The Black Castle (1952)

Sometime in the 18th (17th?) Century. Sir Ronald Burton (Richard Greene), just returned from the business of imperialism in Africa, learns that two of his closest friends have disappeared in the Black Forest.

The place they were last seen is suspiciously close to the estate of one Count Karl von Bruno (Stephen McNally). Von Bruno is an enemy of Burton and his friends from their colonial adventures, and would have good reason to want to take vengeance on them; he certainly has the lack of scruples to make any such vengeance very cruel indeed. He has, however, never laid eyes on Burton, so Burton decides to pull political strings to go undercover as a hunting guest at the Count’s castle, in the hopes of finding out what happened to his friends, and to hopefully save them from a dire fate.

He gets into rather more trouble than he initially expected, but is helped by his rather egalitarian ways with the lower classes as well as his quick fencing arm. Burton will need all the help he can get, for his motivations are quickly shifting from those of the investigator and possible revenger to a man very much in love with von Bruno’s wife, Elga (Paula Corday). Elga reciprocates very much, for she was married off to her hated husband for political reasons – one can’t help but assume blackmail to have been involved given how much of a villain the guy is. Other complications involve a mute strongman who hates all Englishmen (Lon Chaney Jr.), the mysterious and somewhat sinister Dr Meissen (Boris Karloff), as well as a (non-metaphorical) pit full of crocodiles.

Nathan Juran’s mix of swashbuckling adventure and gothic non-supernatural horror tropes The Black Castle is rather a lot of fun even eighty years later. The script by Jerry Sackheim builds a highly enjoyable castle of tropes that provides opportunity for physical derring-do as well as for gothic melodrama (there’s even some Romeo and Juliet style coma draught business) while Juran – not always the most exciting director – puts a lot of effort into finding the point where the lighter style of the historical adventure movie and gothic horror in the Universal manner meet visually. His use of light and shadow certainly often creates a pleasantly creepy mood that’s very effectively intercut with the handful of scenes where Burton demonstrates his physical abilities. Some very fine sets add to the effect.

The cast is in fine fettle, as well. Greene makes for a believable, rather human, hero, while McNally, Michael Pate as his main henchman and Chaney Jr. milk the possibilities of the gothic swashbuckler villain for all it is worth.

Another of the film’s strengths is its willingness to give its character a second dimension, so von Bruno’s hatred of Burton isn’t completely without reason, and some characters who would usually just do what their evil boss says are allowed to have agency and moral complexity of their own. I was particularly taken with Karloff’s first sinister but increasingly troubled Dr Meissen. Karloff was always able to do sympathetic villains particularly well, and does wonders when he is allowed to play an actual human being like here.

So The Black Castle ends up being a rather wonderful mix of two related but seldom mixed genres that turn out to be as close to my heart in blended form as they are separated.

In short: Springfield Rifle (1952)

For a Western directed by the great André de Toth, I was actually a pretty disappointed by this espionage piece taking place during the US Civil War. There’s a surprising lack of complexity to the film’s characters, and even protagonist Gary Cooper’s central moral dilemma (you can’t have a 50s Western without one) is rather clear-cut to me, with the film’s script underplaying and undervaluing copious opportunities to give more depth to the proceedings. The films seems to see no place for an actual character arc for Cooper’s Major Kearney, leaving us with a story about a man who starts the tale it tells just as he begins, with no changes to him at all in between.

Then there’s the Gary Cooper factor, the man’s very personal type of blandness that, as always, sees him saying his lines, scrunching his face up from time to time, but never developing much of a personality. Who is his Major Lex Kearney? Neither Cooper’s performance nor the script seem willing (or able?) to tell, which leaves quite the hole where the film’s emotional and intellectual heart should be.

Still, while this is a minor de Toth film, even working from a bland script that ends in pretty unendurable fawning about the (oh so wonderful, so buy one) Springfield Rifle (capital letters totally necessary), the director knew how to make an entertaining movie, even if there was no room for depth, so Springfield Rifle’s big set pieces really deserve the descriptor of “rousing”, with beautiful photography, excellent staging and the kind of visual imagination that should have been served by a better script. Plus, the film features one of Beloved Horror Icon Lon Chaney Jr.’s Western appearances as a rather dumb main henchman.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,andré de toth,gary cooper,phyllis thaxter,lon chaney jr,western,spies

In short: Weird Woman (1944)

When Professor Norman Reed (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns from a research and book writing year somewhere in “jungles” of what I can only assume isn’t supposed to be Hawaii or Honolulu, even if the little we get to see of it in flashback suggest a really silly Hollywood version of one of these places, with his new wife Paula (Anne Gwynne), his star is on the rise. His book is a huge success, and he seems to be a shoe-in for the post of the department head of sociology. But are his actual achievements the reason for his success, or is it the magic Paula has brought with her from the island, and whose practice she hides from the unpleasantly rationalistic Norman? (Yes, I’m still a laissez-faire atheist and am perfectly alright with the people in my life having different beliefs than myself, Richard Dawkins and his ilk be damned, so Norman’s conniptions about Paula’s activities once he learns about them still make him look like a patronizing ass to me).

Be the working of magic as it may, his new fast-lane career is bound to make Norman some enemies. The worst of them is Illona Carr (Evelyn Ankers), the college librarian he once had a – seemingly quite public – “flirtation” with, and who learned of his marriage only when he and Paula arrived at the party she gave in honour of his return. Illona does her worst to drive Paula out and/or ruin Norman’s life, and given that people on that campus really fall for the most obvious attempts at manipulation, she just might succeed.

Usually, I don’t find it very difficult to separate movie adaptations of books that diverge heftily from their sources in my mind from the novels they don’t do justice to, and can try to appreciate them as their own entities.

In the case of this first adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s “Conjure Wife”, I find this approach a rather difficult one to take. Watching Weird Woman, I spent most of my time groaning about the changes to the book that devalue the supernatural content in a way which also turns a complex treatment of the connections between superstition and rationality, that is also doing ironic work on 40s concepts of marriage, the supposed differences between men and women, and campus politics, into a simple case of a morally and intellectually black and white thriller. Gone are the ambiguities of Leiber’s book, gone are some excellent moments of supernatural menace, and gone is much of the characterization, all to be replaced by a melodramatic thriller about campus politics that goes through a lot of plot beats of the novel while completely ignoring their meaning, simplifying everything for no reason apart from Universal’s mid-40s hatred of anything supernatural.

If I could get over my problems with these weaknesses, I would probably find something good to say about the film. At the very least, its preposterous melodramatic finale is a thing of perfection in its own little way, carried by performances of Ankers and a wildly, effectively, overacting Elizabeth Russell in tandem with blunt, yet wonderful, noir-expressionist editing and camera work. Director Reginald Le Borg does one of his finer jobs here anyway, providing Weird Woman with many a scene of shadowy moodiness, which makes it probably quite the effective film for anyone not as grumpy about Scott Darling’s adaptation of Leiber’s novel as I am. Of course that mood in the service of an actual supernatural tale would have been quite the thing.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,thriller,reginald le borg,lon chaney jr,anne gwynne,evelyn ankers

In short: The Frozen Ghost (1945)

Radio mentalist Alex Gregor aka Gregor the Great (Lon Chaney Jr.) suffers a breakdown when he thinks he has accidentally willed a drunken audience member to death. He breaks off all contact with his medium and girlfriend Maura (Evelyn Ankers), and doesn’t exactly act like the picture of mental health in other respects either.

His helpful agent and friend George Keene (Milburn Stone) has just the idea for a relaxing way for Alex to get his act back together. Why not move into the wax museum of Madame Valerie Monet (Tala Birell)? It will come as a complete surprise for everyone in the audience that things don’t go too well there for Alex. Ignoring the atmosphere of the place, there’s also the fact that the museum’s resident artist, former plastic surgeon Rudi Polden (Martin Kosleck), is a creepy eccentric who talks with his wax figures as if they were living human beings and hates Alex on sight, perhaps because Valerie’s niece Nina (Elena Verdugo) adores the man as if he were a singer in a boy band, or Frank Sinatra, to use a more timely comparison. As an additional problem, Valerie is very much in love with Alex, a feeling he doesn’t reciprocate.

When he friend-zones Valerie, the resulting scene ends with Valerie falling down (dead? unconscious? just very sleepy?), and Alex doing what he does best – running away. When he returns with George, his potential victim has disappeared, and the dumbest cop in town (Douglass Dumbrille) treats Alex as his main suspect in what can clearly only have been murder, right? Oh the mystery and excitement!

But seriously, Harold Young’s The Frozen Ghost, the fourth entry in Universal’s series of films branded after radio’s Inner Sanctum Mysteries – alas without excellent elements like the Creaking Door, or the cheesily cynical narrator - is a perfectly good time, if you’re not afraid of a mystery that is both obvious and just as preposterously constructed as it would have been in comparable Poverty Row movies. This being a Universal production, the production values are quite a bit higher than that of the poor relations, though, with some decently atmospheric sets (probably re-used from higher budget efforts), a director whose nickname isn’t “One-Shot”, and who consequently actually seems to have directed beyond shouting “cut!”, and acting that is at least decent, sometimes, like in the delightful scenery chewing of Martin Kosleck, decidedly enjoyable to watch.

Like the other Inner Sanctum movies, the film is also a showcase for the talents of Lon Chaney Jr., at this point in time credited without the “Jr.”, playing more suave and better dressed characters than you’d expect if you only know him as poor Larry Talbot or in his later incarnation of alcoholic wreck, in usually more convincing ways than you might fear. These films did of course know that what Chaney did best was reacting to pressure in ways even I’d call wimpy and milked that fact generally too much, but The Frozen Ghost at least isn’t overdoing it, and, like a few of the other Inner Sanctum films, also realizes the importance of giving Chaney’s characters some redeeming back bone when it is most needed. Despite their varying quality, the more of these films I see, the more respect I develop for Chaney as the kind of actor who actually could make something out of the things a script gave him, providing his characters with a dignity that made them worth rooting for because of their relatable weakness, or who at the very least gave it his best try.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,mystery,harold young,lon chaney jr,evelyn ankers,martin kosleck

Three Inner Sanctums Make A Post: Read the fine print: you may have just mortgaged your life

Dead Man’s Eyes (1944): In this Inner Sanctum Mystery, Lon Chaney Jr. feels particularly sorry for himself after his artist character is accidentally blinded (which is the sort of thing that happens when your eyewash stands right next to your acid). That’s bad news for the audience, for the only thing standing between it and a dull yet melodramatic plot full of non-events that mostly aren’t shown by director Reginald Le Borg anyway is an extra helping of Chaney whimpering “I’m blind! I’m blind”, followed by Chaney shouting “I’m blind! I’m blind”, and other assertions of blindness. If you’re like me and find Chaney’s general tendency to regard whininess as the supreme thespian expression aggravating more often than not, Dead Man’s Eyes might just cause you paroxysms (“My brains! My brains!”) of annoyance.

Strange Confession (1945): Despite some – surprisingly – stylish direction by John Hoffman and an extra sleazy performance of J. Carrol Naish as the world’s sleaziest capitalist, this outing of Lon Chaney Jr., unluckiest man alive, isn’t very interesting. It fluctuates wildly between pretty tame melodrama, not very interesting mystery, and sub-Frank Capra gestures, without ever seeming to get to the actual point. Unless the point is to tell us that capitalists are evil bastards out to exploit even genius chemist Lon Chaney Jr., in which case I can only say “No shit, Sherlock”.

Pillow of Death (1945): This final Inner Sanctum mystery finds beleaguered Lon Chaney Jr. again having trouble with a murdered wife. An absurdly old-fashioned (for 1945) old dark house mystery ensues, fake séances are held by a psychic investigator called Julian Julian, and a guy who steals corpses and stalks the film’s heroine gets the girl in the end. The script of this thing is so crack-brained, it’s not difficult to imagine this to be a Monogram picture – nobody’s motives and actions ever have anything to do with each other, the film’s murder reveal tries and fails to get away with the old “he’s crazy, so it doesn’t need to make sense”, and things like attempted murders by gassing have no repercussions for the people involved whatsoever.

Because director Wallace Fox (him of Monogram’s magnum opus The Corpse Vanishes) does his job with visible enthusiasm expressed via random fast camera movements, and the script seems to be totally at one with its own idiocy, the resulting film is a very entertaining example of its type, the sort of thing I’d recommend to everyone who has seen all Monogram productions with Bela Lugosi and wants to see more of the same, just with Lonnie and a slightly higher budget. Which describes myself pretty well, actually. God be merciful on our souls.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,mystery,horror,melodrama,lon chaney jr,j. carrol naish,wallace fox,reginald le borg,john hoffman

In short: Calling Doctor Death (1943)

Popular neurologist Dr. Mark Steel (Lon Chaney Jr.) might have a wonderful career but when it comes to his private life, he’s a rather unlucky chap. His wife Maria (Ramsay Ames), you see, has only married him for his money and social position, and really likes to rub his nose in it too. Of course, she doesn’t agree to a divorce. It’s enough to make even somebody as exceedingly mild-mannered as Steel think about murder.

As luck will have it, Maria is found dead soon enough, hit with a blunt object and mutilated with acid. Curiously, it is the exact same weekend Maria is murdered when Steel has a nice little blackout followed by amnesia. Why, a neurologist might think there’s a bit of repression going on here! The investigating Inspector, a certain Gregg (J. Carrol Naish) is all too interested in Steel a suspect, even after Steel’s loving secretary, bookkeeper and nurse Stella (Patricia Morison) decides to give her boss an alibi. Gregg isn’t even happy after Maria’s lover Bob Duval (David Bruce) turns up, making just as nice a suspect as Steel himself.

Steel, stricken by feelings of guilt and hounded by the cop, isn’t happy with the situation either. Perhaps hypnosis will make things clearer to him?

I have already gone on record as not a great admirer of Lon Chaney Jr., despite his fine casting as Universal’s original wolfman. Turns out, I quite like his performances in the films based on the popular (and often excellent) Inner Sanctum Mysteries radio show. These films gave Chaney an unexpected opportunity to play characters a bit more suave than typical for him while, still providing enough room for his hangdog expression and general air of being hopelessly beaten before he even begins a fight. And because at that point in his life, he wasn’t quite the alcoholic wreck he’d become all too soon, Chaney actually made good use of the opportunity, turning out likeable and effective performances.

The first Inner Sanctum movie, Calling Dr. Death, is a case in point, with Chaney giving his successful doctor as someone it is difficult not to have sympathy with, while not overdoing the whole helplessness shtick. Cleverly, the script even makes a point out of the contrast between his abilities in his profession and his dire private life.

At its core, the film is of course a comparatively cheaply made programmer, a mystery more than bordering on the field of the noir with the plot and many of its elements (predatory women, amnesia, hypnosis) certainly belonging into the genre. One could, of course, argue Reginald Le Borg’s direction to be a bit too straightforward (with a handful of choice exceptions) for everyone’s favourite non-genre, and I wouldn’t even be able to disagree very much, but when a film’s every idea is this deep inside the well of a certain genre, I’m inclined to place it there as a whole.

Wobbly genre definitions aside, Calling Dr. Death is certainly a fine little film that may be rather obvious, but doesn’t outstay its welcome, and provides Chaney as well as J. Carrol Naish with opportunities to show themselves from their best sides. As an added bonus, there’s also a head in a crystal ball starting the film with a narration that has little to do with anything that comes after (and the same speech then was also used as an intro most of the following Inner Sanctum movies, with just as little connection to the actual films following it there).

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,noir,mystery,reginald le borg,lon chaney jr,patricia morison,j. carrol naish

The Cyclops (1957)

Even though her fiancée Bruce has disappeared in plateau somewhere in Mexico, Susan Winter (Gloria Talbott) is convinced he is still alive. She manages to get together three men to help her with a small expedition into the area. These are Russ Bradford (James Craig), a bacteriologist and old friend of Bruce’s who is in love with Susan and is really coming along to prove his friend’s death, alcoholic stock market trader Marty Melville (Lon Chaney Jr.), out to find some uranium, and hired pilot Lee Brand (Tom Drake).

After some trouble with the local governor, the quartet barely manage to land where they want to go – turns out having Lon Chaney Jr. grabbing the control stick of one’s plane in mid-flight is not a good thing. But hey, at least there’s more uranium to be found here than Marty could ever have dreamed of! In a strange coincidence, there’s also a frightening amount of preposterously giant fauna around. After boring interpersonal problems and too much footage of “giant” animals slaughtering one another, our heroes finally meet the titular personage (Duncan “Dean” Parish), though the “cyclops” really is a giant guy with a half melted face and brain damage. You’ll never guess who he was before the glories of radiation had their way with him.

Bert I. Gordon’s The Cyclops is a bit of a shame, for it puts a rather interesting and effective twenty minutes of film behind forty minutes going on two-hundred of library footage of planes, pointless feet-dragging, and the kind of interpersonal conflict that doesn’t even make sense if you believe every character in the film to be a fool as well as an arsehole.

Worse, the film’s early three hours of running time are mostly dull as dishwater with scenes that shouldn’t have been in the movie in the first place going on for far too long while little of importance to character, theme, plot or audience enjoyment happens. It’s, as is regularly the case with Gordon’s films for me, particularly frustrating because the director actually was one of the more visually dynamic ones of his time and budget bracket, talents that are wasted when there isn’t anything in Gordon’s own script to actually apply them to. The animal slaughter involved doesn’t exactly help improve things, adding a degree of unpleasantness that still manages to be pretty dull, adding insult to the injury of animals dying for our enjoyment by not containing even the suggestion of enjoyability.

The thing is, once the actual film begins about forty minutes of real time in, the still conscious viewer is actually treated to something worthwhile. Jack H. Young’s “cyclops” make-up is as gruesome as anything I’ve seen in a film from this era, really making the so-called monster look like the victim of radiation damage, enabling the film to make its so-called monster painfully human at the moments when it counts. And make no mistake, this make-up, the big guy’s background and his unceasing desperate grunting (thought up in a time when sound design generally was an afterthought), as well as his undeserved end combine not just into one of the sadder giants in Gordon’s giant-rich filmography, but reach a point amounting to actual tragedy; which is no mean feat given that the giant also has an embarrassing wrestling match with a python (or is it a boa?).

I find this aspect of the movie so surprisingly dark, so effective in its darkness, and so atypical for 50s horror/SF films I’d nearly be willing to suggest it’s worthwhile wading through the dullness that comes before. At the very least, this part of The Cyclops illustrates that Gordon, despite what people - including myself - often unfairly suggest had ambitions as a filmmaker beyond making a quick buck by showing giant or tiny things.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,giant monsters,bert i. gordon,james craig,gloria talbott,lon chaney jr,reviews

The Alligator People (1959)

Warning: I'm pretty sure various alligators were hurt for our entertainment during the making of this movie, so if you're sensitive about these things, this might be a film to avoid. It was a borderline case for me

Under hypnosis, nurse Jane Marvin (Beverly Garland), tells her psychiatrist boss a peculiar tale about a time when she was the freshly married Joyce Webster.
The honeymoon trip with her new husband Paul (Richard Crane) was rudely interrupted by a telegraph whose content convinced Paul to jump the train and disappear out of his wife's sight. Before the wedding night. Her husband's sudden and inexplicable flight wasn't something Joyce was willing to tolerate, but her attempts at finding out where her wayward husband got to were less than successful. It's not as if Joyce had much to go on anyway. Paul never did talk about his life before he met her except for mentioning a plane crash he shouldn't have survived and his belongings are strangely devoid of any hints towards his past.

Some off-screen sleuthing eventually led Joyce to Paul's former college fraternity and from there to the place he gave as his home address - a creepy mansion deep down in the swamps of Louisiana. Of course, Joyce made her way there as soon as she was able, finding a certain Mrs Hawthorne (Frieda Inescort) living there with two black servants and hook-handed, gator-hating, alcoholic handyman Manon (Lon Chaney Jr.) in the swamps nearby. Mrs Hawthorne purported not to know anything about Paul, but Joyce easily enough understood the old lady was lying for some reason, and would not be moved until she found out what truly was going on.
One suspects our heroine didn't exactly expect the truth had something to do with a friendly mad scientist (George Macready), the pituitary glands of alligators, and a husband with a very bad case of psoriasis.

Despite pretending to be a horror movie in its marketing material, The Alligator People is a SF melodrama with a slight influence of Southern Gothic for all but the final five minutes of its running time. As expected, it's also patently ridiculous in its set-up - so Paul is absenting himself from his new wife because he might start to look ugly, despite the way his face looks anyhow? -, silly in its science - did you know the best hope against curing the unpleasant aftereffects of alligator pituitary gland serum is radioactivity, or that cobalt 60 is transported in simple wooden crates you leave standing around at a rural train station until a mad alcoholic can get them? -, and not as clever as one would like it to be - after all, the only way the film's writer Orville H. Hampton can think of to produce a meeting between scaly-faced Paul and Joyce is to have the up to that point perfectly capable and sane woman suddenly run hysterically through a swamp full of very laid-back alligators by night, during a storm, and nearly getting raped by Lon Chaney Jr. whose leering she seems completely oblivious towards.

Despite these problems, the film has its moments. Director Roy Del Ruth (a man with a long and varied filmography starting in the early 1920s and nearly ending here) manages from time to time to conquer his workmanlike tendencies and shoot an atmospheric scene or two before it all breaks down in a very badly done bit of last minute monster rampage that only seems to happen because the producers suddenly realized they were selling this as a monster movie and not the science fictionally enabled melodrama they actually had. Plus, when she's not going into uncharacteristic hysterics, The Alligator People unexpectedly gives always theoretically capable (which is to say, as much as the movies she was in allowed her) b-movie actress Beverly Garland much opportunity to shine as the sort of heroine that even comes to her melodramatic moments with honesty. When the script isn't betraying her, Garland is very convincing as the driven, capable (for a 50s genre movie) woman out to understand why the hell her jerk of a husband suddenly disappeared. She gives the character just the right amount of frailty and desperation at the edges of her strength, making her much more believable than anyone or anything else in the movie.

Unfortunately, nobody else in the cast got the memo about Garland's kind of naturalistic acting, and so Inescort, Macready, and Chaney are mugging their roles up with fierce abandon. Chaney clearly has fun with his role (and who wouldn't have - he has a hook hand and rants about the evil of alligators, after all), while Macready speaks every single one of his lines (even "good morning", if he'd ever say something quite as prosaic) with a pathos and overemphasis I can only explain with him assuming every single member of any giving movie audience to be dumb and deaf. Even though I do approve of a good bit of overacting, I don't think these performances do the film any favours at all. They sure as hell don't do Garland's performance the justice it deserves.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,sf,melodrama,roy del ruth,beverly garland,lon chaney jr,george macready,reviews

Three Films Make A Post: in her eyes...DESIRE! in her veins...the blood of a MONSTER!

Gantz - Perfect Answer (2011): In the second Gantz movie (that in truth is the second half of one very long movie) Director Shinsuke Sato still ignores the fanservice part of the manga he is adapting, and concentrates on the characters and a lot of melodrama that's from time to time broken up by pretty fantastic fight scenes, as well as by a handful of pleasantly weird flourishes. The general tenor in reviews of the film seems to be that there just aren't enough of the fight scenes, but I really prefer the two tour-de-force set-pieces the film does have to the "more blood, more tits" approach; you know, there's nothing wrong with trying to stay classy. The problem the film has in my eyes is one of pacing - it takes a bit too much time to get going (and a bit too much time to actually end once the plot is over and done with), and then hasn't quite enough time left to develop the huge swathes of manga it has decided to adapt. I still enjoy the two Gantz films quite a bit more than most films of the blockbuster league, though.

The Black Sleep (1956): In theory, it must have sounded like a good idea to make a Gothic horror movie about the usual mad science stuff featuring Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine and a heartbreakingly ill looking Bela Lugosi. In practice, it's one of those films where most of the old stars are just carted out for a few minutes to remind the audience of better films, and the only one of them with a substantial role - Rathbone as the mad scientist - has the difficult job to not upstage Herbert Rudley too much while still acting like the prototype of Cushing's Baron Frankenstein.

The film's main problem is that there really isn't anything remarkable about it except for Rathbone's performance - the script is tame and lacking in imagination, Reginald Le Borg's direction is characteristically bland, and little happens that could not have happened in a film twenty years earlier in exactly the same way. "Pure retro" was an approach to art with as little power in 1956 as it has today.

Investigation Into The Invisible World (2002): I know, it's an incongruous position for someone like me, who always praises Werner Herzog's documentaries for their respect for even the strangest people and ideas, to take, but I find the same approach taken by Jean-Michel Roux talking to a bunch of eso crackpots and schizophrenics in Iceland pretty offensive. It might have something to do with Roux's visual style too, or rather the way he tries to turn Iceland into the cover of an Enya record (though at least the film's score by Biosphere and Hector Zazou is much above the Enya-level) using post-production effects so aggressively manipulative I was at first thinking something was wrong with my DVD player. To me, the whole project feels like kitsch with pretentions to be art, which is always the worst kind of kitsch as well as the worst kind of art.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,japanese movies,french movies,in short,sf,action,horror,gothic,documentary,shinsuke sato,reginald le borg,jean-michel roux,bela lugosi,lon chaney jr,basil rathbone,john carradine

In short: Man Made Monster (1941)

Thanks to his abnormal tolerance for electricity, the electrical one-man circus act Dan McCormick (Lon Chaney Jr.) is the only survivor of the collision of a bus with a high-voltage tower. Unfortunately, this talent awakens the interest of mad scientist Dr. Paul Rigas (Lionel Atwill), who soon uses the affable and friendly Dan as a helpful guinea pig in his plans for creating his own private electricity-driven zombie slave. Just imagine what an army made out of such men could achieve, etc.

When Rigas' experiments are successful, and Dan is all a-glow with dangerous electricity, Rigas' much more moral friend and sometimes partner in science Dr. Lawrence (Samuel S. Hinds) steps into the lab and is so aghast he loudly exclaims that he will have to call the police on Rigas. That won't do at all, of course, and so the mad evil one commands his electro-slave to kill his friend. The murder done, Rigas orders Dan to confess to the killing.

Then follows a quarter of an hour of courtroom drama that of course concludes with Dan being sentenced to death - on the electric chair. Sometimes, the sadistic ways of the death penalty really bite its fans in the ass.

Directed by George Waggner in the same year in which he also made The Wolf Man with Chaney, Man Made Monster is certainly one of the more tolerable of the non-classic Universal films of the 30s and 40s. That doesn't mean it's anything like an ignored classics. Rather, the film is a professionally made, yet somewhat unenthusiastic revue of scenes you might know from other Universal films - sometimes in slight variation, sometimes not. Compared with the downright hate for its own audience and the genre it was working in that can be found in much of the studio's output besides their well-known classics, Man Made Monster seems at least willing to entertain the idea that it owes its audience at least a bit of coherence, maybe even a movie worth watching.

Waggner was never one of my favourite directors of Universal's horror films. He lacked the visual flair people like Browning (when he bothered to), Freund or Whale brought to their films, and had only a dogged professionalism to put into that hole, which is not much of a replacement. At least in Man Made Monster's case, Waggner manages to keep things comparatively well-paced (with the overlong court-room stuff and surrounding things as an exception that pumps a part of the film that should take five minutes at most up to fifteen - for no good reason whatsoever; and some sentimental mawkish stuff with an unnecessarily cute dog for whose inclusion I don't see much reason either). It's all very inoffensive, but also a bit dry.

That is, it's dry as long as Lionel Atwill doesn't start on one of his lengthy, mad-scientific rants. Once Atwill gets going, the "tampering in God's domain" (alas, not used in this exact form here) phrases are thrown around with abandon, and plans that make no logical sense at all are explained with much relish. The ten minutes or so of Atwill doing his thing are the main reason to watch the movie, and would deserve - as would one of Junior's better turns as monsterized everyman - to be part of a film that knows what it has in them.

But, as I said, it's all perfectly watchable, which is more than I can say about a lot of Universal's movies from the 40s.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,lionel atwill,lon chaney jr,george waggner

House of Frankenstein (1944)

Mad scientist and Frankenstein fanboy Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) has been incarcerated for trying to put a human brain into a dog (or was it the other way round?) and has been in jail for fifteen years now. At least, prison life has brought him the acquaintance of a proper hunchbacked assistant, a certain Daniel (J. Carrol Naish), who'd do just about anything for any cackling madman promising him a new and improved body.

Really bad weather frees the duo from its imprisonment, and shortly thereafter they meet Professor Lampini (George Zucco) and his mobile chamber of horrors. As luck will have it, the good Professor drives around with the skeleton of Count Dracula (John Carradine), just waiting to lose its stake and come back to life again. When Lampini shows to be unsympathetic to a change of his travelling destination to somewhere convenient to Niemann, Daniel strangles the man and his master and he take over the chamber of horrors.

Niemann plans to use Dracula to take his revenge on the people responsible for his imprisonment, and surely, the friendly vampire does kill the first of Niemann's enemies for him. Alas, the poor bloodsucker doesn't survive the following coach chase (don't ask). At least our hero madmen escape.

Niemann's next stop is the beautiful village of Frankenstein, where he hopes to find the research notes of his idol. Before he and Daniel can visit the obligatory castle ruin, Daniel falls for "beautiful gypsy girl" Ilonka (Elena Verdugo), who is fastly added to the entourage. I'm sure this will end will.

Later at the castle ruin, Niemann fails at his spot hidden roll, though, and has to employ the help of Larry "The Wolfman" Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), who - like Frankenstein's monster - just happens to lie frozen in the ruins of Frankenstein's castle. For a promise of being freed from the werewolf curse, Larry is more than willing to show Niemann what he's looking for.

Afterwards, the merry band - now also including the unconscious monster, for no reason I could fathom - travels to Niemann's home lab, so that Larry can whine a lot and through his awesome power of whining about killing people instead of trying to actually keep himself from doing it, charm Ilonka, Daniel can get jealous and Niemann can plan the big brain switcheroo of '44 - something about putting the monster's brain in Talbot's body and putting Talbot's brain into some anti-climactically caught enemy of Niemann's. Of course, there will come torch-wielding villagers.

House of Frankenstein is the premier example of the late period of Universal Studio's classic monster films, when nobody behind the camera, and certainly nobody from the business side, cared about making watchable films anymore and instead threw any old crap together they thought they could get away with. The order of the day was to cynically milk the last pennies out of franchises none of the involved had ever cared about and an audience the studio obviously loathed.

Viewed from that perspective (and with knowledge of how dreadful most of Universal's genre films of the period were), it is a small wonder House of Frankenstein turned out as entertaining as it is.

The film's entertainment factor certainly has nothing at all to do with the terrible script by Edward T. Lowe Jr. Lowe just randomly throws all Universal horror clichés at the viewer as if the writer had never even heard of words like "character motivation" or "plotting". The script is episodic, sloppy, and makes less sense than the average Dardano Sacchetti script. Obviously, seeing the absence of even the simplest bit of artfulness, concepts like thematic unity between the episodes making up the film are right out. What is most disappointing here, though, is that there is no interaction between the monsters at all; it's strictly one monster after the other. You could think nobody responsible even realized having the monsters interact with each other would be rather fun. Instead, you get a monster meet-up in which the monsters don't meet.

On the plus side, the film is rather energetic and really throws a lot of stuff into little more than an hour of running time, so much of it in fact that some of it just has to be fun, at least for people who like the clichés of classical Universal horror.

I'm not too enamoured of Erle C. Kenton's direction either. Sure, Kenton wasn't the worst of Universal's directors at the time, which is to say that he sometimes accidentally manages to shoot an atmospheric scene, but compare his work here to Val Lewton's contemporary productions at RKO, and you'll see how little thought and care has been put into House of Frankenstein (don't compare the scripts, or you'll want to cry).

Where the people behind the camera don't give a toss, the actors step up to the occasion and do the only thing anyone could do given material like this. They start to chew the scenery with as much melodramatic vigour as possible. Well, at least Karloff and Naish - troopers that they are - do. Carradine doesn't have more than a guest role and just isn't Bela Lugosi (and therefore somewhat boring), while Chaney Jr. is hurt by the script's idiotic assumption that anyone watching will care about his character's plight or the "tragic" love triangle.

Still, having said all that, as a train wreck, House of Frankenstein can be a lot of fun, if a viewer can keep her love for those Universal films which were actually good (or even just passable) at bay. Watching it, I was swinging back and forth between two very different emotions. The first was sadness about what little respect the film showed for some of the early high points of US horror filmmaking that were among its predecessors. The second amusement about the campy excess of it all, something I would have found easier if this hadn't been a Universal film, but something thrown together by enthusiastic but misguided fans of the original films.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,horror,reviews,boris karloff,lon chaney jr,j. carrol naish,john carradine

Spider Baby (1968)

A terrifyingly square-jawed (and dumb as the piece of rock his chin resembles) man called Peter (Quinn Redeker) tells us a little story about that strange little illness known as Merrye's Disease.

It's quite a fittingly named disease, seeing that only members of the Merrye family seem to suffer from it. At some point in their teenage years, all Merryes start to regress mentally and also develop some unpleasant signs of murderous insanity. In the end, a Merrye even falls back into a pre-human state of existence (that is, starts to resemble Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy).

The last presentable members of the family (I suppose procreation by something other than accident can get a little problematic when you are never mentally adult), Virginia (Jill Banner), Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) and Ralph (Sid Haig) live in the rather musty old family home, protected and fed by their trusty old family chauffeur Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.).

The old man is also taking care of the less human family members, a small assortment of aunts and uncles hidden away in the cellar.

Alas, Bruno is but a single man - not a very sane man himself, at that -, and when he returns from an excursion into the city, he finds himself confronted with the dead body of the postman (played by our old nemesis Mantan Moreland), who did not survive the charming little game of "spider" that Virginia likes to play so very much.

Even worse than the corpse though is the letter the postman was delivering - some greedy relatives are planning on taking the "children" under their wings and steal all their money. Oh joy, they're coming to visit today.

And what charming people they are. There's Emily (Carol Ohmart), whose love for dancing in front of mirrors while dressed in her undies will prove quite problematic for her future survival, our narrator (and therefore hero of the piece, so hurray for him) Peter - as I said, dumb as a rock, the hitler-mustachioed lawyer Schlocker (Karl Schanzer) and his secretary Ann (Mary Mitchel), the future love of Peter's life, who is of equally dubious intelligence.

Bruno and his charges are bravely trying to put on a sane face, but Emily's insistence on first having dinner at the house and then staying the night combined with Schlocker's unhealthy curiosity lead them down a path, or rather a corridor, that ends like all corridors in old dark houses end - in a room where someone is very enthusiastic about playing "spider".

Spider Baby's director and writer Jack Hill is one of my heroes of low budget filmmaking in the 60s and 70s. The way in which he was always on the look-out for new methods of making his films as sleazy as possible, while at the same time instilling them with a sense of outrageous fun as well as a very healthy dose of satire alone would be enough to make most of his films (The Big Doll House! Coffy! Foxy Brown! Switchblade Sisters! etc.) mandatory watching in my book. But Hill was also a more than competent director, not of the sort that has much use for obvious signs of flashiness, yet exceedingly effective at making well-paced and clever b-films that for once tend to keep the promises their one-sheets make.

Underneath the wonderful and sometimes delirious strangeness of Hill's movies, there was always something else going on, be it that Hill made a quite cynical commentary on the genre of the revenge flick inside of a revenge flick or that he used a cheerleader exploitationer as a declaration of love and hate for women's lib at once.

Spider Baby isn't any different. Here, Hill drags the corpse of the old dark house mystery/horror movies from the 30s and 40s from its grave and takes a good look at what can be done with it in the late 60s. While he's doing that, he might just as well add the sexuality to it the older films were never able (or allowed to) talk about.

And, while he's at it, he makes parts of the sexuality quite uncomfortable by ascribing it to young women with the minds of children, basically poking around in the closet with the sign "Children and sexuality! Don't open!" without running the risk of not being able to sell his film to an audience.

Brilliantly, Hill does this trick while still making a sleazy, well-paced, well filmed, competently acted and very weird black comedy.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,comedy,jack hill,lon chaney jr.,sid haig,horror,reviews

Witchcraft (1964)

The two British country families of the Laniers and the Whitlocks have been feuding for more than 300 years now. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Norman Laniers managed to discredit the Saxon Whitlocks as the leaders of a local witches' coven, leading to the death of family matriarch Vanessa by being buried alive. This little coup made the Laniers the leading family of the community, with the remaining Whitlocks their eternal enemies.

In 1964 not much has changed between the families. Although the Laniers' head of family Bill (Jack Hedley) is a rather civilized man, it does not take much to rekindle the hatred of Morgan Whitlock (Lon Chaney junior in one of his more dignified late performances).

The Laniers have fallen on hard times and are in need of money. Bill is planning on building a housing estate on his land, but needs the help of the shady (is there any other kind?) building contractor Myles Forrester (Barry Linehan) for its funding.

Trouble arises when Forrester thinks it cheaper to just flatten the graves and crypts on an old cemetery where the ancestors of the Whitlocks (of course including Vanessa) are buried, instead of moving the gravesides.

Lanier himself had nothing to do with the decision, but the enraged Whitlock does not care much.

When Lanier visits the graveyard at night to assess the damage he hears scratching and moaning from Vanessa's sarcophagus. This can't of course be real - or so the man thinks until the people around him start dying in strange accidents. All this can't have anything to do with the devil dolls that are found near the victims, or the strange mute woman in the mud-crusted coat (Yvette Rees), don't you think?

Then there is the little tryst between Lanier's younger brother Todd (David Weston) and Whitlock's niece Amy (Diane Clare) to cope with. Lanier couldn't care less if the girl's a Whitlock or not, but Whitlock does have a different perspective on things.

 

Director Don Sharp and writer Harry Spalding were two of the more talented workhorses of British genre film in the late 50s and early 60s, both probably not all that artistically inclined, but very capable of making the best of low budgets and tight shooting schedules.

With this in mind, I went into Witchcraft expecting a solid film, no more, no less. What I actually got was an effective and moody piece about the collision of the supernatural and modern times.

The script is stronger than usual in this type of film - the protagonists are understandably skeptical when it comes to the reality of witchcraft but are not disbelieving their own experiences so much that the viewer stops taking them seriously anymore. Spalding even goes so far as to make everyone in the film act rather sensible. As sensible as I'd expect someone suddenly confronted with a hidden coven of witches with real supernatural powers to act, at least.

Sharp's direction is a career high, making good use of the clear black and white of the early 60s and reaching a quite perfect gothic mood in the second half of the film. The attack on grandmother Lanier alone is worth the price of admission.

Even if Witchcraft does not reach the dream-like heights of Bava's masterpiece, the photography and the look of Vanessa bring to mind Mask of the Demon, and I'd be very surprised if the Italian film hadn't been an influence on it.

 

Technorati-Tags: british movies,horror,gothic,lon chaney jr.,harry spalding,don sharp,reviews

The Horror!? 87: The Devil's Messenger (1962)

Some demonic bureaucrat in hell (Lon Chaney, jr.) sends a young, dead woman named Satanya (Karen Kadler) back into the world of the living to deliver three items. Each item causes a different strange tale to happen.

In the first one, an agent sends his client, a famous photographer (John Powell) on a vacation. There the good man not only makes some of his best photos, but also murders a woman. As is the custom in an anthology movie of this type, her picture starts to haunt him.

In the second story, a scientist develops an obsession for a frozen girl. It nearly seems as if she might be alive! Do stories of this kind ever end well?

In the third and last of the stories, a soothsayer predicts that something terrible will happen to a man. At first, he is skeptical, but he gets more nervous with each prediction that comes true.

The Devil's Messenger is an anthology film pasted together from three episodes of a Swedish TV show called "13 Demon Street" that was, as far as I could find out, quite an strange project. The great Curt Siodmak and other Americans went to Sweden and made a little TV show in English for the Swedish market.

Later, a more or less clever American producer paid Siodmak to make an anthology movie of some of the material (I suspect Chaney's scenes were shot for the film and not for the TV show. The sources about the film I could find are divided on the point.). As did happen more than once where Siodmak was concerned, he soon broke with his producer and terrible hack Herbert L. Strock wrapped up the project. It's a nice coincidence that there wasn't much Strock could do to ruin the project, so his filmography contains at least one watchable movie.

Of course, the episodes themselves are neither original nor lavishly produced, but are still products of solid craftsmanship, something that often isn't enough to hold a full length feature together, but works out fine for three nice little horror shorts. Nothing in the movie overstays its welcome or tries for things it can't achieve, so if you don't expect to see a film of the quality of the better Amicus productions, you will have a nice time.

 

Technorati-Tags: reviews,horror,swedish movies,american movies,anthology,curt siodmak,lon chaney jr.