meager pleasures here are mostly in the atmosphere, conjured up with shadows and some expressionistic, Caligari-like sets. The movie is barely an hour long but it still drags in places, although the torture and murder of the prostitute is harrowing, and the rooftop chase is exciting. Fox and Ames (billed here as Leon Waycoff) are fairly bland; Francis doesn't have much to do (I don't even think she has more than one line of dialogue), but she writhes and screams effectively, and it was great fun to see my favorite "What's My Line" panelist away from the panel. During a non-horror scene, there's a disorienting shot of Fox in a swing, with the camera attached to the swing, as Ames pushes her up in the air. The shots of the real ape don't match up well with the shots of the man in the costume. Directed by Robert Florey, who also did the Marx Brothers first film, THE COCOANUTS, and who went on to do a slew of B-pictures through the 40's and a lot of TV in the 50's; the cinematography is by Karl Freund, who did great work on Lugosi's DRACULA. Overall, I'd have to say that, if you lower your expectations, you might enjoy this, but it's difficult to recommend. [DVD]