Monster March: Son of Frankenstein (1939)

My eyes were well and truly rolling with the very title card of Son of Frankenstein, accompanied by a melodramatic late-30s fanfare. The “son of” premise seemed like a stretch, and I’d already seen and rejected Son of Dracula some months before. (Join us next week for that fiasco.) Imagine my surprise, then, to find that Son of Frankenstein is a real bang-up winner, captivating from the start thanks to an increasingly manic Basil Rathbone and an irresistibly weird performance from Bela Lugosi. 

Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) has come to his father’s village to reclaim the family castle. Wolf is astonished to learn that his father’s good name has been abhorred by the town, still reeling from the doctor’s monstrous experiments. In exploring the castle, Wolf discovers that he’s playing unwitting landlord to a squatter named Ygor (Bela Lugosi), an alleged grave-robber whose neck was broken in a hanging gone awry. Ygor guides Wolf to the family crypt, where the remains of The Monster (Boris Karloff) lie in suspended animation. Inspired to rehabilitate his father’s name, Wolf resumes Henry Frankenstein’s experiments and sets out to (re)create life.

 

It’s unfortunate that I spent so much time watching Son of Frankenstein while thinking instead about Young Frankenstein. (It doesn’t help that I’ve undoubtedly seen Young Frankenstein more than any other Franken-film.) It’s unfortunate because Son of Frankenstein is actually really rather enjoyable in its own right. But any Brooks-heads worth their salt can’t help but notice how much of the Gene Wilder spoof is airlifted directly out of Son of Frankenstein – the mustache, the darts, the wooden-armed inspector. There is, however, so much more in Son of Frankenstein worth celebrating beyond the parodic legacy it would inspire, even if the relationship between the two is akin to a winking Rosetta Stone.

 

Son of Frankenstein is Boris Karloff’s swan song as The Monster (though not his last outing as a Frankenstein), and it’s a step backwards from Bride of Frankenstein. Where Bride advanced the creature’s intellect by imbuing him with the power of speech, Son gives us a mute Monster. Nor is the Monster entirely sympathetic here, reduced instead to a hulking brute who blindly follows commands; we get a touch of humanity here and there, but it’s nothing like seeing the Monster learn kindness as he did to great effect in Bride. Still, Karloff manages to find potent opportunities for a part that isn’t as juicy as before; there’s a particularly arresting sequence in which the Monster gazes at his own reflection, and Karloff weaves a whole subtext without a single line of dialogue.

 

There are two paradigms that the Universal Monster movies tend to indulge. On the one hand, you have films like Dracula or The Mummy, in which humanity battles a terrible and monstrous being. On the other hand, films like Son of Frankenstein depict how humanity finds its own monstrosity in the face of the supernatural. While there was little question that Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein was already well on his way to madness before his creation lived, Basil Rathbone gives a delightfully hammy turn as Wolf von Frankenstein, whose descent into madness is a downward spiral of manic glee. By the film’s end, when he’s shrieking and cackling like his father, Wolf is a full-fledged madman in the tradition of Renfield or perhaps even The Invisible Man.

 

For mad monstrosity, though, it is (as ever) tough to beat Bela Lugosi. Lugosi practically carves a Thanksgiving turkey out of the scenery as the snarling Ygor, not quite the hunchbacked assistant you might be expecting. From the very first frames of the film, in which Lugosi leers and squints from a castle window, it’s a captivating performance. For a while, it’s almost as though Lugosi has skulked his way out of another film, his hairy fanged Ygor an odd mix of vampire and werewolf, but Lugosi to his credit never veers out of his lane and instead forces the film to bend around him. Like the Monster, Ygor too has been made unnatural, supposedly executed only to rise from his grave and reveal that his neck was merely but not fatally broken. You can probably guess where Ygor’s plot goes based on an early scene in which Ygor spits upon the jurors who had previously sentenced him to a death that didn’t take, but the way Lugosi revels in this bizarre supporting character tests the old Frankenstein cliché that the real monster is the doctor. No, Son of Frankensteinoffers, the real monster is the one society creates. The question of whether Ygor was a grave-robber is almost immaterial because the film is more interested in the ways that Ygor was driven to his present condition.

 

At the surprising heart of Son of Frankenstein, though, is Inspector Krogh, as played by Lionel Atwill. I say “surprising” because my only prior exposure to this kind of character was the exceedingly preposterous Inspector Kemp, portrayed by Kenneth Mars in Young Frankenstein. Mars’s Inspector is eight rungs over the top, with numerous faulty wooden limbs and an accent thicker than oatmeal, so I was in a sense bowled over by Inspector Krogh – and not just to find source material for Kenneth Mars to mine. I was surprised that Krogh is recognizably a prototype for Kemp, but I was even more astounded that Krogh is entirely sympathetic, a tragic figure who steals your heart (while Lugosi steals the movie). Krogh’s underlying backstory – that he had a promising military career torn away from him when The Monster ripped off his arm – radiates through every scene, Atwill instilling a tender and heartfelt note into his character’s very soul.

 

Of course, this is a Universal Monsters movie, and the history-repeating moment when The Monster rips off Krogh’s wooden arm feels very much like having your cake and eating it too. You can almost hear director Rowland V. Lee giggle with delight at finding a way around the censors of 1939 by having a prosthetic torn away; for a moment, movie magic tricks you into think the Monster is tearing actual limbs apart. Lee is clever, though, as he is throughout the film’s comparably exorbitant runtime; Son of Frankenstein runs 99 minutes, which is a good twenty to thirty minutes longer than most of the Universal Classic Monsters features. It’s to Lee’s credit that the film never feels baggy or slow; the films starts on a moving train, and it’s almost as though Son of Frankenstein never loses that momentum. As the first Universal Monsters movie in three years, after Dracula’s Daughter, Son of Frankenstein is a promising reboot/sequel. 

Son of Frankenstein is not rated. Directed by Rowland V. Lee. Written by Willis Cooper. Starring Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson, and Donnie Dunagan. 

Next week for Franken-Friday, somebody call an exorcist, because it’s The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), starring Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. If you need your Franken-fix before that, Wolf Man Wednesday has House of Frankenstein (1944), starring Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, and Glenn Strange.

Monster March: Dracula's Daughter (1936)

On the surface, there is much that should be intriguing about Dracula’s Daughter. It represents the last Universal Monsters film before a hiatus and renewal, it follows closely on the narrative heels of Dracula, and it expands the Dracula mythos by introducing a daughter to the world of the vampire’s curse. Even better, Edward Van Sloan is back as Van Helsing (here, inexplicably, Von Helsing). Yet for a good amount of Dracula’s Daughter’s brief runtime, I found myself bored amid what sounding like a promising premise.

Immediately after driving a stake through Count Dracula’s heart, Professor Von Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) is arrested for murder. Scotland Yard scoffs at his tale of vampires, so his only hope for exoneration lies in proving his sanity. He calls on his friend Jeffrey Garth, a psychiatrist, to join his legal team, but Dr. Garth is slowly falling under the quite-literal spell of Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), the secret daughter of Count Dracula himself.

 

Typing that synopsis out, Dracula’s Daughter sounds like a real winner. I was perhaps unreasonably excited to see Edward Van Sloan return, as he was my second favorite from Dracula (behind Bela Lugosi, naturally). Thanks to Van Sloan, the first reel of Dracula’s Daughter is dynamite, though I concede that I was half-expecting a courtroom drama in which Von Helsing defends his innocence by proving the existence of vampires – though I grant you, that probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I was therefore disappointed that Von Helsing’s significance to the plot dwindles as the film goes on, to the point where his arrest for murder is never actually resolved (though we hope and presume that Scotland Yard believes him after settling the strange case of Countess Zaleska). Sadly, the film reduces Von Helsing to an exposition machine, down to repeating a great deal of dialogue from the 1931 film. (What’s more, Dracula’s Daughter actually reuses a shot from 1931, the operating room when Lucy Weston passes, here subbed for one of the Countess’s victims.)

 

Unfortunately, then, Von Helsing is not the focus or even a primary concern of Dracula’s Daughter. In a classic case of wasted potential, Von Helsing never even meets Countess Zaleska. Perhaps that’s for the best, though; where Edward Van Sloan had crackling chemistry opposite Bela Lugosi, it’s hard to imagine him getting blood from the stony performance of Gloria Holden, who is, I’m sorry to say, a bit of a bore. At first, she seems promising, scheming to free herself of her father’s dreadful curse, yet as the film elapses and the poor Countess surrenders to the selfsame curse, Holden’s performance dries up, and she spends most of the rest of the runtime – pardon the pun – vamping. There’s very provocative subtext (especially for 1936), if terrifically clichéd, about the female vampire being coded as lesbian, which makes her budding relationship with Dr. Garth a real mystery. Is she planning to bite him, or does she hope he’ll hypnotize her out of her vampirism? The film leans more toward the second possibility, though I’m not sure that’s how vampires or hypnosis work.

 

Surprisingly, some of the best parts of the film have nothing to do with Countess Zaleska or with vampires in general. Equally if not more compelling are the sequences between Dr. Garth and his secretary Janet, played by Marguerite Churchill. The pair have a wonderful sense of interplay, reminiscent a bit of a discount William Powell and Myrna Loy. (Indeed, I’m certain I would have loved Dracula’s Daughter if Powell and Loy had played in it.) These scenes are light and breezy, and Churchill plays what could have been a thankless role with spunk and good humor.

 

Dracula’s Daughter does represent something of the end of an era. It’s the last Universal Monsters film for three years – the cinematic universe would be, appropriately enough, resurrected in 1939 with Son of Frankenstein – and it’s the last to bear the influence of studio bigwig Carl Laemmle and his son, Carl Laemmle, Jr. It certainly feels of a piece with its predecessors, stodgy and stagey for better and for worse. Its pace is deliberate, often slow, and the monstrosity of the story is largely restricted to the imagination. In a sense, the key is again Edward Van Sloan; though Dracula’s Daughter takes place moments after Dracula, Van Sloan certainly appears to have aged at least five years, with his hairline receding and his presence more sedate than before. So too perhaps did the studio feel the monster movies had run their course; Universal certainly felt that way about ousting the Laemmles.

 

But if we’ve learned one thing over the course of this Monster March, it’s that you can’t keep a good creature down for long. In the case of the vampire, it would only take seven years for the Son of Dracula to rear his head; fortunately for you creatures of the night, it’ll be a scant seven days.

 

Dracula’s Daughter is not rated. Directed by Lambert Hillyer. Written by Garrett Fort and Oliver Jeffries. Starring Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill, Irving Pichel, and Edward Van Sloan. 

Tune in tomorrow for Wolf Man Wednesday, with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi.

Next week for Transylvania Tuesday, if Dracula’s Daughter can’t git-r-dun, this looks like a job for the Son of Dracula (1943), starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Monster March: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

From 1935, Bride of Frankenstein is the first Universal Monsters film to be produced after the so-called “Hays Code” was placed in effect, operating as a mandatory code of conduct for film production. One might then expect, especially with the old maxim that sequels rarely live up to the original, that Bride of Frankenstein would be a watered-down shadow of its predecessor, a moralizing cash grab to capitalize on Universal’s newfound monster mania. The truth is, however, Bride of Frankenstein is a mesmerizing and unmissable continuation of Frankenstein.

Moments after the original film (and following a handy recap segment), Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is rescued from the burning windmill, where his monstrous creation is presumed to have died. But while Henry recovers from his experience, the Monster (Boris Karloff) too has escaped certain death and is lurking near the village in search of companionship. Meanwhile, Henry’s old mentor Dr. Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) has come to Castle Frankenstein to demand that his former pupil resume his aberrant experiments in order to create a Bride (Elsa Lanchester) for the Monster.

 

Bride of Frankenstein is another in the Universal Monsters canon that I couldn’t be sure whether I’d seen before. There were bits that I recognized, certainly, but what was surprising was that those were sequences I had previously assumed were in the original Frankenstein, like the fact that the creature speaks in this film. I was equally amazed to discover that The Monster’s interaction with a blind man – which was present in the Shelley novel – was reserved for Bride of Frankenstein. (Of course, anyone who can get through that sequence without a hearty guffaw at the memory of Gene Hackman hasn’t, I venture, seen Young Frankenstein.)

 

In fact, watching Frankenstein and Bride practically back to back made me wonder if this was less an early case of Hollywood sequel-itis and more a case of a genuine two-part story that (with the benefit of hindsight) ought to be run sequentially. The analogue that kept running through my mind was a comparison with The Godfather Saga, the seamless editing of The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II into one extended epic film. Surely someone out there has stitched Frankenstein and his Bride together, moving the Mary Shelley prologue to the very beginning and eliminating the recap reel that opens Bride. If not – psst, Universal, that’s money on the table.

 

I teased in last week’s review of The Invisible Man that Bride of Frankenstein is the first Universal Monsters film made after the Hays Code was in effect, and the central change here seems to be that Henry Frankenstein’s God complex is excised – or perhaps, more accurately, relocated onto the villainous character of Dr. Pretorius. In the process, however, the net result is that Henry becomes a character practically addicted to his scientific experiments; his aberrations pull him away from his wedding night and drive him into a recursive spiral of abomination. Having created misshapen life already, a sweaty, frantic Henry is now impelled to create a bride. It’s a deranged turn, made all the more manic by Colin Clive’s own struggles with alcohol addiction. 

 

I was surprised to see what little screen time the eponymous Bride is given in this film – only minutes at best (and with no dialogue, to boot). It’s frankly astonishing, then, to think of how iconic she’s become, and that’s almost entirely due to that striking image she presents, with her lightning-frazzled beehive and ghoulish shrieks and hisses. Perhaps the Universal Monsters linger best in our memories as still images, shocking intrusions into reality beyond any horror that a full-length film could impart. One can’t help but wonder what the Bride might have done had the Monster not decided for the both of them, “We belong dead.”

 

Of course, the Monster is speaking also for Dr. Pretorius, who joins the cast as its all-too-willing villain. Ernest Thesiger plays him delightfully arch, with a gleeful dose of camp, which makes him the perfect foil for the repressed mania of Henry. Pretorius is then the other half of the mad scientist coin; where Henry is prone to fits of hysteria (as when he reprises his most famous line to shriek, “She’s alive!”), Pretorius is in full control of his faculties and pursues his own eccentric experiments all the same. The sequence in which he demonstrates the results of his homunculi project is quaint for its 1935 special effects, but there is a sadistic streak in Pretorius, particularly when he encourages Henry to think of him as the devil.

 

Where the first film was very careful to caution us in advance that monstrosity is innate, particularly in the case of the Monster’s abnormal brain, Bride of Frankenstein is more reserved, positing instead that the Monster can and does learn kindness – a double-edged sword, as it were, since the Monster learns in tandem the lesson that humanity will always fear and revile him. This redemptive plot, in which an abnormal brain in an executed criminal’s body can rediscover his own humanity, is both surprisingly progressive and welcomely transgressive, forcing us to ask who the true monsters have really been. Mary Shelley herself (portrayed by Lanchester here) has her own opinion, suggesting that her story has been one of a man who plays God, but it seems the narrative gets away from Henry by the film’s end. The franchise too would get away from him (and, alas, director James Whale, for whom Bride is his last Franken-film), leaving this film a bit like the ending of The Godfather: Part II, in which Michael Corleone sits on a park bench and regrets all the ways his best-laid plans went awry. Whether the Coda to the Frankenstein duology would be Son of Frankenstein or (as I might prefer) Young Frankenstein is a question for next week’s Franken-Friday.

 

Bride of Frankenstein is not rated. Directed by James Whale. Written by William Hurlbut and John L. Balderston. Based on the novel by Mary Shelley. Starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, and Elsa Lanchester. 

Tune in tomorrow for Deep Sea Saturday, with Revenge of the Creature (1955) starring John Agar, Lori Nelson, Tom Hennesy, and Ricou Browning.

Next week for Franken-Friday, madness skips a generation for the Son of Frankenstein (1939), starring Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Bela Lugosi. Next week is a triple-header for the Monster, though. On Sunday, it's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange; then stop by on Wolf Man Wednesday to see what happens when Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi.

Monster March: Werewolf of London (1935)

Devotees of the Universal Monsters may be surprised (as I was) to know that Lon Chaney Jr.’s iconic Wolf Man was not the first werewolf movie assayed by Universal. No, as Yoda says, there is another, six years earlier and eclipsed by its franchised successor. Werewolf of London ought to be remembered for largely inventing the werewolf myth as we know it, though its middle is a bit baggy and saddled with discomfiting and ultimately irrelevant Orientalism.

Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) has just returned from Tibet, having successfully retrieved a sample of the phosphorescent moon flower. While secluding himself in his laboratory in an attempt to replicate the moonlight that makes the flower grow, Dr. Glendon is keeping a dangerous secret from his estranged wife Lisa (Valerie Hobson). In Tibet, Glendon was mauled by a mysterious wolf-like creature, and old acquaintance Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland) believes Glendon was bitten by a werewolf – a bite that will cause Glendon to mutate and murder that which he loves most.

 

We can speculate all day about why it was that Chaney’s Wolf Man became the third cornerstone of the Universal Monsters trinity (with Karloff’s Frankenstein and Lugosi’s Dracula) while Hull’s didn’t. Perhaps the standout feature for me came in discovering that there is very little sympathetic about Glendon, even before he mutates into a werewolf; he is neglectful of his wife, suspicious of her only friend in the film, and utterly consumed by his work. Yet where Colin Clive elicited some degree of sympathy as Henry Frankenstein, addicted to his scientific endeavors, Hull is entirely heartless and downright antisocial in his monomaniacal pursuit of the “mariphasa” flower.

 

That’s not to say, however, that Hull isn’t eminently watchable. Indeed, as a sneering cad, he gives a delightful character performance that leads me to wish we had seen more of him in the Universal Monsters canon. I feel similarly about Jack Pierce’s makeup effects; all too often, makeup artists were the unsung heroes of monster films, and Pierce’s work transforming Hull into a werewolf – recognizable as both man and wolf simultaneously – is the actual scene-stealer in the film. Under the slightly minimalist makeup, Hull gets to snarl and skulk his way through the film in a performance that practically screams how much fun he’s having.

 

In watching Werewolf of London, I was struck by how the film seems to anticipate the morality play aspects of later slasher films. We all know that when teen campers get handsy in their tents, the serial killer is most likely to strike, subtextually communicating the value of chastity to the audience. Werewolf of London, too, plays the same game; in one memorable sequence set in a zoo, Glendon’s victims discuss their intent to commit adultery without any subtlety. “I hadn’t ought to do this,” the man says, “me with a wife and kids.” His mistress replies, “But you don’t love your wife and your kids. You love me!” It’s so on the nose that a neon sign practically announces their imminent mortality, a delightfully unsubtle beat that reminds us how simple – or rather, how willfully uncomplicated – classic films could be. As much as we might love the Monsters, these films often take pains to show that good people (and usually, happily married ones) will always prevail.

 

Perhaps what Werewolf of London needed, then, is a clearer positioning of Glendon as the film’s antagonist. Instead, the film includes Dr. Yogami as his adversary, particularly in the pursuit of the mariphasa. Dr. Yogami is, in a sense, the elephant in the room, because it’s Warner Oland continuing to do his Charlie Chan routine, albeit as a villain this time. As retrospectively uneasy as Oland’s yellowface performance is, and over and against Oland’s own dubious claims to Mongolian ancestry, it can’t even be said to be in service of the character (as one might argue for Chan) because there’s no reason for Dr. Yogami to be Asian, aside from invoking “Yellow Peril” as shorthand for Yogami’s villainy. In fact, we know little about Dr. Yogami, how he came to need the mariphasa, or what he might do without it. He remains only an obstacle for Glendon to overcome, even though there might be an even more interesting story if Yogami were given any of the film’s attention.

 

Likewise, the film gets distracted from the much more interesting werewolf plotline by several subplots that never quite go anywhere. We’ve got Yogami, yes, but the film also pays a good amount of attention to a will-they/won’t-they between Glendon’s wife Lisa and her childhood friend, aviator Paul Ames (Lester Matthews). It’s interesting to watch the ways this plotline invokes Glendon’s ire and jealousy, but the film never pushes the relationship beyond what the Hays Code would allow. Moreover, the film ends with what is apparently Paul’s plane flying away from London – though why the film ends there is anyone’s guess. Elsewhere in the film, Glendon rents a room to isolate himself from his wife and thereby save her from his lycanthropic bloodthirst. Yet every time the film cuts away to Glendon, it first lingers with his landladies, two elderly drunkards who indulge in protracted bits of odd comedy that never quite lands. Maybe it’s the accents, maybe it’s the historical distance, but Mrs. Whack and Mrs. Moncaster are a far cry from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and I found myself begging for a full moon to clear them from the deck.

 

The lingering image I take from Werewolf of London, though, is its delightfully dapper werewolf, who makes certain to grab his coat and scarf before he goes on the prowl. No torn sleeves or muddy trousers for this beast – Glendon is a werewolf of class, and watching him carefully don his overcoat had me howling with delight. It’s this air of sophistication that makes him more Dracula than Frankenstein, proving that monsters with panache are just that much more intriguing. The furry beast that mauls Glendon in the first act is scary enough, but Glendon’s own refusal to lose his sophistication and humanity puts one very much in the mindset of Warren Zevon’s song of the same name. If only we’d gotten to see Glendon eat beef chow mein in the sequel!

 

Werewolf of London is not rated. Directed by Stuart Walker. Written by John Colton and Robert Harris. Starring Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, and Spring Byington. 

Tune in tomorrow for See-Thru Thursday, with The Invisible Man Returns (1940) starring Vincent Price and Sir Cedric Hardwicke.

Next week for Wolf Man Wednesday, worlds collide when Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi. For bonus werewolf shenanigans, Silly Sunday has Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange.

Monster March: Drácula (1931)

Today’s monster movie, to borrow a phrase from Rod Serling, is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of review. As prolific as international films have become and as sophisticated as modern dubbing might be, we may find the genesis of Drácula somewhat mystifying. Shot in Spanish, using the same screenplay as Tod Browning’s Dracula, Drácula was filmed strictly at night while Browning’s crew used the same sets during the daytime. We don’t quite have anything like this for the other installments of Monster March, so Drácula is a bit exceptional. It’s also very nearly a better film than Browning’s Dracula, aside from one essential omission – it doesn’t have Lugosi. 

Carlos Villarías stars as El Conde Drácula, a more genial and more sensuous vampire than Lugosi. After arranging a real estate deal with the mad solicitor Renfield (Pablo Alvarez Rubio), Drácula travels from Transylvania to England, where he preys upon socialite Eva Seward (Lupita Tovar), her fiancé Juan Harker (Barry Norton), and her physician father (José Soriano Viosca), who has already enlisted the help of Professor Van Helsing (Eduardo Arozamena) in understanding the unscientific maladies plaguing London since the Count’s arrival.

 

Drácula uses the same script as Browning’s film, but it’s more than twenty minutes longer because its script wasn’t “censored” in the way that Browning’s was. We spend more time with Eva and Juan, establishing their relationship and their reactions to the grim circumstances befalling them; consequently, they’re much more interesting here than Mina and John were in Dracula. There’s a much longer sequence where Eva begs Juan to leave her to her fate, and the moment when she very nearly bites him is much more intense and erotically charged.

 

Indeed, at the risk of indulging a caricature, emotions are running much hotter overall in Drácula. Eva is lustier than Mina, El Conde is more overtly passionate than Lugosi’s slow-burn charisma, and we actually see the physical evidence of Drácula’s bite – his kiss, if you will – multiple times. In fact, Drácula is entirely less coy about the erotic dimension of El Conde’s kiss, perhaps because Villarías is ten years younger than Lugosi. Surprisingly, though, Drácula is missing the brief sequence where Dracula menaces a flower girl outside a London theater, almost as though this Drácula is much too sophisticated to indulge in a quickie with an anonymous victim. Yet there’s an additional death in Drácula; where Dracula left the fate of Lucy Weston largely unresolved, Drácula makes sure to let us know that the vampiric Lucía has been staked by Juan and Van Helsing.

 

In a bit of performance review, Lupita Tovar is very nearly better than Helen Chandler as Eva/Mina, though in part because she’s given so much more to do (or at least, so much more of her work made it past the editor’s desk). Eduardo Arozamena plays Van Helsing as more avuncular than Edward Van Sloan, who you’ll recall made that movie for me. Yet in a real surprise for me, Pablo Alvarez Rubio steals the show as Renfield, whose descent into madness is more drastic than Dwight Frye’s. Renfield comes off much more sympathetic in Drácula, as we see him wrestle with his vampiric possession amid genuine concern for Eva’s wellbeing (only glimpsed in Frye’s performance). Yet when he’s mad, he’s mad; the sequence aboard the boat is all the more chilling in Drácula because it’s scored by Renfield’s unbreaking and genuinely alarming shrieking cackle.

 

With so much about Drácula emerging as more engaging than its better-known English version, it’s almost a shame to say that Carlos Villarías just doesn’t live up to Bela Lugosi. In fact, like poor George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Villarías ends up being the one actor you can’t help but wish had been cast with the original. To be fair, Villarías is perfectly serviceable as Conde Drácula, his bug eyes and vamping posture suitable for any creature of the night. Instead of the pinprick spotlights that gave Lugosi his haunting stare, Villarías is granted extreme close-ups on his eyes, the sort of editing trick that Dziga Vertov must have loved. But having just seen Lugosi do the same performance, and make such weirdness out of it, permits this vampire to fall a bit flat.

 

Director George Melford (who, incidentally, didn’t speak a word of Spanish) apparently had access to Tod Browning’s dailies, and it does show. Melford’s direction is more cinematic than Browning’s, and he has better command of the film’s soundscape, most notably in the creaking doors and coffins that are silent in Browning’s version. Melford also interposes a musical refrain every time Drácula rises, a Wagnerian game with the audience to let us know that this motif means danger.

 

Drácula is not without its supporters, and there are many who feel it’s infinitely superior to the Tod Browning version. I’ll say it’s certainly more watchable and by far more cinematic, but without Lugosi it’s not the hit it could have been. If anyone with technical savvy can “deepfake” Bela Lugosi into Drácula, then I’d say we’re really onto something. Without him, though, it’s an engaging enough sidebar for Monster March to indulge.

 

Drácula is not rated. Directed by George Melford. Written by Baltasar Fernández Cué and Garrett Fort. Based on the novel by Bram Stoker, and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. Starring Carlos Villarías, Lupita Tovar, Barry Norton, Pablo Álvarez Rubio, Eduardo Arozamena, and José Soriano Viosca. 

Tune in tomorrow for Wolf Man Wednesday, with Werewolf of London (1935) starring Henry Hull and Warner Oland.

Next week for Transylvania Tuesday, it’s all in the family with Dracula’s Daughter (1936) starring Gloria Holden. For bonus Dracula shenanigans, Silly Sunday has Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange.

Monster March: Frankenstein (1931)

Frankenstein is, like Dracula, another classic monster story we know through osmosis. In this case – perhaps even more than in Dracula – it’s through imagery that isn’t in the Mary Shelley novel but has become intrinsically connected to the Frankenstein story through repetition, particularly in satires like Mel Brooks’s brilliant Young Frankenstein. Going back to the original, however, isn’t a case of seeing untapped potential. Frankenstein is that very potential realized.

Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) has gotten so involved with his scientific experiments that he’s about to miss his wedding. Fiancée Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) is concerned, so she enlists the help of their friend Victor (John Boles) and Henry’s mentor Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan). What they find at Henry’s lighthouse laboratory is that Henry and his hunchbacked assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) have been experimenting at making life. “It’s alive!” Henry shrieks upon observing his creation, but he has no idea that The Monster (Boris Karloff) has an abnormal brain inside that flat skull of his. Soon, however, the whole Bavarian village will know...

 

I’ll try not to spend too much time comparing Frankenstein to Dracula, though watching them both practically back-to-back doesn’t make that easy. It’s worth exploring, however, the ways that these two movies operate in dialogue with each other, essentially forming the backbone of the very first cinematic universe. (It’s also interesting to note that Bela Lugosi was originally cast as The Monster, leaving the project after make-up tests proved disastrous. Lugosi had, however, initially wanted to play the doctor.) Critics at the time noted the similarities between the two films, and I do have to agree with them that – no slight to Dracula – Frankenstein is the more successful feature.

 

Though the image of Karloff looms large over the film (and subsequently the very idea of Frankenstein’s monster), Frankenstein’s success owes in large part to director James Whale. Where Dracula’s director Tod Browning kept things mostly stagey aside from the impressive sequences with Lugosi, Whale’s direction is dynamic and, to encapsulate the burgeoning medium in a word, cinematic. The camera moves nimbly, the edits are impressive, and the pacing of the film is enviable; despite the rigor mortis of the subject matter, there are no dead spots in Frankenstein. Whale is especially adept at using shadows and light, particularly firelight, to which The Monster has a notable aversion. 

 

Frankenstein was, like Dracula, adapted in equal parts from the Mary Shelley novel and from a stage play by Peggy Webling. As with any adaptation, there are many interesting changes, a good number of which have become practically canonical. Where the novel takes pains to show that The Monster learns inhumanity from its creator and others, the film sets the creature up to fail by giving him an abnormal brain; in a bit of a reversal, the creature learns compassion from playing with little Maria, but we know how famously that playtime goes south. Similarly, Henry Frankenstein (not Victor, as in the novel) is always already a little deranged by the time we meet him, played to arch perfection by a manic Colin Clive. Perhaps this is a consequence of the novel being told in epistolary fashion through Victor’s eyes; when we view Henry from the outside, we can’t help but notice he seems a little mad in his pride at his aberrant experiments.

 

Among the additions Whale and company bring to the story are the use of electricity and the hunchbacked assistant (Fritz, not Igor). Anyone turning to the novel might be surprised to find these aspects missing, so inextricable have they become to the Frankenstein legend. In the case of the latter, Fritz is played by Dwight Frye, late of Dracula, where he played a similar role as the vampire’s assistant Renfield. It’s the sort of thankless role that Peter Lorre might have played a few years later; surprisingly, Lorre never played any version of Igor, and I’ve never been able to discern how his voice became identified with the part. Also back from Dracula is Edward Van Sloan, playing another skeptical man of science. Here, Van Sloan is less compelling than he was as Van Helsing, largely because his role here is less than central, but his presence forms an odd kind of stabilizing backbone in the emerging monster franchise, where the forces of the supernatural are pitted against the keen and cool intellect of science. There’s even an interesting prelude to the film where Van Sloan comes out of a curtain, breaks the fourth wall, and warns the audience about the film they’ll be seeing. (A similar sequence with Van Sloan was crafted for Dracula, though it is evidently lost to history).

 

Of course, no review of Frankenstein would be complete without a heap of praise for Boris Karloff, whose extensive turns in disfiguring makeup made him a legend. He’s practically synonymous with the Universal Monsters, and we’ll be seeing much more of him throughout Monster March; where Lugosi reprised his role as Count Dracula only once, Karloff gladly donned the makeup again and again, even getting a turn (sort of) as the not-so-good doctor. Karloff manages to emote from behind the thick layers of prosthetics, vacillating between childlike wonder and murderous rage as his fancy suits him. That flat dome and the bolts on his neck continually remind us of the creature’s monstrosity, but so too does Karloff’s shambolic limp and subvocal groans. (His distinctive walk, however, with arms thrown out before himself, would be a Lugosi creation for 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.)

 

For monster movies, it’s hard to imagine a better double feature than Dracula and Frankenstein. They’re two sides of the same coin, two creature features whose very unnaturality can be summed up in the mere names of their stars – Lugosi and Karloff. (Can you imagine if they’d been played by a Smith or a Jones?) By the end of Frankenstein, the natural order appears to be restored, but we all know that the truest undead in Hollywood is the spectre of the sequel, and Frankenstein would certainly have his – as well, we know, as a bride.

 

Frankenstein is not rated. Directed by James Whale. Written by Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh. Based on the novel by Mary Shelley, and on the play by Peggy Webling. Starring Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan, Frederick Kerry, Dwight Frye, Lionel Belmore, Marilyn Harris, and Boris Karloff. 

Tune in tomorrow for Deep Sea Saturday, with The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) starring Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Ben Chapman, and Ricou Browning.

Next week for Franken-Friday, behind every successful Monster is a Bride of Frankenstein (1935), starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, and Elsa Lanchester.

Monster March: The Invisible Man (1933)

Monster March gallops on with See-Thru Thursday, and The Invisible Man is something unique in the Universal Monsters pantheon. He’s not a creature or a supernatural being, nor does he have a lair, a costume, or even a particularly distinctive physical feature (aside, perhaps, from his bandages). What he does have on his side, however, is horror legend James Whale, a surprisingly nimble special effects crew, and a shockingly violent debut film.

Covered head to toe in bandages and overcoat, Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) takes up a room at the Lion’s Head tavern, where his innkeepers discover that their new lodger is actually an invisible man. Griffin flees, abandoning his scientific work to reverse his invisibility, and sets about seeking revenge instead – particularly on fellow scientist Arthur Kemp (William Harrigan).

 

The Invisible Man has the unique honor of being the fifth and final Universal Monsters film to be released before the Hays Code was enforced, beginning in 1934. (We’ll see next Friday whether the Hays Code had much effect on the first monster sequel, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein.) Among its monstrous predecessors, The Invisible Man is by far the most violent. Frankenstein may have it beat for gruesome subject material, but The Invisible Man, while not overtly gory, is garish and unflinching in its brutality. Within the body of the film, Griffin bludgeons a policeman to death, derails a train, and murders a man by driving his car off a cliff – and all of this is shown in clear detail on the screen! Moreover, each sequence is scored by the gleeful laughter and grim humor of the titular Invisible Man, juxtaposing terror with sardonic cheer to brilliant horrific effect. Where each preceding monster had some redeeming quality about him, the Invisible Man revels in the violence he’s all too happy to wreak.

 

So very much of The Invisible Man works because of Claude Rains’s go-for-broke vocal performance. Selected for the role after Boris Karloff’s contractual pay fell through, Rains was evidently a favored choice for Whale because of his crisp delivery, and in terms of elocution Rains is a champion. More victorious, though, is the way Rains is able to fluctuate between cold rationality and mad misanthropy, hooting and cackling as he goes. It’s no wonder that Mark Hamill has admitted he drew a great deal of inspiration for his Joker voice, making this performance a bit of a Rosetta Stone for Hamill’s Batman work. Completely unseen until the literal final frame of the film, Rains is nevertheless commanding, compelling you to hang on his every word. It’s a shame, then, that Rains, like Lugosi, would never truly return to the role, though Rains enjoyed a much more extensive career in Hollywood than Lugosi ever did.

 

It’s a good thing Rains is so first-class as Dr. Griffin, because the rest of the cast is serviceable at best. Gloria Stuart has a role that amounts to an extended cameo as Griffin’s fiancée Flora, who nominally incites the action of the film by announcing her paramour’s disappearance but never fully selling her affection for him. William Harrigan, too, is largely indistinguishable as Arthur Kemp, to the point where I had legitimate difficulty picking him out of crowd scenes. Elsewhere in the film, Henry Travers puts in a memorable turn as Flora’s father, though I can’t be sure if he’s exceptional here or if I simply recognize (and will always love) him from It’s a Wonderful Life. If there is a scene-stealer in the bunch, it’s Una O’Connor, whose shrieking innkeeper is both hysteric and hysterical, hollering her way through the film’s first act. It’s certainly one of those performances that leaves you wanting more.

 

After Rains, though, the star of the film is its special effects team. Even by 2020 standards, the 1933 special effects are fairly stellar. Sure, you can see the seams and strings on a 4K television today, but nevertheless it’s effectively spooky to watch Griffin unravel his bandages to reveal the hollowness underneath. There are several sequences where one senses Whale and his crew are just showing off – as when Griffin removes his bandages and tucks himself into bed. It’s a scene that serves no real purpose in the plot other than to highlight the uncanny special effects of the day, but this sort of narrative indulgence, even in a film that’s a tight 71 minutes, can be pardoned because of how well it works. It’s all well and good to be told that Griffin is invisible, but seeing – or not seeing, as the case may be – is believing.

 

The Universal Monster movies are nominally horror films, though there is seldom anything truly horrific about them, particularly to a desensitized audience in 2021. There’s gothic drama in spades, suspense and chills, but is anyone truly terrified of Frankenstein’s monster or of vampires? (Van Helsing’s admonition, “there are such things,” notwithstanding.) Meanwhile, the Invisible Man is genuinely scary, preying on the visual nature of film to expose the purest terror in cinema – the terror of the unseen. “There is no terror in the bang,” Hitchcock famously said, “only in the anticipation of it.” Likewise, the true terror of The Invisible Man is in not seeing him, not knowing when this otherwise common murderer may wrap his unseen fingers around your throat. The only warning you’ll get is that velvety voice snapping into a snarl before your car plummets off a cliff – that’s the stuff, Bogart might say, nightmares are made of.

 

The Invisible Man is not rated. Directed by James Whale. Written by R.C. Sherriff. Based on the novel by H.G. Wells. Starring Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan, Henry Travers, and Una O’Connor. 

Tune in tomorrow for Franken-Friday, with Frankenstein (1931) starring Boris Karloff and Colin Clive.

Next week for See-Thru Thursday, The Invisible Man Returns (1940), though he does and doesn’t, starring Vincent Price and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. But for bonus invisible shenanigans, Silly Sunday kicks off with Invisible Woman (1940), starring Virginia Bruce and John Barrymore.

Monster March: Dracula (1931)

Viewing Dracula is a bit like remembering a dream you might have had. I can’t recall if this was my first time sitting down to watch the film front to back, but there were moments that stood out vividly in my memory. Other parts, though, seemed strange and foreign, diversions from the Bram Stoker novel I know so well. It is, then, like the old line from Inception, a half-remembered dream – and the half you remember is very, very good.

Bela Lugosi stars as Count Dracula, the role that made him infamous and the role that he made famous. After arranging a real estate deal with the mad solicitor Renfield (Dwight Frye), Dracula travels from Transylvania to England, where he preys upon socialite Mina Seward (Helen Chandler), her fiancé John Harker (David Manners), and her physician father (Herbert Bunston), who has already enlisted the help of Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) in understanding the unscientific maladies plaguing London since the Count’s arrival.

 

It is not quite the first vampire film – that honor most likely belongs to 1922’s Nosferatu, itself the subject of a plagiarism lawsuit brought by the Stoker estate – but Dracula is certainly the archetype. I don’t think I’m overstating things to say that just about every visual impression you have of the Dracula myth starts with this Tod Browning adaptation. He’s cribbing liberally from the Stoker novel (by way of the Deane/Balderston stage adaptation, about which more in a bit), but the definitive visual stamp of Dracula gives one the acute sense of déjà vu. If you haven’t seen the Browning film, shame – but also, in a sense you always already have, because it’s become a kind of cultural shared memory. This deep primordial memory is never clearer than in the film’s riveting first act, set in Transylvania; though the film places Renfield in Castle Dracula (rather than the novel depicting Jonathan Harker’s descent therein into madness), everything else about this opening sequence is uncannily familiar – the demented carriage ride, the castle itself, Dracula’s three brides and his own hypnotic stare.

 

Indeed, if the film can be said to succeed at all, it’s because of the inspired (or perhaps cursed) casting of Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire. Lugosi would only play Dracula once more, in 1948’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but it was a role that haunted him and typecast him. But typecasting only really happens when one is exceptionally good at a particular role, and Lugosi is Dracula. This performance works on every level – the look, the posture, the voice, the mannerisms. Even the line “I never drink... wine” (which originates here) has become a central precept in the Dracula gospel, right down to Lugosi’s distinctive intonation. When he’s on screen, the movie is solidly arresting, almost as though Lugosi is himself hypnotizing the audience.

 

When Lugosi’s not on screen, though, unfortunately Dracula becomes a bit boring. None of the other performers is as charismatic as Lugosi, so when the script turns its attention to Dr. Seward and the London social scene, the film slows into a snooze. Similarly, where Browning’s direction is electric and moody during the Dracula scenes, the sequences without the vampire are stagy and dull, doubtless a consequence of the film’s shared DNA with the stage adaptation. The momentum of the film winds down considerably, as though the very projection reels grind to a crawl. Just about the only saving grace in this middle act is Edward Van Sloan’s turn as Van Helsing, which he plays a bit like a cross between the screen presences of Anthony Hopkins and Max Von Sydow – fiery and wise. The immediate adversarial nature established between Dracula and Van Helsing is never more riveting than when Van Helsing quickly realizes that Dracula casts no reflection, followed swiftly by Van Helsing’s modest ability to resist the Count’s hypnosis.

 

However, the push and pull between Lugosi and Van Sloan never quite takes over the third act of the film the way one might hope. Instead, the film becomes an unquestionable product of its time when it focuses on John Harker’s quest to free his beloved Mina from Dracula’s thrall. Here, Helen Chandler is suitably convincing as the possessed Mina, though David Manners is forgettably milquetoast, even for a pre-Hays Code film. Yet despite the film predating the Hays Code by more than three years, its climax is straight out of the playbook, with its focus on ensuring a happy ending for a soon-to-be-married couple, while the nefarious foreigner is dispensed with off-screen. Browning (or perhaps cinematographer Karl Freund, who is largely assumed to have taken control of the picture) stages the final shot as an ascent from Dracula’s dungeon – unfortunately, he leaves the two most interesting characters in the catacombs.

 

For what is essentially the first monster movie, Dracula is a real trailblazer, and it’s not hard to draw a straight line to nearly any other creature feature. Browning was working without a map here, but he ended up playing cartographer to an entire genre. And at the edge of the map he drew, we can faintly read the inscription, “Here be monsters...” Whether any of them could live up to Lugosi’s mantle is, perhaps, a question for the rest of Monster March.

 

Dracula is not rated. Directed by Tod Browning and Karl Freund. Written by Garrett Fort. Based on the novel by Bram Stoker, and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. Starring Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, and Edward Van Sloan.

Tune in tomorrow for Wolf Man Wednesday, with The Wolf Man (1941) starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Next week for Transylvania Tuesday, let’s do it again but in Spanish this time, with Drácula (1931) starring Carlos Villarías and Lupita Tovar.

Monster March: The Mummy (1932)

We’re kicking off Monster March with Mummy Monday, and who better to usher in a month of monster movie reviews than Boris Karloff himself? The Mummy is a real doozy, a whopper of a horror film that goes for Golden Age restraint with equal maximums of pathos and terror, and at the center of it all is a delightful performance by Karloff.

Ten years ago, the mummified remains of the high priest Imhotep disappeared from an archaeological expedition, and the explorer Sir Joseph Whemple (Arthur Byron) renounced his work after his assistant Ralph Norton (Bramwell Fletcher) went mad. A decade later, Sir Joseph’s son Frank (David Manners) is on a dig of his own, and with the help of Ardeth Bay (Boris Karloff) he locates the unbroken tomb of Princess Anck-es-en-Amon. But when the princess’s remains are transported to the Cairo Museum of Antiquities, Ardeth Bay reveals that he is the resurrected Imhotep, and his plans to revive his beloved revolve around Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), who may be the princess reincarnated.

 

I don’t think it’s much of a secret around these parts that I’m an inordinate fan of Stephen Sommers’s 1999 film The Mummy, which is just about one of my favorite movies of all time. (I’ll say it just about every Monday this month, for those who aren’t paying attention.) Watching the 1999 Mummy directly before this Mummy might have been a mistake if 1932’s Mummy weren’t so engaging – I was struck by how captivating the movie was, despite having next to no resemblance to the Brendan Fraser vehicle I love so much (other than a few names in common). There’s none of the action/adventure swagger or sense of humor that hooked me in 1999; instead, what we get is a kind of mystical Romeo & Juliet, draped in Egyptian finery and laden with magical menace.

 

We’ll never be able to review a monster movie without turning to the creature at its center, and Karloff is divine as The Mummy. He’s only in rags for the first act of the film, where makeup artist Jack Pierce is the undisputed star of the film. This prologue, in which Imhotep is resurrected by Ralph Norton (no Honeymooners jokes, please), is the perfect tee-up for the film, loading it with dread right at the top as The Mummy lumbers away into the night. The next time we see Karloff, his skin looks like wizened parchment, and his hulking shuffle tells us straightaway that Ardeth Bay is barely among the living. Karloff’s voice, too, gives us the sense of the long-dead, a low roar coming from an expressionless visage. But there is a fire in his eyes (only occasionally literally), and we get the distinct impression just from his presence that he’s not to be taken lightly.

 

As with any monster movie, the supporting cast in a film like The Mummy is largely negligible. A mere year after his star-making turn in Frankenstein, Karloff was surely the box-office draw. Yet the cast of The Mummy is pleasantly up to the task of supporting Karloff, particularly Zita Johann, who’s given the generally-thankless role of “damsel in distress.” In the moments when she contemplates her own mortality, though, Johann is triumphantly terrified, and her reaction to being reincarnated is pretty compelling stuff (doubtless helped by Johann’s own belief in past lives). Elsewhere, Bramwell Fletcher practically steals the show in his one scene, in which he’s driven mad by witnessing The Mummy’s resurrection; it’s a classic example of “This isn’t going to go well” as the scene unfolds, the audience waiting on tenterhooks for the inevitable, and Fletcher’s manic giggle is the perfect punchline. And Edward Van Sloan, who’s fast becoming one of my favorite faces in the Universal Monsters canon, turns up to do another variation on his “man of science” routine from Dracula – this time, however, he’s the only character to admit that a resurrected mummy isn’t such a ridiculous proposition, and his particular brand of gravitas renders the absurd eminently plausible.

 

One thing to appreciate about these early monster movies is that they’re extremely lean, economical not just in terms of budget but in their approach to storytelling, as well. At 73 minutes, The Mummy doesn’t waste any time. It doesn’t try to fool you into thinking Ardeth Bay might not be The Mummy, nor does it bother to explain the magic behind his scrying pool or the resurrection ritual he’s plotting. In this way, The Mummy is deliciously refreshing – “just go with it,” the movie requests, and the result is that you see a language being built, establishing the iconography for every mummy film to follow.

 

It helps that this Mummy is fun in a different way; where my beloved 1999 Mummy is self-reflexive and gleefully camp, this Mummy is deadly serious about its own hokum. The result is that the film washes over you like a tidal wave of superstition and becomes very nearly scary in its intimation that there is a whole cosmology – not just a singular creature – beyond our understanding, so when the ending comes quite literally as a deus ex machina, it doesn’t feel like a storytelling cheat. Rather, it’s a fulfillment of Van Sloan’s warning at the top of the film to take curses seriously – in effect, it’s Chekhov’s Curse. Or in storytelling terms, don’t put a sarcophagus in your film unless it’s going to be opened, and don’t mention a curse if it won’t be levied against some unwitting fool.

 

The Mummy is not rated. Directed by Karl Freund. Written by John L. Balderston. Based on a story by Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer. Starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan, Arthur Byron, and Bramwell Fletcher.

Tune in tomorrow for Transylvania Tuesday, with Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi.

Next week for Mummy Monday, behold the horror of The Mummy’s Hand (1940), starring Tom Tyler and Dick Foran.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

We interrupt the impromptu tour through the movies of Martin Scorsese to bring you this golden oldie from 1938 - Errol Flynn in the vivaciously colorful The Adventures of Robin Hood. And now for something completely different...

Having previously enjoyed the 2010 Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe rendition of the Robin Hood legend, I retreated to the vaults for a helping of one of the earliest film versions and indeed perhaps the definitive one (aside from that Disney one with the foxes). In this one, swashbuckler Errol Flynn is the titular robber hero, battling the evil Prince John (Claude Rains, with the world's worst haircut) and his lackey Sir Guy of Gisborne (Basil Rathbone) for the freedom of England and the hand of the beautiful Maid Marion (Olivia de Havilland).

I'm aware that I have readers out there who enjoy reading reviews of movies definitively established as classics, and so I will try to overcome the challenge of saying something new regarding a movie about which so much has been said already. The Adventures of Robin Hood is regarded as the definitive Robin Hood story, the standard against which all others are to be measured (yes, even the Disney version, which seems to have borrowed liberally from this one). Modern first-time viewers may feel a strong sense of deja vu, then, because there's much in this film that's been deployed by subsequent entries in pop culture. The motif of the film smacks of V for Vendetta, such that I'm surprised the latter film's director chose to use The Count of Monte Cristo instead of this one for the protagonist's favorite movie. Robin Hood's escape from the gallows is reminiscent of a similar getaway employed by one Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. The green costume has become synonymous with Robin Hood, and the splitting-an-arrow trick has been used ad infinitum to indicate an archer's prowess.

Yet, remarkably, much about this movie feels fresh. Errol Flynn's vibrantly joyful performance is a welcome change-up from modern films, whose protagonists are often conflicted and bogged down by cultural ennui (I'm looking at you, Spotless Mind); thankfully, this Robin Hood is charming and confident in the rightness of his mission, unflinching in his devotion to his cause. More surprising are the rousing action scenes directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley; I've been bored before by action scenes that rely too heavily on quick cuts and special effects to grab an audience's attention, so imagine my surprise when the most entertaining action moments since The A-Team come retroactively, from a film more than 70 years old. These and other scenes in the film are entertaining beyond anticipation, with daring rescues and improvised ambushes takign up most of the movie's runtime.

And of course, the colors, Duke, the colors. (Anyone remember that ad?) The film is just gosh darn pretty. Though the colors are probably brutally anachronistic (I have a hard time believing Robin Hood had a pristine suit at all times while living in, of all places, a forest), they look astounding - particularly on the DVD, which is surprisingly cleaned up for such an old piece of work. Maid Marion's dresses quite literally sparkle, and there's not a band of the visual spectrum that goes unused here - the result being a visual spectacle that, if nothing else, gives your home entertainment system a workout.

But the standout feature of The Adventures of Robin Hood is the fact that it asks no heavy lifting from its audience: just sit back, relax, and enjoy the next hour and forty minutes. Good conquers over evil and has a good time doing it. The Adventures of Robin Hood, then, is pure, unadulterated, guilt- and angst-free fun, rousing escapism for all.
Finally rated in 2003 after being merely "Approved," The Adventures of Robin Hood now bears a PG rating "for adventure violence." I was actually surprised by the film's action; though there's very little blood, there is a surprising amount of arrow wounds and clubbings (most of which come off as comedic, even if that wasn't the initial intent). It's definitely more than appropriate, though.