The Seventh Victim (1943)

The Seventh Victim, released in 1943, was the fourth of the eleven movies (nine of them horror movies) made by producer Val Lewton at RKO in the 40s. It was Mark Robson’s directorial debut.

Lewton’s first RKO film was Cat People which was a huge hit. In commercial terms the series started to falter slightly after that. Lewton’s idea of taking a totally fresh and original, and subtle, approach to the horror genre was an artistic triumph but audiences were increasingly unimpressed.

The nine Lewton horror films gradually established major cult followings and are now immensely admired by cinephiles but it is worth bearing in mind that only Cat People and The Body Snatcher achieved massive commercial success at the time.

The Seventh Victim bombed at the box office. It’s easy to see why. It sounds like it’s going to be a murder mystery but it isn’t. It’s also not a conventional horror movie. It’s not a conventional anything. No matter how good such films are they’re difficult to promote and are likely to provoke audience resistance. These are the sorts of movies destined one day to become cult movies.

The Seventh Victim begins with what does seem like a straightforward mystery. Schoolgirl Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) is told that the school has been unable to her sister Jacqueline. Jacqueline is her only living relative and pays her tuition fees. Mary decides to head for New York to find her.

She is befriended by lawyer Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont) who claims to be in love with  Jacqueline and to be equally anxious to find her. Ward seems like a very nice man.

Mary is also offered help by a down-at-hell private eye, Irving August (Lou Lubin). He is scruffy and seedy and looks very disreputable but he also sounds very confident and Mary probably figures all private detectives look like bums.

Mary meets several other men who have played some part in Jacqueline’s life. There’s failed poet Jason Hoag (Erford Gage) and psychiatrist Doctor Louis Judd. Since Judd is played by Tom Conway he could turn out to be a sinister figure but in a Lewton film it’s foolish to jump to conclusions.

Mary also discovers the room that Jacqueline rents but keeps permanently locked. The contents of the room provide the first unsettling moment in the movie and it’s very unsettling indeed, for Mary and for the viewer.

Gradually it emerges that Jacqueline had belonged to a group of Satanists known as the Palladists. It seems that Jacqueline is trying to break off her contact with this group.

The movie was criticised at the time for being incoherent. The fact that several scenes were apparently cut (including a longer ending) may have contributed to this but I suspect the cuts were deliberate. Those cut scenes were unnecessary and would have slowed the movie down. The Lewton movies had to come in with running times around 70 minutes. That was non-negotiable. And that was a good thing. They couldn’t afford to have an ounce of fat on them, and they don’t.

The ending as it stands works extraordinarily well and I think the movie is meant to remain enigmatic. In particular I think that Jacqueline is meant to remain something of a mystery. What led her to the Palladists?

It’s definitely not a plot-driven movie. Mood is everything here. None of the characters take any actions that really achieve anything. The attempts by Mary and her friends to rescue Jacqueline are confused and ineffectual.

This is a very morbid film. Most of the characters are either failures or disappointed by life or drifting through life in a mood of quiet despair. This incredible bleakness almost certainly contributed to the movie’s commercial failure just as it has contributed to its later cult status. Nobody made movies like in the 40s, but Val Lewton did.

What’s really fascinating is that these devil-worshippers are themselves so ineffectual. They are effete self-indulgent would-be intellectuals playing at wickedness. They would head for the fainting couches if they ever encountered true evil. Their devil-worshipping game of make-believe staves off the boredom and despair for a while. They think it gives their lives meaning but it doesn’t.

Forget the silly stuff about homoerotic subtexts that some reviewers try to read into this film. I don’t buy it because it would be out of place. This is a movie that has other fish to fry. This is a movie about people who are emotionally, spiritually and intellectually neutered. They’re empty vessels.

Mark Robson had edited the first three movies in the series for director Jacques Tourneur (whom he admired greatly) and Robson learnt his lessons well. He does an excellent job. And the cinematography is once more done by the great Nicholas Musuraca.

The Seventh Victim is awash with film noir nihilism. It’s tough viewing but it’s very highly recommended.

Curse of the Cat People (1944)

The Curse of the Cat People, released in 1944, was the sixth of the horror films produced by Val Lewton for RKO. 

This was Robert Wise’s first movie as director. 

As with Cat People DeWitt Bodeen got the writing credit but in fact the script was co-written by Bodeen and Lewton.

RKO gave Lewton enormous creative freedom except for one thing - they got to assign the titles to the movies before the scripts had even been begun. Oddly enough this worked quite well - being given a title and then having to build a movie around it was a challenge to which Lewton was more than equal. 

But in this particular case Lewton really was dismayed. He did not want to make any sequels. He solved this problem very adroitly. The Curse of the Cat People is an object lesson in how to make a sequel without actually quite making a sequel. They are two separate but linked movies.

While it’s not quite a sequel The Curse of the Cat People does reveal major spoilers for Cat People. You absolutely must see Cat People first. And the nature of the story means that it is impossible to discuss The Curse of the Cat People without revealing huge spoilers for Cat People. So from this point on this review will contain very big spoilers for Cat People.

The time element is a slight problem. Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) and Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) are now married and they have a six-year-old daughter, Amy (Ann Carter). This means that at least seven years must have elapsed since the events of the first movie.

Oliver has never fully recovered from the death of Irena. He deals with it by convincing himself that Irena simply had strange fantasies but Cat People is unequivocally and unambiguously a supernatural horror story. There is no doubt that the supernatural was involved.

Amy is a sweet kid but inclined to live in a dream world. She is solitary rather than lonely. The other children avoid her but this possibly bothers her father even more than it bothers her.

An eccentric old lady gives Amy a ring. It’s a wishing ring. The one thing Amy wishes for is a friend. The old lady has a daughter but refuses to admit it. She insists that her daughter died years earlier and that this woman is an imposter.

Oliver has an odd obsession that Amy is going to take after Irena. Which is of course impossible. She’s Alice’s child, not Irena’s. Although Oliver stubbornly refuses to admit that anything supernatural happened in the past involving Irena he does seem to fear that Irena might somehow be able to exert an influence on Amy. It’s a kind of irrational superstitious fear.

Oliver is not only worried about Amy’s tendency to live in a dream world. It frightens and angers him.

And Amy’s dream world takes a sudden turn when she finds the friend she so desperately wants. The lady is Irena, or Irena’s ghost.

There are many who insist that nothing at all supernatural happens in this movie. It can certainly be interpreted that way. Whether having viewed the movie you believe that Irena’s ghost is real or not is up to you.

With Nic Musuraca once again doing the cinematography this is a visually gorgeous movie with a very slight fairy tale flavour.

Lewton may not have liked the title but it did allow Simone Simon to be cast. After the huge success of Cat People Simone Simon was definitely regarded as bankable and she was the movie’s main selling point, getting top billing and being prominently featured on the poster. To be honest this is such a low-key movie that the title and the presence of Simone Simon were desperately needed to give it any chance at all of commercial success.

Ann Carter pretty much has to carry the whole movie and her superb performance is its biggest strength. Jane Randolph is dull. Kent Smith is dull as well and in this movie Oliver is a very unpleasant unsympathetic character.

Incidentally once the film was completed Lewton decided he was dissatisfied with the ending and ordered reshoots with a slightly different ending.

This is not even remotely a horror movie. It’s almost a fairy tale movie. It’s the story of an unhappy little girl and it was very autobiographical. There are bits of Lewton in Amy and in Oliver and other characters are based partially on people from Lewton’s past. It’s interesting but to me it seems too low-key for its own good and it’s not surprising that it’s commercial performance was disappointing. It’s worth a look as an interesting misfire although I should point out that most people like it a lot more than I did.

Robert Wise did go on to make a genuinely great horror movie, The Haunting (1963).

Isle of the Dead (1945)

Isle of the Dead, released in 1945, was the tenth of the eleven movies made by producer Val Lewton at RKO in the 40s. Yes, there were eleven - there were also two non-horror films.

Lewton started his run at RKO with Cat People which was a smash hit. The subsequent films fared increasingly poorly at the box office. Lewton’s idea had been to take an entirely fresh and original, and subtle, approach to the horror genre. Artistically the idea was a triumph but audiences were not too keen on subtle horror. And while Cat People had received rave reviews critical response to the later Lewton films was decidedly mixed. Critics even more than audiences struggled with the subtlety and psychological complexity of these films.

The nine Lewton horror films gradually built huge cult followings and they’re now worshipped by cinephiles but it is important to bear in mind that only Cat People and The Body Snatcher (the most conventional of the lot) achieved massive success at the time.

RKO had started to become just a little disillusioned. They wanted proper gothic horror settings, not contemporary settings, and they tried to force Lewton into more conventional channels by imposing Boris Karloff on him as the star for the final three films.

Isle of the Dead was a bit of a cheat on Lewton’s part. It does have a period setting but instead of central Europe in the nineteenth century it’s set on an island in the Aegean in 1912, during the First Balkan War. And instead of playing a monster Karloff plays a Greek general. There are supernatural monsters in the movie, or at least the idea of supernatural monsters plays an important role in the plot, but the supernatural definitely does not figure in the movie in the conventional way for which RKO was hoping.

An American war correspondent, Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer), has attached himself the the army of General Nikolas Pherides (Boris Karloff) which has just won a major victory against the Ottoman forces. There is just one tiny fly in the ointment - there have been a couple of cases of septicaemic plague in other Greek army units.

The inspiration for this movie was Arnold Böcklin’s famous painting of the same name. Or rather paintings - the Swiss Symbolist artist produced half a dozen versions between 1880 and 1901.

In the movie the General and Davis visit a tiny nearby island (which looks like the paintings) which is uninhabited and used as a cemetery. They intend to lay a wreath on the grave of the General’s wife. 

The island is represented by a matte painting and it’s a fine example of how effective that technique can be. When we reach the island we can’t help wondering if we’re leaving behind the world of science and reason and entering a world of nightmare.

They are in for a surprise. The island is well and truly inhabited. A Swiss archaeologist, Aubrecht (Jason Robards Sr) lives there with his housekeeper, an old peasant woman named Kyra (Helene Thimig). They have a whole tribe of house guests. There’s British diplomat St. Aubyn (Alan Napier), his wife Mary (Katherine Emery), their sweet but timid servant girl Thea (Ellen Drew) and there’s a Cockney tinware salesman named Robbins.

Davis and the General spend the night on the island. In the morning Robbins is dead, and all the symptoms point to septicaemic plague. 

The General, quite correctly, declares that the island is now under quarantine. Now all they can do is wait for the wind to change. The plague is spread by insects. When the sirocco starts to blow the hot winds will destroy the insects’ eggs and the plague will be over. There is no way of knowing when the sirocco will arrive. If it doesn’t arrive in time they are all doomed. There is no cure for the plague.

And to add to their troubles old Kyra is convinced that the evil has been brought upon them by a vorvolaka (an undead creature similar in some ways to both a ghoul and a vampire). She believes that Thea is the vorvolaka.

So until the movie is well advanced the horror comes from the fear of the plague and from Kyra’s superstitious beliefs. The General is of peasant stock and was raised in an atmosphere of superstition. When he reached the age of manhood he abandoned such beliefs and become a modern man, a man who believed in science and progress. But can we ever entirely forget the superstitious fears of childhood?

Early on we learn something that foreshadows the real horror content which hits us in the final third of the picture, and what a gut-punch it is when it arrives. I can’t think of anything from this era that can match it, apart from The Seventh Victim which just happens to be a Val Lewton picture directed by Mark Robson.

And in Isle of the Dead Mark Robson doesn’t put a foot wrong. Cinematographer Jack MacKenzie  shows us that he knows a thing or two about using light and shadow.

All the cast members are solid but it’s Karloff who has the really meaty role. The General is a good man, but a hard man. He has a stern sense of duty, but also a stern sense of justice. We may find it hard to warm to him but Karloff makes sure we respect him and are fascinated by him.

Isle of the Dead has subtlety and an atmosphere of dread and it has some real chills. Very highly recommended. 

King Kong (1933)

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s King Kong astounded audiences in 1933. It hasn’t lost any of its impact. It’s deservedly regarded as a classic, and it’s one of the most important movies in the history of genre cinema. 

This is a movie about a man who wants to make movies unlike anything ever seen before and that’s exactly what Cooper and Schoedsack were aiming to do, and they succeeded.

King Kong was made at RKO with David O. Selznick acting as executive producer.

Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) makes what we assume are semi-documentary movies in wild and exotic places (such movies were indeed hugely popular at the time and Cooper and Schoedsack had made such movies). He’s been advised that what his films need is some love interest. He’s decided that that is good advice. He’s looking for a suitable actress but due to his reputation for risk-taking no agent will provide such an actress. Quite by accident he encounters Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), a former film extra down on her luck. She’s desperate and she jumps at Denham’s job offer. She’s told she’ll need to be on board the ship ready to sail at dawn.

The movie starts fairly slowly but that’s OK since we get a gradual buildup of the sense of mystery. This is a ship headed to an unknown destination for an unknown purpose. We also get a chance to get to see just how obsessive Carl Denham is, and we get the chance to get to know Ann Darrow and care about her. She’s feisty, likeable and sexy. She also takes a very sensible and grown-up attitude towards Carl Denham. He’s certainly using her but he did rescue her from destitution and gave her a break when she needed it so she owes him. He also promised not to put the moves on her and he’s kept his promise. He’s played square with her and she intends to play square with him.

The destination turns out to be an uncharted island west of Sumatra. If Carl Denham wanted something special to film then he’s certainly found it here. Dinosaurs and a gigantic gorilla definitely qualify as something new. A great deal of mayhem follows, Ann gets to be up close and personal with King Kong, there’s plenty of slaughter. Eventually even more slaughter will follow, in New York, leading up to one of the most iconic ending sequences in movie history.

Of course it’s tempting to focus on Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation which was ground-breaking at the time and still impresses but King Kong has a lot more than that going for it. Once the action starts 40 minutes in it’s relentless. There is a solid hour of non-stop action and excitement and danger. It has a solid plot, basically a riff on Beauty and the Beast. The sets are wonderful. There’s tragedy (Kong is certainly a tragic monster). There’s romance.

It’s also a pre-code movie. Had this movie been made two years later it would have been a whole lot blander. The mayhem and violence wrought by Kong would have needed to be toned way down. And the hints of perversity would have been eliminated (any suggestion that Kong’s attraction to Ann was sexual would have been ruthlessly eliminated). It would have been just a routine monster movie. But in 1933 RKO didn’t have to worry too much about such things and King Kong is breathtakingly violent and loaded with perversity.

I love the extreme artificiality of the island. It’s like a fever dream. Or a voyage into the unconscious of a madman. The special effects are stunning but they’re not aiming for realism. If you’re going to make a fantasy movie it’s pointless trying to make anything in the movie look realistic. King Kong takes place in its own world where the rules are different.

The movie was shot entirely on sound stages and on the backlot. There is no location shooting at all. Which is a major plus - it reinforces the sense that we’re no longer in the everyday world. We’re not in Kansas any more.

Two acting performances stand out. Robert Armstrong is excellent as Carl Denham, effectively conveying the character’s complexity. Carl is unscrupulous and cynical but he’s basically honest and in his own way he’s an obsessive visionary who will sacrifice anything to get his vision on the screen. There’s a lot of Carl Denham in most of the great film-makers in cinema history.

The other standout is Fay Wray. She’s mesmerising and very sexy and she’s never whiny.

And, to be fair, Bruce Cabot is quite good as the handsome first mate Jack Driscoll with whom Ann falls in love.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer and most importantly the film is uncut. Anyone who saw King Kong on TV in the 60s, 70s or 80s was seeing a heavily cut print. The audio commentary track features Ray Harryhausen, a very appropriate choice. It also features snippets or archival interviews with original cast and crew members including Merian C. Cooper and Fay Wray.

King Kong works as well today as it did ninety years ago. A hugely entertaining visually stunning movie. Very highly recommended.

Mark of the Vampire (1935)

Mark of the Vampire is a 1935 MGM horror movie (yes, MGM did make a few horror movies in the 30s) directed by Tod Browning. And it’s a vampire movie starring Bela Lugosi. In this movie he’s Count Mora rather than Count Dracula (the name change being necessitated by the fact that Universal were in a mood to sue anybody who dared to use the name Dracula).

Mark of the Vampire provokes violently mixed reactions among horror fans, the main reason being a certain plot twist, but I won’t say any more for fear of revealing spoilers.

My main reservation about this movie has always been based on the presence of Lionel Barrymore in the cast. In fact he gets top billing. Lionel Barrymore was the biggest ham in the history of cinema and he could annoying.

There’s also the vexed Tod Browning question. Browning has his admirers but he has a lot of detractors and the doubts about his abilities as a director mostly stem from dislike of his 1931 Dracula. I don’t hate Dracula as much as some people do. It has its problems with poor pacing and excessive staginess but it has its merits as well and I’ve slowly warmed to it, to an extent at least.

Mark of the Vampire is a remake of Browning’s 1927 mega-hit London After Midnight which had starred Lon Chaney Sr. It’s impossible to compare the two films since the last surviving print of London After Midnight was destroyed in a vault fire in the late 1960s.

The biggest problem with Mark of the Vampire is that it is partially a lost film as well. It ran into massive problems with the Production Code. It also suffered from a great deal of studio interference and was previewed many times and re-edited many times. Consequently this is a movie that was hacked to pieces. About a quarter of the movie was lost, and most of the cut scenes do not survive. All we have is a horribly butchered version. Unfortunately it appears that many of the scenes that were cut were scenes involving Bela Lugosi and Carol Borland - in other words some of the best bits of the movie were removed and destroyed. As a result there is simply no way to make a proper judgment on this movie.

The movie (or what remains of it) opens with the murder of a nobleman, Sir Carol Borotyn. The setting seems to be central Europe. Mosty it takes place in the late Sir Carol’s castle. It is set in contemporary times, in 1934 in fact.

Dr Doskil (played by Donald Meek) believes Sir Carol was killed by a vampire. The villagers and the servants tend to agree.

The police officer in charge of the case, Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill), scoffs at such superstitious nonsense. He believes he is dealing with a straightforward murder. Sir Carol was a very rich man. Several people stood to gain financially by his death - including his daughter Irena Borotyn (Elizabeth Allan), her fiancé Fedor Vincente (Henry Wadsworth), Irena’s guadian Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt).

Then Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) arrives on the scene. He’s the Van Helsing character. He has no doubt that they are dealing with a vampire.

In fact probably two vampires. Local legends point to a certain Count Mora and his daughter Luna. The Count is naturally played by Bela Lugosi, with Carol Borland as Luna.

Both Irena and Fedor are attacked by the vampire but survive. Professor Zelin has plans to track the vampires down in their lair and destroy them.

Then we get that major plot twist.

I saw this movie years ago on VHS. Seeing it now on Blu-Ray obviously makes it easier to appreciate the visuals, and it is a good-looking movie. James Wong Howe’s cinematography is a major asset.

Dracula had made quite an impact in 1931 with its stunning gothic imagery. Mark of the Vampire is more polished and perhaps visually more impressive than Dracula. The special effects (such as the bats) are done quite well. The gothic atmosphere in the castle is achieved superbly. There are some wonderful spooky images. Luna's flying scene is a highlight.

Barrymore is not quite as irritating as I’d feared. Lionel Atwill is good. Bela Lugosi and Carol Borland are not called upon to do anything more than look disturbingly creepily vampiric and they manage that very convincingly. Elizabeth Allan makes a good heroine without being insipid.

The minor supporting players are there to provide comic relief. There’s way too much of that in the movie and it’s excruciating.

It has to be admitted that the amazingly convoluted plot makes no sense at all. None whatsoever.

Tod Browning had an up-and-down career during the 1930s, with the downs outnumbering the ups. He only made a couple of movies after Mark of the Vampire. The Devil-Doll, made the following year, is a rather good mad scientist movie. I’m quite fond of his final movie, Miracles for Sale (1939).

I liked Mark of the Vampire a bit more this time around. It’s livelier and more technically sophisticated than Dracula and it’s fairly entertaining. Whether you will decide that the ending ruins the movie is up to you. Recommended.

Condemned to Live (1935)

Condemned to Live is a 1935 horror movie made by an outfit called Invincible Pictures (soon to be absorbed into Republic Pictures). This is another of the vampire bat movies that were so popular at the time.

The movie begins in a cave with three members of an exploring expedition (presumably in South America since the cave is infested by vampire bats) taking refuge from hostile locals. One of the three is a pregnant woman and she manages to get bitten by a bat.

We then jump forward a generation or two to a small European village, sometime in the 19th century. It appears to be northern Europe, possibly one of the Scandinavian countries. Professor Kristan (Ralph Morgan)  is much loved by the villagers who look to him for advice about absolutely everything. They’re now much in need of advice. Two people have been found dead, drained of blood, and rumours abound that this is the work of a gigantic bat.

The middle-aged Professor Kristan is about to be married to pretty young Marguerite (Maxine Doyle). Marguerite is actually in love with a young man named David (Russell Gleason) but Professor Kristan is a much better match and he’s such a kindly man and she really respects him and she’s sure she will learn to love him and be a good wife.

The murders continue and while the villagers still insist that it a bat is responsible there are those who are coming to think that perhaps this is an all-too-human fiend. Professor Kristan and his friend and foster father Dr Bizet (Pedro de Cordoba) have their suspicions. The audience already knows (and has known since the beginning of the movie) that the Professor is the fiend and it would in any case have been very obvious. In fact the point of the movie is that we know the identity of the monster but we get to know him and there’s a strong element of tragedy. Professor Kristan is a good man but he has a terrible affliction over which he has no control. Even more tragically, he remembers nothing of his crimes and does not know that he is the killer.

Of course to add some suspense we know that Marguerite is going to be in danger, m a danger of which she suspects nothing.

We naturally get mobs of villagers with torches wanting to hunt down the monster and naturally they pick the wrong man.

Ralph Morgan’s performance is low-key but that works quite well. The problem is that he makes the Professor somewhat sanctimonious.

Maxine Doyle is a reasonably likeable heroine in danger. Mischa Auer is very good as the Professor’s devoted servant Zan.

While this was an Invincible Pictures production it was shot at Universal studios. This movie apparently made use of sets left over from bigger budgeted productions (according to some sources including The Bride of Frankenstein) so for a Poverty Row feature the production values are a lot higher than you might expect.

There’s even some location shooing, at Bronson Canyon in California.

Director Frank R. Strayer incidentally also directed The Vampire Bat. He spent his career mostly making B-movies. His main fault in this movie is that he lets things drag a little at times and it gets a bit talky. On the whole though it’s a well-crafted movie and it packs more of an emotional punch than most low-budget horror flicks. The slightly sympathetic monster is one of its many resemblances to Universal’s great horror movies of the ’30s. One gets the strong impression that Strayer was trying to do a Universal monster movie on a Poverty Row budget, and with a surprising degree of success.

The film runs for 67 minutes but probably would have been better with a little judicious trimming.

Condemned to Live has been released on DVD as part of The Film Detective Restored Classics series. Yes I know what you’re thinking - it probably hasn’t been restored at all. To be honest I don’t think it has either (or at least not very much) but having said that this is still a pretty good transfer. The image is reasonably sharp, contrast is good and while there’s some print damage it’s not intrusive. Some quality is quite acceptable.

Condemned to Live isn’t quite a neglected gem but it’s a decent B-feature that tries for a degree of subtlety which it sometimes achieves. It’s enjoyable enough and is worth a recommended rating.

The Return of Dr Fu Manchu (1930)

Paramount released three Fu Manchu movies in the early days of sound movies. All starred Warner Oland (who went on to even greater fame and notoriety as Charlie Chan) as Fu Manchu. The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu appeared in 1929, followed by The Return of Dr Fu Manchu in 1930 and Daughter of the Dragon in 1931. It is The Return of Dr Fu Manchu with which we are concerned at the moment.

It opens with a recap of the events of the first film. The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu had offered an explanation for Fu Manchu’s hatred of European civilisation - his wife and child had been killed by white soldiers during the Boxer Rebellion (in which Fu Manchu had been firmly on the side of the European powers) and so his crusade against white civilisation is motivated entirely by personal revenge. This is totally at odds with the character of Fu Manchu as established in Sax Rohmer’s novels and in my view it cheapens and trivialises the character. In the books Fu Manchu is motivated by grander and nobler sentiments. He believes that either western civilisation must dominate the East, or that eastern civilisation must dominate the West and being Chinese he naturally hopes that eastern civilisation will triumph. He genuinely believes that he is fighting in the cause of a superior civilisation. Reducing him to a man bent on personal revenge, like a character in a cheap B-western, makes him far less interesting.

It also makes him less of a larger-than-life character and less of a super-villain, which is unfortunate. Everything about Fu Manchu should be on the grand scale, both his evil deeds and his acts of nobility. This is lost in these early film adaptations.

But I digress. The recap of the earlier film takes place during Fu Manchu’s funeral, attended by his old foe Inspector Nayland Smith. Since the movie is just beginning and Fu Manchu is the central character I don’t think any viewer is going to be the least bit surprised that with the funeral services over Dr Fu Manchu is revealed to the audience as being very much alive.

Nayland Smith’s close friend and comrade-in-arms Dr Jack Petrie is about to marry Lia Eltham, both these young people believing they are now free from the menace of Fu Manchu. But Fu Manchu is determined the wedding will not take place. Instead there will be a funeral, Jack Petrie’s funeral. Fu Manchu has set himself the goal of murdering all the British officers responsible for the deaths of his wife and son, and he intends to murder the son of those British officers as well. Dr Jack Petrie is the last name on his list.

The movie takes on some of the attributes of the Old Dark House genre, with the wedding party more or less under siege while Fu Manchu is lurking nearby preparing to strike.

Unfortunately it takes a long time before he does strike. This movie is much too slow. Nothing really happens at all in the first half hour.

Early talkies have a reputation for being static with too much dialogue and not enough action, mainly because of technical difficulties with the early sound technology. This film definitely has that dreaded static feel to it. Rowland V. Lee was usually a competent B-movie director so I would assume that the problems here were mostly due to those technological issues.

It does improve and the second half of the film features some interesting battles of will between Smith and Fu Manchu and between Petrie and Fu Manchu. It doesn’t matter who is stronger or braver or cleverer, what really matters is who has the greater will. There is a bit of action and at least some suspense.

Warner Oland was a fine actor and he makes Fu Manchu a living breathing character but he doesn’t quite the grandeur and the arrogance and the aura of genius to really capture the essence of the character. Of the many actors who have played the rôle the only one who really nailed it was Christopher Lee. Warner Oland isn’t terrible by any means but he just isn’t Fu Manchu.

O.P. Heggie is a very dull Nayland Smith. Neil Hamilton (best remembered as the Commissioner in Batman) is not bad as the young Dr Petrie. Jean Arthur doesn’t make much impact as Lia. William Austin provides some excruciatingly feeble and unfunny comic relief as Petrie’s best man.

A major weakness is that we don’t see enough of Fu Manchu himself, especially in the early stages. While I have reservations about Oland’s performance there’s no question that he’s the one actor here really worth watching.

When we finally see Fu Manchu in his lair things pick up a bit. It’s quite a good set, in fact very good, and does convey a kind of oriental mad scientist vibe.

The Return of Dr Fu Manchu is at best a partial success. After a very dull start it provides some entertainment value but it fails to capture the essential spirit of Sax Rohmer’s novels.  Hardcore Fu Manchu fans will probably want to see it anyway out of curiosity.

Drácula (1931, the Spanish version)

In 1931 if you wanted to reach non-English speaking markets dubbing and subtitling were not options. You had to shoot a second version of the film. In 1931 Universal decided to shoot a Spanish language version of Dracula as well as the Tod Browning-directed English-language version, and to do the two films simultaneously, using the same sets. Browning shot his version during the day. At night George Melford and his crew shot the Spanish version. A legend has grown up that this Spanish version is superior to the English language version and some versions of the legend even go so far as to claim that Melford’s Spanish Drácula is the great horror film that Browning’s film should have been.

Unfortunately it just isn’t true. The Spanish version certainly has its virtues. Melford and his cinematographer George Robinson equal and in many cases surpass the visual brilliance of the Browning-Karl Freund version.

On the whole the acting is slightly better. Lupita Tovar is a more lively and more sexy heroine than Helen Chandler, Barry Norton is much less annoying than David Manners and Eduardo Arozamena is a less stilted Van Helsing. The atmosphere is less stuffy.

There are however some very big problems with the Spanish language version. The first is that Pablo Álvarez Rubio is just a bit too over-the-top as Renfield while failing to achieve the levels of creepiness that Dwight Frye reaches.

A much bigger problem is the absence of Lugosi. Carlos Villarías is, quite simply, an awful Dracula. He grimaces continually but rather than being scary it simply makes the Count seem ridiculous. More seriously he lacks Lugosi’s presence. Lugosi could make Dracula ingratiatingly charming and genuinely sinister. Villarías just seems hyperactive and silly. The more menacing he tries to be the sillier he seems.

Yet another problem is that this version is half an hour longer than the English-language version. Melford was obviously determined to shoot every scene that was in the shooting script. The trouble is that almost all of the extra scenes he shot were unnecessary, and they’re mostly very dialogue-heavy and they make Tod Browning’s leisurely paced film seem brisk and economical.

Melford’s film, despite its visual splendours, also cannot avoid the stagebound feel that was a basic flaw in the script. The initial mistake made by Universal was to adapt the (admittedly very commercially successful) stage play rather than Bram Stoker’s novel. Both versions of the film are for much of their running times too much like filmed plays. Of course it has to be said that Stoker’s novel has its problems too.

Being able to utilise the same sets as Browning’s movie was obviously a huge advantage. For very little money (a budget of just over $60,000) Universal got a movie that looks like an A-picture.

The Spanish version is certainly interesting. It’s fascinating to see the slightly different ways that essentially the same scenes were shot and to see the ways in which Melford and Robinson were often able to improve on the original (they had the further advantage of being to see the dailies of Browning’s film and so of course could see what worked and what didn’t).

Overall however it has to be said that Tod Browning’s Dracula (which I reviewed yesterday), even with its flaws, is the better film. If you’re going to make a vampire movie you have to have the right actor to play the vampire and Lugosi was the right actor, and (sadly) Carlos Villarías wasn’t.

The Spanish-language Drácula is included as an extra on both Blu-Ray and DVD releases of Dracula. Apart from one reel it looks terrific. English subtitles are of course provided.

It is definitely worth seeing even if it’s even more flawed than Tod Browning’s version.

Dracula (1931)

I’ve seen Universal’s 1931 Dracula quite a few times and it’s never impressed me but since I now own it on Blu-Ray I thought I’d give it another try.

Of course the biggest single problem with this movie is that it was so influential and has been imitated, quoted, homaged and parodied so many times. Everything about the movie became a horror movie cliché. What you have to keep always in mind is that in 1931 these were not clichés. At the time of its release this film was new, fresh and exciting. While Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu was the first vampire movie for the vast majority of viewers in 1931 the Universal Dracula would have been their first exposure to the vampire film. In its day it had genuine shock value. It was not just the horror content but also the sexual implications. Dracula’s victims are almost all female and there is a very strong element of seduction in his hunting of his victims.

While Bram Stoker’s novel was well known and the stage adaptation had been very successful it’s also fair to say that most of the plot elements that are now so very familiar would have been new to most of the movie’s initial audience.

Dracula also marked the first appearance of the Universal gothic aesthetic. While that aesthetic would itself become something of a cliché there’s no question that in 1931 this movie must have been an extraordinary visual experience.

So in order to have any chance of appreciating this movie you have to try to forget all those imitations and parodies and just judge it on its own merits.

This naturally also applies to Bela Lugosi’s performance.

This at least is what I tried to do this time and it did help, to some extent at least.

The first twenty minutes is in my view as good as anything you’ll see in any gothic horror movie. We’re told what we need to know in very economical fashion but mostly the focus is  on building the atmosphere. Which is accomplished with outstanding success. There are just so many superb visual moments in this early part of the film. The first scene in the crypt below Dracula’s castle, the first glimpse of an undead hand opening a coffin lid, the celebrated scene on the staircase when Renfield first encounters the Count, the wonderfully eerie scenes with the three brides of Dracula - all absolutely superb.

After the first twenty minutes the scene shifts from Transylvania to England and the movie starts to lose impetus. There are not quite so many opportunities for visual pyrotechnics and upper-class English drawing rooms just aren’t as wonderfully spooky as medieval Transylvanian castles. There are still some very striking images but as the movie relies increasingly on dialogue rather than mood it becomes much less interesting.

There is a school of thought that the strengths of this movie are due to brilliant cinematographer Karl Freund while its weaknesses are the responsibility of director Tod Browning. That might be going too far but certainly the visuals are consistently superior to the story-telling. In fact there are accounts of the making of the movie that suggest that Browning had little interest in proceedings. That would certainly explain the fact that the movie loses direction halfway through and never quite gets back on track.

Lugosi almost single-handedly created our idea of the film vampire - aristocratic, cultured, exotic and very theatrical. The cape, the middle European accent, the piercing stare, pretty much all the stereotypical vampire characteristic go back to Lugosi. In Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu (an unauthorised adaptation of Stoker’s novel) Max Schreck makes the vampire bestial and rather disgusting. It’s a powerful performance in its own way but Scheck’s vampire is a mere monster. In literature there had certainly been aristocratic vampires but it was Lugosi who made the cinematic vampire a gentleman (albeit a slightly creepy gentleman). The many parodies of Lugosi’s performance have made it seem almost ridiculous but that’s perhaps a little unfair. Lugosi would certainly go on to give much better performances (in movies like White Zombie, The Black Cat and The Raven).

The early part of Dracula is very cinematic. Once the Count arrives in England though it becomes more and more simply a filmed stage production, and the performances (including Lugosi’s) become more stagey and much less effective. Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing gives a performance that is both overly melodramatic and rather dull. Dwight Frye is certainly memorable as Renfield although again it’s essentially a silent movie performance.

Although I’m inclined to judge it less harshly than in the past overall Browning’s Dracula is still a bit of a disappointment, particularly since the essential ingredients were there for a great horror film, most notably the superb Universal gothic aesthetic and Lugosi as the Count.

Universal’s Blu-Ray release looks very good although the menus are unbelievably aggravating. There are plenty of extras - a couple of documentaries and an audio commentary by David Skal. The most exciting extra though is the Spanish-language Drácula, shot at the same time as the English version. It’s interesting enough to be worth its own post which will follow shortly.

The Black Raven (1943)

The Black Raven is an Old Dark House movie, a genre notable for movies of widely varying quality and entertainment value. This is definitely one of the better examples.

This is a PRC picture and you know what that means. A pitifully small budget, rock-bottom production values and very few sets. It does however have George Zucco and that makes up for a lot.

Zucco plays Amos Bradford, also known as the Raven. He runs a small hotel called the Black Raven near the Canadian border. He obviously had a shady past and now it might be about to catch up to him. A small-time hoodlum who believes Bradford double-crossed him has broken out of prison and now he’s arrived at the hotel determined to even the score. Bradford is however not the easiest guy to rub out. He’s been around and he knows a trick or two.

Naturally there’s a severe storm that has washed away all the roads and bridges so the handful of guests at the Black Raven are cut off from the outside world, just as they should be in any self-respecting Old Dark House movie.

The guests are naturally a motley and slightly disreputable lot.

There’s gangster Mike Bardoni who is hoping to slip over the Canadian border. There’s a weedy little middle-aged guy named Horace Weatherby who clutches a briefcase very nervously and won’t let anyone touch it. There’s a young couple who are eloping and, rather inconveniently, there’s also the girl’s father. Her father is crooked politician and gangster Tim Winfield, which is even more awkward for the young couple. There is also of course the escaped convict mentioned earlier. To round off the cast there’s Bradford’s servant Andy (yes there’s an Amos and an Andy).

None of these people could be described as being entirely a law-abiding citizen and none could be described as trustworthy. So when the first murder takes place just about every one of them could be a suspect.

There’s also an incredibly dumb sheriff who clearly could not be trusted to investigate a case of an overdue library book.

There will be much creeping about in dark cellars, people will get slugged from behind and pushed down stairways, everyone will suspect everyone else, there will be more murders and it all takes place with lots of thunder and lightning in the background. In other words it has all the ingredients that this genre requires except that there are no hints of the supernatural.

It seems like a stock-standard plot for this genre but it does have a bit of a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. I was sure I knew the identity of the murderer but I was wrong.

George Zucco as Bradford is a slightly ambiguous character. He could be a villain or he could be a hero. Zucco is as watchable as always. The other cast members are adequate. Glenn Strange as Andy provides the comic relief which luckily is kept within reasonable bounds.

Sam Newfield directed countless B-pictures including quite a few that were pretty good movies of their type. He really goes to town with the shadows in this film. One could almost say that he overdoes it, but this is an Old Dark House movie and you just can’t have too many sinister lurking shadows in such a movie. On the whole his approach works and the movie’s pacing can’t be faulted. For a PRC movie it’s surprisingly well made.

This is a public domain title so while there are quite a few DVD releases around most are obviously going to be of fairly poor quality. The Grapevine Video edition offers a transfer that is at least reasonably watchable although some scenes are very murky indeed and most of the movie has a somewhat washed out look. They have paired this film with another Zucco flick, Dead Man Walk, on one disc. If you’re a George Zucco fan and you can pick it up cheaply enough it’s probably worth grabbing.

The Black Raven is an unassuming but vastly enjoyable little movie. It only runs for an hour but it’s non-stop fun. Highly recommended.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Bride of Frankenstein is the celebrated 1935 sequel to Universal’s 1931 hit Frankenstein. Both movies were directed by James Whale, a man with an extraordinary and to my mind slightly mystifying reputation as a great director of horror movies.

We start with a rather unnecessary prologue featuring England’s most degenerate poets, Byron and Shelley, listening to Shelley’s wife Mary continuing her story where the novel left off. And the movie then takes up the story at the exact point at which the 1931 Frankenstein ended, with the monster incinerated in the burning barn and the body of the hapless Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) being returned to his castle and to his grieving fiancée Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson).

Henry Frankenstein is however not quite dead. He recovers and is determined to forget all about his terrible experiments. The arrival of his old teacher, Dr Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), changes all this. Pretorius has been working (in a particularly bizarre way) on the creation of artificial life as well, and he wants Frankenstein’s help. He intends to get that help, even if he has to resort to extreme methods to persuade Frankenstein.

Pretorius wants to create a female monster, a mate for Frankenstein’s original monster. The monster, like its creator, survived the fiery furnace and now is now roaming the countryside causing mayhem and trying to make friends, which in turn creates more mayhem. The monster’s wanderings will eventually bring him to Frankenstein’s castle where Pretorius will use him to force Frankenstein’s hand.

Finally, after an hour of mostly irrelevant sub-plots and maudlin interludes, the movie kicks into high gear as Frankenstein and Pretorius bring the monster’s mate (played by Elsa Lanchester) to life with unexpected and catastrophic results.

James Whale clearly had no genuine interest in horror films and no real respect for the genre. As in most of his horror efforts he insists on playing far too many scenes as comedy and unfortunately comedy was something for which he had little flair. The entire movie seems to be intended as a mockery of the horror genre, and of Mary Shelley’s original story and quite probably mockery of the audience as well. To make sure that the movie’s impact as a horror film is blunted as much as possible Whale agains calls on the services of Una O’Connor who had almost single-handedly wrecked The Invisible Man. She throws herself into her task of wrecking The Bride of Frankenstein with great enthusiasm.

Many many writers worked on this film so perhaps it’s not surprising that the final script is a little disjointed and unfocused.

The acting is extremely uneven. Apart from the appalling Una O’Connor we get more unfunny comic relief from E.E. Clive as the burgomaster. Colin Clive is dull, as he was in Frankenstein. Ernest Thesiger is mannered and arch and while he tries hard to be the personification of evil and vice at times he becomes just irritating.

On the credit side Elsa Lanchester is memorably bizarre in her dual roles as Mary Shelley and as the monster’s bride but gets little screen time and little time to do any actual acting. Karloff is good, as always, although he strongly disagreed with the decision to make the monster speak. Dwight Frye as the sinister Karl is another bright spot.

The scenes involving Dr Pretorius’s miniature people are technically impressive but they’re silly and pointless and they greatly weaken the film.

While the script, direction and acting are uneven the superb visuals do much to compensate for the movie’s other weaknesses. The bringing to life of the monster’s bride is a spectacular visual tour-de-force. Whale seems suddenly to come to life, throwing one stunning image after another at us. There’s some superlative editing also in these scenes. The movie is well worth seeing just for these absolutely superb sequences.

Whatever its weaknesses this is technically an exceptionally well made motion picture. The sets are excellent. The Bride’s makeup effects are terrific. John J. Mescall’s cinematography (he described the lighting approach he used as Rembrandt lighting) is magnificent. James Whale had worked as a set designer and apparently had quite a bit of input into the impressive art direction of the film.

Universal’s Blu-Ray presentation looks great and there are plenty of extras, including an embarrassingly worshipful audio commentary.

Bride of Frankenstein is certainly a vast improvement on Whale’s The Invisible Man. It has some very very good moments. The changes of tone are somewhat disconcerting. For most of the earlier part of the film it just doesn’t quite work, perhaps mostly because it’s obvious that James Whale never really wanted to do the film in the first place. The last twenty-five minutes though are as good as anything that has ever been achieved in a horror movie. Despite the reservations I have about it Bride of Frankenstein still has to be recommended.