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: The Mummy's Hand (1940)

I had the distinct feeling after watching The Mummy’s Hand that I was about to forget everything I had seen. Never mind that the film is only 67 minutes long, half of which is astoundingly boring; the half that is interesting is wholly generic and entirely unmemorable. It’s a far cry from the Boris Karloff original and an even further cry from 1999’s The Mummy (which I contend is not just the best mummy movie ever made but one of the best adventure movies, period). 

Archaeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his assistant Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford) think they’ve stumbled upon the last clue to the location of Princess Ananka’s tomb. Initially discouraged by Professor Andoheb (George Zucco), Steve and Babe set off in search of their own funding, which they find in magician-cum-investor Tim “Solvani” Sullivan (Cecil Kellaway) and his daughter/assistant Marta (Peggy Moran). What they don’t know is that Andoheb is secretly the high priest of an order devoted to protecting Ananka, and this priest has a mummy (Tom Tyler) at his beck and call.

 

As I’m watching the Universal Classic Monster movies, it’s been fun to notice places where tropes were born, moments when story beats become ossified into canonical necessity. In the case of the Mummy films, I’ve been noticing echoes with the Stephen Sommers Mummy, and The Mummy’s Hand has those in spades – a down-on-his-luck adventurer, affluent investors, superstitious local diggers, a museum curator in league with a secret society. For being only the second Mummy movie, there’s a surprising amount of formula already at play in The Mummy’s Hand, even as it differentiates itself from the 1932 original by locating a solid half of the film to the archaeological dig site.

 

When the film gets to the dig site, the real mummy action kicks in, and The Mummy’s Hand is at a minimum watchable. That action is horribly cliché, and there’s a surprising lack of urgency despite the fact that the mummy Kharis is methodically killing off protagonists tent by tent over the course of what seems to be a single night. Having said that, though, there’s a certain engagement to be gained simply by having a supernatural creature skulk through your film and do his master’s dark bidding, and I have to say that there’s something charming about seeing the archetypal mummy action play out. Unlike Karloff’s Imhotep, Kharis is a silent and lumbering brute, lurching his way toward his victims, and makeup artist Jack Pierce adds another visual stunner into his repertoire. If nothing else, this mummy looks good.

 

“Watchable at best” is certainly damning with faint praise, and it’s a real wonder if audiences even make it that far. The first half-hour of the film is interminable in dragging out its exposition; The Mummy’s Hand opens with two old men droning on about mythic backstory before one expires, perhaps from boredom. Then the film sets up a long and uninteresting plot in which Steve Banning fundraises for his expedition before falling in with a magician who never does much magic beyond his introduction. (You’d hope, if Solvani is Chekhov’s Magician, he’d do a bit of prestidigitation to save the day. No such luck here.) These B-movie shenanigans truly diminish the film’s potential for horror to the point where you almost expect the gumball machine from Mystery Science Theater to pop up and start riffing on how dull the film is.

 

Often the best thing we can say about a bad Universal Monster film is that they rarely overstay their welcome. The Mummy’s Hand is brief, but it’s a slog, exacerbated by subpar acting that’s both monotonous and overly campy. Wallace Ford gets a few chuckles in as a Lou Costello type, though for comic relief he’s wildly out of place in the brand of monster movies Universal had perfected by 1940. The rest of the cast are the very definition of serviceable though largely indistinguishable from other versions of the same archetypes. Even Tom Tyler as Kharis is a bit of a snooze, and perhaps I was so desperate for something engaging that my first glimpse of a mummy got me to sit up and say, “I’ll take it.” But Kharis himself lacks any agency in the film; he’s at the mercy of Andoheb and his mystical tana leaves, which reanimate the mummy and set him off into the night. There’s a half-baked suspense plot about what might happen if Kharis gets his hands on an infinite supply of tana leaves, but none of the protagonists knows about this, so the net effect of anticipation is a wash. 

 

Ultimately, The Mummy’s Hand is an exercise in unmet expectations and settling for the first gruesome creature to shamble your way. It’s dull and (pardon the pun) lifeless, a reanimated clone of The Mummy drained of its excitement and fueled by the sort of scripting that might fit better on an episode of Svengoolie. Even with a runtime of little more than a hour, as Universal Monster sequels go, The Mummy’s Hand is a bust.

 

The Mummy’s Hand is not rated. Directed by Christy Cabanne. Written by Griffin Jay and Maxwell Shane. Starring Dick Foran, Peggy Moran, Wallace Ford, Eduardo Ciannelli, George Zucco, Cecil Kellaway, and Tom Tyler.

Tune in tomorrow for Transylvania Tuesday, with Drácula (1931) starring Carlos Villarías and Lupita Tovar.

Next week for Mummy Monday, enter The Mummy’s Tomb (1942) starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Monster March: Invisible Woman (1940)

In the words of Monty Python, “And now for something completely different.” We’ve spent the last week looking at the Universal Classic Monsters, so for Sundays let’s do something a little silly. Silly Sundays, if you will. With the monster archetypes pretty firmly entrenched by 1940, the studio was free to get a little more creative with the formula (though, as was often the case, they tended to opt for light remakes that didn’t do much in the way of innovation). Enter The Invisible Woman, having little to do with 1933’s Invisible Man. Nor is it much of a monster movie at all – instead, it’s a slapstick comedy, amusing if a little lame.

Department store model Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce) answers an ad in the newspaper from Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore), who offers to make his next test subject invisible. While the professor’s financier and spendthrift playboy Dick Russell (John Howard) begins to fall in love with the unseen test subject, gangster in exile Blackie Cole (Oscar Homolka) gets wind of the professor’s device and sends a trio of goons to steal the secret of invisibility.

 

Within five minutes of The Invisible Woman, you know you’re in for something radically different from any of the Universal Monster movies that preceded it. (Indeed, I’m not even sure we should consider this an Invisible Man movie, but Universal does, so into Monster March it goes.) As the film opens, Dick Russell’s butler (played by Charlie Ruggles) trips headlong over a messy staircase and pulls a pratfall right there in the foyer. It’s a gag that recurs several times, each tumble more forceful than the one preceding it, but it sets the tone quite effectively. While there was some humor – grim though it may have been – in the earlier Universal Monster movies, The Invisible Woman isn’t ashamed to go for the punchline.

 

As far as comedy goes, The Invisible Woman isn’t anything innovative. There aren’t really any jokes that you haven’t heard before (except maybe the one about the gangster named Foghorn with the high-pitched voice). Watching a whole month’s worth of monster movies might make The Invisible Woman seem funnier than it is, but it’s a far cry from screwball greats like Bringing Up Baby or anything the Marx Brothers would have put out. Still, the atmosphere is diverting enough, and there are a few genuine chuckles to be had within the film. It’s the kind of good clean fun you saw all over the 1940s, light and inoffensive – though modern audiences may be surprised just how much fuss is made over the fact that a truly invisible woman is entirely undressed. (Indeed, that minor detail seems to be the whole reason Professor Gibbs has a female assistant, played by Margaret Hamilton – so that Kitty has someone to whom she can pass her clothing without the slightest hint of impropriety.)

 

If Universal had the lock on monster movies, Warner Bros. certainly cornered the market on gangster films. (Maybe next year, it’ll be Mobster March here at The Cinema King?) It’s therefore a little intriguing to see the two genres stitched together in The Invisible Woman; where the monster angle of the film is pretty watered down, the gangster subplot is certainly more Some Like It Hot than Angels with Dirty Faces. Oscar Homolka and his gang are hardly menacing, to the point that one of them is quite literally played by one of the Three Stooges, Shemp Howard. Shemp aside, they’re all straight out of central casting, and while there’s nothing thematically unified about gangsters and invisible women, it’s an effective shorthand for villainy in a genre that usually needs to distance the eponymous “monster” from the true fiends.

 

Perhaps more so than The Invisible Man, The Invisible Woman captures how much fun it might be to become truly invisible. Claude Rains whooped and cackled with glee, it’s true, but it’s hard to imagine anyone in the audience envying Jack Griffin. Kitty Carroll, on the other hand, is legitimately likeable in her desire to be invisible because she uses her invisibility for good. There’s a fair bit of mischief in the way she settles the score with her truly awful boss Mr. Growley (Charles Lane), and who among us hasn’t desperately wanted to tear down that loathsome old time clock at work? Fortunately for Kitty, there’s no specter of imminent madness looming over her invisibility, as Claude Rains and Vincent Price before her endured. It’s all in good fun.

 

The Invisible Woman is not rated. Directed by A. Edward Sutherland. Written by Robert Lees, Fred Rinaldo, Gertrude Purcell, Curt Siodmak, and Joe May. Starring Virginia Bruce, John Barrymore, John Howard, Charlie Ruggles, and Oscar Homolka. 

Tune in tomorrow for Mummy Monday, with The Mummy’s Hand (1940) starring Tom Tyler and Dick Foran.

Next week, we get even sillier with one of the true classics of the monster genre and perhaps of all comedy films writ large. Did someone say “Chiiiiiiiiiiiick”? It’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange.

Monster March: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

With only three movies under his fishy belt, and coming to the party more than ten years too late, the Gill-Man – the eponymous star of Creature from the Black Lagoon – had some rather large shoes to fill, following as he did in the footsteps of five giants in the Universal Classic Monsters cinematic universe. Thirteen years after the debut of Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man and a full twenty-three years after Dracula, the Gill-Man might best be seen as the spiritual successor to Chaney’s other monster, Kharis the Mummy. Fortunately for filmgoers, Creature from the Black Lagoon finally got that formula right.

After Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno) finds the fossilized hand of an amphibious humanoid, he invites a pair of Californian scientists, David Reed and Mark Williams (Richard Carlson and Richard Denning), to Brazil to help corroborate his finding. Another colleague, Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), joins the expedition, but their arrival is disrupted by the discovery that some of Carl’s assistants have been brutally murdered by the Gill-Man (Ben Chapman and Ricou Browning), who’s become smitten with the hapless Kay.

 

At the risk of spoiling the rest of Monster March for you, the Universal Monsters movies tend to start strong, with diminishing returns for each sequel added to the canon. (That means that the first half of the month will be lots of good feelings, while the second half will leave many of us in cinematic despair.) For the first half of that statement, Creature from the Black Lagoon is no exception – it’s a fantastically strong debut for Universal’s latest and last original monster. Recalling the rhythm of a slasher film, Creature finds its titular antagonist swimming through the plot, surfacing only to commit homicide before retreating into the murky Black Lagoon. While the blaring trumpet score feels a little dated – we get it, the Gill-Man is scary! – there’s something timeless about the pacing and structure of the film, particularly the way that the film doles out brief sightings of the Gill-Man until his full appearance is revealed, almost as though he’s Godzilla being sighted piece by slimy piece.

 

To continue to reveal where Monster March is headed (for those playing the home game, I’ve watched the films in chronological order but reviewed them in thematic sequence), Creature truly reminds me of the later Mummy sequels starring Tom Tyler and later Lon Chaney Jr. Those films too anticipated the slasher horror sub-genre, but they did so in ways that was, shall we say, less than compelling. There is not much to fear from a mummy whose shambolic gait reminds one of a lurching, limping zombie. The Gill-Man, on the other hand, is quick and nimble, darting through the lagoon with balletic poise. So too does the Gill-Man’s very appearance put Kharis the Mummy to shame; while the mummy looked wrinkled, sad, and fragile, the Gill-Man is downright weird, covered in scales and fins with expressionless eyes and a piscine mouth that flaps open. It’s the kind of riveting screen presence that turned the Gill-Man into an unconventional matinee idol – any time he’s on the screen, I defy you to look away.

 

Here’s the catch with Creature from the Black Lagoon, though – and it’s the same catch we have with most of the Universal Classic Monsters movies – the human cast is tragically white-bread to the point where the Gill-Man can’t help but emerge the standout star. The supporting cast is often the weak link in a Universal Monsters picture, and I have to confess that I frequently lost track of how many humans were aboard the exploratory vessel. Julie Adams gets all the attention for being carted away a few times in the Gill-Man’s arms, though I was more drawn to the performance of Nestor Paiva as Captain Lucas, who seems to be the only character with a personality aboard the Rita. Lucas cackles and cracks wise, apparently the only person having fun in the movie. The rest of the characters putter about the plot, largely without emotion, firing off dialogue so dry that you expect someone to dub a wisecrack over the film. 

 

In that sense, maybe one more comparison needs to be indulged. Like Bela Lugosi in Dracula, the Gill-Man elevates the entire picture. Any time he’s on, it’s riveting stuff, and you feel you’re in the presence of true greatness, a classic in the making. (If anyone had “treating Gill-Man like an Oscar winner” in Monster March bingo, stamp your cards now.) The rest of the film struggles in his shadow, even as you know that anyone not wearing gills may not be long for this world – and, honestly, the sooner the better. It’s not that these characters are actively offensive, but the best parts of the movie are the creeping tingles of expectancy as we wait for the Gill-Man to make his next move. Even though much of the film is clearly shot on a soundstage, occasionally with the use of hokey rear projection, Creature manages to drum up suspense with each movement of the Gill-Man’s murderous pursuit.

 

But like Dracula, the Gill-Man is surprisingly lusty, maybe even more lascivious than Dracula’s suave seduction. In sequences that must have inspired the opening to Spielberg’s Jaws, the Gill-Man creeps up on the swimming form of Kay Lawrence, grasping at her exposed ankles. We’ve all been there, felt the wayward tendrils of seaweed brush against our legs in the deep, and the Gill-Man’s slack-jawed and unblinking expression layers on a frightful new dimension to the quotidian. Dave Edmunds warned us that “all he wanted was a lady,” but the fact that he is only ever interested in the sole female scientist adds a creepy subtext. Both Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster wanted brides, but the Gill-Man wants a conquest. Even if none of the characters in the film knows it, the Gill-Man brings a weird erotic charge to a genre that often sublimates that element deep into the unconscious.

 

In terms of franchise development, Creature from the Black Lagoon is so reminiscent of The Wolf Man because it’s a creative shot in the arm. Finally, something new happens in the stagnating cinematic universe. Even though he would never meet the other Universal Classic Monsters – the closest he got was a television appearance with Abbott and Costello, before joining The Monster Squad – the Gill-Man is a fantastic and fun example of a franchise raging against the dying of its own light. If only I’d been able to see it in 3-D! 

Creature from the Black Lagoon is rated G. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Harry Essex, Arthur Ross, and Maurice Zimm. Starring Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Paiva, Ben Chapman, and Ricou Browning. 

Tune in tomorrow for Silly Sunday, with Invisible Woman (1940) starring Virginia Bruce and John Barrymore.

Next week, the Gill-Man hits dry land in Revenge of the Creature (1955), starring John Agar, Lori Nelson, Tom Hennesy, and Ricou Browning.

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: The Wolf Man (1941)

“Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night / May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” Half of the Universal Monsters had some sort of literary inspiration, but only The Wolf Man had his own rhyming couplet to sum up his tragic fate. It’s a clever little jingle that echoes through the film, haunting its protagonist – and the audience – until that moon shows itself and the curse manifests. Like the moon peeking out from behind the clouds, Lon Chaney Jr.’s debut as The Wolf Man proves that, after a decade of monster movies, Universal still had a few new tricks up its sleeve.

Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns home to Wales after the death of his brother, hoping to rekindle his relationship with his father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains). Smitten with Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), who runs the antique store in town, Larry squires her and her friend to a traveling group of gypsies to have their fortunes read. When one of the women is attacked by a wolf-like creature, Larry rushes to her defense but is mauled in the process. Gradually he begins to fear that the creature was a werewolf – and now he’s under the transformative spell.

 

It’s interesting to think back and reflect that the bulk of the Universal Classic Monsters were all introduced within two years – and that The Wolf Man made his debut a full decade after Dracula kicked things off in 1931. (A sixth and final, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, would not emerge until 1954.) At a time when monster sequels were starting to run stale (I’m thinking especially of The Mummy’s Hand and The Invisible Woman, which immediately preceded The Wolf Man), the introduction of the werewolf into the pantheon of monsters almost revivifies the genre. Indeed, the presence of the Wolf Man ends up serving as a kind of backdoor pilot to bring all the monsters together for the “monster mash” sub-genre – but that’s a story for later on in Monster March. Suffice it to say, though, that the advent of the Wolf Man feels a bit like the final piece of the puzzle.

 

Lon Chaney Jr.’s performance as Larry Talbot is really quite remarkable among the Universal Monsters canon because it’s the first bit of acting that feels human. We’ve had campy caricatures and stock archetypes, but I’ve never gotten the vibe that any of the performances before 1941 were of real people with natural emotions. It sounds like a low threshold – and it is – but Chaney’s Talbot is imbued with genuine humanity. He’s compassionate with his loved ones (though his pick-up skills could use a little work), and he’s compellingly fearful when he believes his life is at stake. Moreover, he’s concerned for the fate of his soul, and he evinces a deep pathos when he assumes the burden of guilt for what he’s become. Larry Talbot is almost more interesting than the Wolf Man himself, which is a definite and welcome change of pace for the genre.

 

Having said that, though, this is a Wolf Man movie, and the sequences where Talbot goes wild are the stuff of gleeful popcorn matinees. Chaney mugs for the camera, sniffing and snorting, such that his Wolf Man is almost more dog man. It’s a far cry from what we’ll see next week in Werewolf of London, with a carefully groomed wolf man; there is very little sophisticated about Talbot as the Wolf Man. It is a shame that we don’t see more of the Wolf Man in this film, though I suppose it follows the old maxim of “leave them wanting more.” Indeed, one could imagine a version of this movie that doesn’t show the Wolf Man at all, leaving room for the possibility that Talbot is merely going mad, that his lycanthropy is all in his mind.

 

The rest of the cast is engaging enough, though very few of them get much of anything to do. Claude Rains is magnificent (and, unlike in tomorrow’s film, entirely visible) as Talbot’s father, though one wonders what he might have done with a meatier role in the vein of what Anthony Hopkins achieves in the comparable role in the 2010 remake. Evelyn Ankers is suitably shrieky in the role of the distressed damsel, but I confess that many of the other supporting players – Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Patrick Knowles – I would struggle to point out in a line-up. Instead, my focus was hypnotically drawn to Bela Lugosi, who I hadn’t expected to see in a werewolf movie (though his role as Ygor in a few Franken-films is delectably wolfish), and to Maria Ouspenskaya, who quietly steals the show with a gravitas-laden performance. I’m legitimately excited to see that Ouspenskaya will be back for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man – as if that title weren’t enough to augur good things!

 

Chaney said that he regarded Talbot as “my baby.” Considering how often Universal recast or outright replaced its monsters, it’s remarkable that Chaney stayed in the role for as long as he did – which is to say, permanently, never being supplanted as Talbot. With a debut as strong as The Wolf Man, though, maybe it’s not that much of a surprise. Larry Talbot might be vulnerable to silver, but this reviewer is a sucker for cinematic gold. 

 

The Wolf Man is not rated. Directed by George Waggner. Written by Curt Siodmak. Starring Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Evelyn Ankers, Patrick Knowles, Bela Lugosi, and Maria Ouspenskaya. 

Tune in tomorrow for See-Thru Thursday, with The Invisible Man (1933) starring Claude Rains.

Next week for Wolf Man Wednesday, we’ll get a big dish of beef chow mein with Werewolf of London (1935), starring Henry Hull and Warner Oland.

 

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.

Coming Soon to The Cinema King...

“It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation: life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So, if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now’s your chance to uh, well––we warned you…”

Tomorrow, we begin a marathon of reviews. Each day in March, The Cinema King will be looking at an early – if not the very first – cinematic universe. It’s not Star Wars or The Avengers, though its inhabitants are just as colorful. It’s not Alien or Predator, but you wouldn’t have those series without the dangers of… the Universal Classic Monsters. Stay tuned for thirty reviews in thirty-one days as we linger in the graveyards and haunt the mausoleums for… Monster March.