OVP: The House of Rothschild (1934)

Film: The House of Rothschild (1934)

Stars: George Arliss, Loretta Young, Boris Karloff, Robert Young

Director: Alfred L. Werker

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Picture)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Robert Young: click here to learn more about Mr. Young (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Robert Young is an odd actor to pick for a series like this not because he doesn't fit the bill (in many ways he's the very definition of an actor who "made it big in TV after never landing in film" but because much of his film career doesn't have a lot of differentiation.  Unlike some stars we've profiled this year like Ann Sothern or Lucille Ball, his career doesn't have a lot of chapters.  Young began his career at the beginning of the Sound Era, initially working much of the first 15 years of his career at MGM, playing opposite big stars on the lot like Norma Shearer & Joan Crawford.  Young graduated from supporting work to love interest or third lead work rather quickly, and stayed there.  As a result, it's harder to fit a narrative around Young's work early in his career, but suffice it to say in 1934 he was clearly relegated to B movies on the MGM lot, working in a half dozen pictures a year at the time, and didn't appear to create much fuss over this.  One exception in his early career was when he was loaned to United Artists for a prestige biopic starring George Arliss, which was a big hit for the studio and won a Best Picture nomination: The House of Rothschild.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the famed banking family the Rothschilds and their humble beginnings in a Jewish ghetto in Prussia which would, throughout the film graduate to them becoming the wealthiest family in Europe, helping to fund the Napoleonic wars (this film is not historically accurate, so I'm summarizing the plot, not the actual history).  The movie focuses first on the banking family's patriarch Mayer Rothschild (Arliss), who on his deathbed makes his five sons promise they'll always pursue wealth over all else.  As grown men, the smartest of the five Nathan (also Arliss) begins to grow his banking capital, frequently with the hurdle of anti-semitism, as some of the nobility refuses to interact with Nathan because he's Jewish, principally Count Ledrantz (Karloff, startlingly young without his typical Universal Monster movie makeup).  This causes Nathan to forbid his daughter Julie (Loretta Young) to see Captain Fitzroy (Robert Young), who is not Jewish.  By the end of the movie, though, money ends up being the true unifier, and Nathan is not only accepted into society but becomes a Baron, one who can condone Fitzroy & Julie's relationship.

It's always important to remember context when it comes to older movies.  In 1934, a film about anti-semitism was noteworthy, and it was particularly noteworthy given the parallels to what was going on in Europe at the time, with Hitler's rise to power on the backs of anti-Jewish rhetoric.  As a result, you'd almost be forgiven for thinking that this film being dated but still a hit was worth it; after all, who can argue against a movie, even a bad one, if it is espousing tolerance?

But The House of Rothschild to a modern audience reads as deeply antisemitic, showing the Jewish characters as money-loving & duplicitous.  Yes, they frequently get the upper-hand in arguments & overt antisemitism in the film (like when Count Ledrantz won't allow Rothschild to have a contract because of his ethnicity) is never rewarded, but the film plays into ugly Jewish stereotypes, and feels like the rare film about tolerance that reads as unflinchingly problematic and honestly, quite hateful.

On top of that, the movie is terrible.  It weirdly reads as a Big Short of its era, with Rothschild using difficult-to-understand stock market & loan maneuvering to ruin his opponents, and so you'd be forgiven if you didn't understand some of the more technical aspects of the film.  But Arliss (who, it should be noted, is not Jewish despite his most iconic parts being that of Jewish protagonists), is dreadful, every bit as bad as his Oscar-winning role as Benjamin Disraeli, and particularly bad as the Rothschild patriarch.  No one is good in this, not even Karloff (who is usually excellent even with bad material).  Our star is relegated to only a couple of scenes, and is largely window-dressing...he doesn't do much other than make out with Loretta Young (not a bad gig if you can get it, but still).  While this was a hit, it's easy to see why Young wasn't suddenly on critics' radars after a movie this banal.

The Raven (1935)

Film: The Raven (1935)

Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lester Matthews, Irene Ware, Samuel S. Hinds

Director: Lew Landers

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

As you'll see below, we have covered a lot of ground when it comes to classic horror films, and as we are on our final season of Classical Hollywood-focused horror (never say never, especially with the sequel-prone horror genre, but we will definitely not be doing this at least next year, as we'll go to a different era or style), I wanted to start with something big.  The problem is that most of the classics we have left are not from the 1930's, and since we are doing these chronologically I struggled to come up with the perfect solution until it hit me (like a bolt of lightning, mwahahaha!).  We have had throughout this series two primary mascots: Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff, who starred in many of the below films & launched the characters behind even more of them.  While we have covered all of the Universal Monster incarnations of these two men, we haven't gotten to all of their films, or even all of their films together, and so we will be kicking off our season with these two headliners, taking on their best (loose) version of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is not, it's worth noting, an adaptation of Poe's classic poem (the 1930's Poe films rarely had anything to do with the horror author).  Instead, it's about a mad scientist named Richard Vollin (Lugosi) who has been pulled out of retirement by Judge Thatcher (Hinds) to save the life of his beautiful daughter Jean (Ware).  While Vollin initially refuses, he is convinced, and soon becomes obsessed with the lovely Jean, with whom he shares a love of Edgar Allen Poe's works.  Unfortunately for Richard, Jean is engaged to another man, and this makes Judge Thatcher warn Vollin to stay away from Jean.  Of course, Vollin being a raving mad scientist, he decides he needs revenge on all involved, and gains help with the assistance of an escaped convict named Bateman (Karloff).  Bateman requests a new face so that he can live in peace (since he's an escaped convict), but Vollin instead purposefully deforms him, and says he will only return his face to normal if Bateman helps Vollin kill Judge Thatcher.

It's at this point where arguably the most famous part of The Raven comes out, and the one part of the film that actually relates to Poe.  Vollin has a giant torture chamber in his basement (cause, like, who doesn't?) that is inspired by different works from Poe.  There's a "Sword of Damocles" style device from The Pit and the Pendulum, and while it's not specifically-mentioned there's a clear nod to the Cask of Amontillado where Jean & her fiancee are sentenced to a crushing fate until Bateman saves them.  This is also the best part of the movie-it allows Lugosi to camp it up to the hilt, espousing on how much he loves torture, and has some really fun set design.

The film itself is fine-it's not a classic or a truly great horror movie like Bride of Frankenstein (not enough humor) or Creature from the Black Lagoon (which is just outright spectacular), but it's fun.  If you're into this style of movie (which you might be able to tell, I am), I love this campy motif & the bad side acting & the wonderful plot holes-it's without pretension, and it's always a good time.  One thing to note here-Lugosi is better than Karloff in this movie.  Not only does he get the better (and larger, despite the billing from Universal) part, but he takes more time with it & seems to relish it.  I have listened to the Bela & Boris season of You Must Remember This more times than I can count (it's an annual tradition for me at this point), and this was not oftentimes the case as the two men had a professional rivalry, and Lugosi was jealous of the fact that Karloff was the more natural actor (particularly in English), something I've echoed oftentimes on this blog, but that's not the case with The Raven.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death

The Black Cat (1934)

Film: The Black Cat (1934)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

Throughout their careers, Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff appeared in eight films together, the size and scale of which changed dramatically depending on the movie.  There are a lot of old-school Hollywood rumors about Lugosi & Karloff's relationship, ranging from them being friends to being mortal enemies, and the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle.  Lugosi clearly resented Karloff's success (once Frankenstein was released, there was never really a point in Karloff's career where Lugosi was close to usurping it, even if in Son of Frankenstein Lugosi got the better reviews), but they worked together regularly.  Part of Lugosi's problem was that he never really translated into non-horror films in the way that Karloff did, and also because he never played Dracula again after 1931 until Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.  In 1934, though, they would have been at least somewhat in the same vicinity of stardom, and so getting them in a movie like The Black Cat is a bit of a coup, and shows both actors toward the peak of their horror powers.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Black Cat cites the Edgar Allen Poe short story as inspiration, but it has nothing to do with that tale (and as that might be my favorite Poe story other than "The Tell-Tale Heart," I have read it many times) other than both featuring a black cat .  The movie is instead about Peter (Manners) and Joan Alison (Bishop), a handsome young newlywed couple who are on a train, and share a cabin with a psychiatrist named Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi), who has just left a prison camp in Siberia after 15 years (super common, obviously-this always happens to me on public transit too).  He is set to visit his "old friend" Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) and when the bus that is carrying all three breaks down, the couple have to visit him too.  Once there, Werdegast confronts Poelzig over his treachery during WWI, and of killing his wife.  It turns out he didn't kill her, at least not at first, but married her, and then after she died, married Werdegast's daughter, who is still alive.  As the film continues, we find out that Poelzig is a member of a satanic cult, and wants to sacrifice Joan to Lucifer.  In the end, Joan & Peter escape, but Werdegast is not able to save his daughter, who is murdered by Poelzig, whom Werdegast then skins alive, and eventually blows up the building they're in (when Joan & Peter have fled), killing all of Poelzig's satanic cult along with Poelzig& Werdegast themselves.

That's a lot of plot for what is a 70-minute movie (plot is never in short supply in old-school Hollywood horror).  Yet it works really well-there were only a couple of moments in the script where I was a bit lost (specifically around the daughter-it wasn't clear initially who she was, though you figure out after a second).  As a result, this is a brisk, really well-kept horror film, and one that's genuinely creepy (if not downright scary).  Poelzig is a disgusting, tortured man, and Werdegast is played with enough malice that his true intentions are not always known (this is a weird comparison, but I kept thinking he had a similar morality to Sweeney Todd in that he's fine with people dying to get an answer to what happened to his wife-and-daughter).  And this film, while obviously not showing some of the scenes (you did not see Karloff skinned alive, obviously), it finds a way to throw incest, necrophilia, and torture all into one little pre-Code movie.

As for the two leading men, I have to say Karloff's better, and not necessarily because he gets the better part.  Lugosi's final scene is really good, some of his better acting outside of Igor (for my money, his best character even if it isn't his most iconic), but Karloff just nails this devious man.  The best scene of the movie is him playing chess with Lugosi, whose Werdegast is trying to win Joan & Peter's freedom from Poelzig.  The way that Karloff says "even the phone is dead" is dripping with terror & camp, and it's marvelous (hopefully this link is still valid when you read this review).  All-in-all, a great outing between the two actors/rivals.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

The Old Dark House (1932)

Film: The Old Dark House (1932)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Raymond Massey, Lilian Bond
Director: James Whale
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

We shall rejoin the Sound Era today with The Old Dark House, an early pre-Code film, one from James Whale that in many ways anticipates his later picture The Bride of Frankenstein, which also stars Boris Karloff.  The film mirrors it in that it's kind of funny, and feels like it's supposed to be played for laughs even though it's relatively straight-faced in its approach.  The Old Dark House has a strange history as a film, and a happy one if you look at the ending.  The movie was considered lost for decades, but after William Castle remade it in the late 1960's, there was a concerted effort to find a copy of this all-star movie & bring it back to audiences, and eventually a copy was found, which is what we're enjoying today (I'm a film preservationist in my soul, so this makes me smile-all movies deserve to be seen!).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is prototype of the classic haunted house motif.  A group of strangers are brought during a storm to a house: a married couple Philip (Massey) & Margaret (Stuart), their handsome bachelor friend Roger (Douglas), and later on in the film a chorus girl Gladys (Bond) and her companion William (Laughton, in his first Hollywood movie).  When they get there, they meet the Femm family, a gothic crew, complete with Morgan (Karloff), their near-mute, scarred butler, whom they seem to have a strange reluctance toward, and keep warning the visitors about.  It turns out that Morgan becomes rash & violent when he drinks, and he starts drinking with them trapped in the old house, and in the process he frees Saul (Brember Wills) from being trapped.  Saul is the true Femm family member to be afraid of (Morgan feels a combination of bad decisions & misunderstood), and is a murderer obsessed with fire.  Before he can kill the group & burn down the house, Roger is able to throw himself into danger, nearly killing himself by falling off of the balcony, but in the process saves all involved.  In the end, everyone (other than Saul) lives, and because it's Hollywood, Roger & Gladys end up engaged before the credits pull.

The movie is quite enjoyable, if completely silly.  The film plays the villains, with the possible exception of Morgan, as truly comic figures.  Saul is meant to be ridiculous, as are his relatives Horace & Rebecca (who resembles in some ways Grandmama from The Addams Family), and strangest of all is Sir Roderick, their 100-year-old father in the attic, who is played for some reason by a woman rather than a man (other than Whale's penchant for challenging heteronormative culture in his movies there's no explanation as to why the clearly female actor is playing the part, which may have been the point).  All of this makes the movie more fun, and with Stuart, Douglas, & Laughton all game for laughs, the movie is a delight.

The movie doesn't feature one of my favorite Karloff performances.  This was his first role to receive top-billing after his star-making work in Frankenstein (The Mummy would be released a few months later), and he's kind of playing the same character he would in his breakthrough part.  Morgan is mute, misunderstood but on some level a monster (he does unleash Saul on unsuspecting guests knowing the potential for danger, and seems to have a kind of rabid lust for Gloria Stuart's Margaret), but there's not as much soul in this character as Frankenstein's monster, and it feels like a carbon copy.  We're going to get to a less typical Karloff role later this month, but I'm curious if you've seen this movie where you'd rank this performance, as I think it's the rare film where the perpetual scene-stealer gets washed out in the movie.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Freaks, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

Targets (1968)

Film: Targets (1968)
Stars: Tim O'Kelly, Boris Karloff, Arthur Peterson, Monte Landis, Nancy Hsueh, Peter Bogdonavich
Director: Peter Bogdonavich
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

When you read this I'll be coming back from a sojourn to visit my parents (we've all been socially distancing to do this trip, don't worry), and on that trip, I'll be listening to new episodes of my all-time favorite podcast, You Must Remember This.  This season, Karina Longworth is taking an in-depth look at the career of Polly Platt, an Oscar-nominated art director who was most famous for decades as a creative contributor (and frequent producer) of some of the most ingenious projects to come out of Hollywood, ranging from The Last Picture Show to Broadcast News to The Other Side of the Wind.  Platt's first significant film was the 1968 Roger Corman movie Targets, which was also the directorial debut of her then-husband Peter Bogdonavich.  The next episode I have in the series apparently goes quite in-depth into this movie, and since I'd always wanted to see it (and a recording of it was sitting on my DVR thanks to the eternal gift-giver TCM), this felt like the perfect time to take the opportunity.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie tells two seemingly unconnected tales that end up coming together in a petrifying final sequence.  The first story is one that Bogdonavich would intersperse into a lot of his movies and certainly into his decades of colorful anecdotes about Hollywood: the story of a Classic Hollywood actor.  In this case it's Byron Orlok (Karloff), an aging horror film actor who wants out of the business after finishing his last movie The Terror (which was, in fact, a real-life horror movie that starred Karloff and a pre-fame Jack Nicholson, so your eyes are not deceiving you when you see Jack Nicholson randomly show up in Targets, and according to legend around this movie, Nicholson sought after the other lead in this movie but wasn't given it).  Orlok has a curmudgeonly respect for his assistant Jenny (Hsueh) and a young screenwriter-director named Sammy (Bogdonavich), who has written an actually strong film that might give Orlok a new chapter in his career (meta, right?).

The other aspect of the story is around Bobby Thompson (O'Kelly), an all-American guy (handsome, young, veteran) who seems to have the world-on-the-sleeve, but whose only passion appears to be firearms.  Throughout the movie we see Bobby pretend to kill people, frequently stockpiling more and more weapons while his wife and his parents take little notice.  He eventually goes on a shooting spree, first killing his wife & mother, then shooting people randomly from a tower overlooking a freeway, and then finally shooting people at a drive-in...a drive-in showing The Terror where Byron Orlok is set to make his final appearance before retreating into retirement.

The movie up until the shooting scene at the drive-in is interesting if not always compelling.  The drive-in sequence in many ways anticipates another classic New Hollywood movie, one that I really want to name-check but it's such a surprise what happens at the end of the picture that I don't feel I should...suffice it to say, this movie was influential.  But before that scene, the O'Kelly scenes are oddly bereft of emotion.  This is a choice that I think works in hindsight, but I can't imagine how Bogdonavich had the foresight to think of making such a prototypical, 21st Century villain.  At the time, the character was based in large part on Charles Whitman, who killed 17 people in 1966, many of them at random from a tower at the University of Texas (Whitman also killed his wife and mother before his shooting rampage), and if you look at photos of Whitman and O'Kelly, they do share a similarity.  What makes Targets prescient, though, is that Whitman/Bobby Thompson fit the mold of what we think of as a 21st Century villain-straight, white, male loner obsessed with collecting weaponry & risking other people's safety.

This is what makes the final sequence at the drive-in so electric.  We know at this point that Bobby Thompson is a monster, solely intent on increasing his body count before capture or death.  We watch in horror as an audience of cars slowly realize that the danger is not the villain on the big-screen (Karloff's Orlok in The Terror), but instead a more real, actual danger.  People open their cars or speed away, trying to escape, but in the process turn on the lights, making them easier targets.  It's petrifying-one of the scariest things I've ever seen a movie.  All-the-while, there is Byron Orlok, as we come-to-understand his retirement is more about shutting out the world as he is afraid of death, not realizing that he's being confronted with it in very tangible, absolute terms.  When Orlok ultimately is the person who stops Thompson, he states "is that what I was afraid of?" as if realizing that death can come in many forms.  The film itself isn't strong enough to warrant 5-stars (the earlier sequences are too prosaic), but this is a fascinating film and a strong debut from Bogdonavich, who was about to make a trio of celebrated movies (The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc?, and Paper Moon), and features a mesmerizing piece-of-work from Karloff, giving his final onscreen performance.

The House of Frankenstein (1944)

Film: The House of Frankenstein (1944)
Stars: Boris Karloff, J. Carrol Naish, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Glenn Strange, Elena Verdugo
Director: Erle C. Kenton
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

While we may still have one more dance with Frankenstein, this is our last dramatic entry with the monster who has in many ways defined our Classic Horror Movie month.  I have had such a good time watching these films, and there are so many left for me to see that we won't get to this month (including two more Frankenstein pictures-Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and House of Dracula), that I think I'll probably do a sequel to this next October (it wouldn't be a monster movie without a sequel), but for now let's get into our last (dramatic) moment with the monster, this time played by Glenn Strange.

(Spoilers Ahead) After nearly a decade of monster movies, Universal Studios was trying to find a way to spice up the monster movie franchise, and like most series that are toward the end of their run hoping to boost ratings, they relied upon gimmicks and "special events."  As a result, we get the first film in the series to feature Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein's Monster, albeit in abbreviated storylines.  The film focuses on Dr. Niemann (Karloff), a mad scientist who escapes from prison with his hunchbacked sidekick Daniel (Naish), and together they set off to both seek revenge against those who imprisoned Niemann as well as to recreate the work of Niemann's hero, Dr. Frankenstein.  Initially they meet a man who has Dracula's bones trapped in his cart of curiosities, and after killing him, Niemann brings Dracula (Carradine) back to life, only to quickly have Dracula die (after he has time to seduce a young woman, of course), when he is caught in the sun.  Then we go to Dr. Niemann's lab, where he unfreezes the monster and the Wolf Man (Chaney), and tries to do some more brain-swapping to bring the monster back to life, but in the process his hubris causes his downfall.  The Wolf Man is killed by the gypsy Ilonka (Verdugo, who sadly died just last year) with a silver bullet after she falls in love with his human form, and Daniel, angered at the doctor for not giving him a new body so he can impress Ilonka, causes a chain reaction that kills himself, Dr. Niemann, and the monster...until of course the monster will return in a sequel.

The movie is short despite the heavy lift of plot that I just name-checked there, and that's a large part of the problem.  The movie has too many plots, and largely skates by the entire Dracula story, not really involving him in much of the rest of the film (Carradine, arguably the most prolific Hollywood actor of all time, played Dracula again in a sequel so someday I'll see if they make more of his work as the Count, as I found him somewhat dashing in the role).  The movie reminds me in a way of modern-day comic book movies, where there are too many headliners, and as a result no one is particularly compelling.  Certainly the best of the bunch is Karloff (and while I've ragged on him a lot, this is one of the better performances I've seen from Lon Chaney, Jr.), but this has more to do with Karloff's strong acting ability in general than anything interesting to do with Niemann.  Overall this is a pretty forgettable chapter other than finally getting all three of these monsters onscreen together.  It's titillating when they unveil each monster, but what follows is a bit blasé.

Since we've been learning a bit about horror movie classics throughout this month, I can't leave without the anecdote about why Bela Lugosi isn't in this film.  Originally, Lugosi was supposed to reprise his role as Count Dracula, which would have been the first time since the original 1931 hit that he played the part.  However, Boris Karloff was doing a theatrical run of Arsenic and Old Lace, and the studio wanted to get Karloff to play Dr. Niemann in this film, so they waited and by the time he was available, Lugosi had a prior engagement...in a theatrical run of Arsenic and Old Lace.  This was Karloff's final appearance in any of the classic-run Universal horror films, and so we never got to see Lugosi's Dracula meet Karloff on the big screen.  Lugosi would finally be able to reprise his role as Dracula a few years later in the smash hit Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which (Netflix-willing) may be our final movie of this marathon...though they've been a little bit unpredictable in what they're sending me so I make no promises (just hopes).

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, Freaks, The Ghost of Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space

The Mummy (1932)

Film: The Mummy (1932)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward van Sloan, Bramwell Fletcher
Director: Karl Freund
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We are double-dipping today with our classic monster movies (like most of my blog projects, real life got in the way a bit of me actually accomplishing some of these, but my hope is we'll have at least one review a day until Halloween so it will have maintained its marathon-esque size).  For our evening article, we're going with one of the more intriguing Universal Movies' monsters: the Mummy.  The Karloff creation weirdly never had any proper sequels, instead being reimagined with 1940's The Mummy's Hand, and despite mummies themselves being high on the list of traditional monsters, it's one of the lesser-known of the "Big 8" Universal Horror monsters.  As a result, I knew the least about this film of all of the major monster movies we're going to encounter in our marathon, and was excited to see Boris Karloff in a role that wasn't Frankenstein.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around the unearthing of an Egyptian tomb (the public was still very much in awe of the unveiling of the tomb of King Tut a decade earlier, so this played well into the general audience's fascination).  The movie begins on an expedition that is run by Dr. Edward Whimple (van Sloan, who was also in Dracula and Frankenstein, making him the Unofficial Mascot of TMROJ this month, plays this role, essentially the same one he had in Dracula).  He discovers that the mummy Imhotep (Karloff) was not mummified at all, but instead buried alive.  After his assistant Ralph (Fletcher) opens a cursed box (going mad in the process), Imhotep is brought back to life and we are quickly transitioned to ten years later.  Imhotep is now living as a regular man with an odd skin condition (Karloff's casting as an Egyptian is, well, not great by modern expectations), and believes that a young woman named Helen (Johann) is in fact the reincarnation of the princess he loved and was murdered for so many years earlier.  Helen is in love with Frank (Manners), who is like so many (honorable) men in these films a handsome dolt, but manages to save her from the curse that Imhotep puts her under in order to resurrect her as his bride.  The film ends with the scroll that brought Imhotep back to life being burned, thus sentencing him to actual death rather than his mummified stupor.

The film is striking in that the monster here is a well-spoken, smart man.  The only similarity Imhotep has with Frankenstein's monster is they both lumber around, but otherwise Karloff's posh British accent and deep bass is on full display here, and he's mesmerizing as Imhotep, by far the best part of the movie.  The film is at its absolute best when we're seduced by his plan, and the cameraman knows just how to light him.  There's a recurring effect (seen in the photo) of Karloff's eyes being lit up and staring off as he's using his magic to either seduce or kill, and it works.  The movie's center is strong, as we learn his backstory, and it's a darn shame that the film cut the sequence with Henry Victor as a Saxon Warrior (who proves that Helen has, indeed, lived through multiple lifetimes between the present and her time as a princess), as this was the best part of the movie.

Because while this is another monster film I enjoyed, it's diminishing returns when it comes to the supporting cast.  There's no moral message here in the same way as Frankenstein or Creature from the Black Lagoon, and while Karloff is terrific, no supporting player is saving this picture and Johann & Manners as the other legs of the triangle aren't really up-to-snuff.  Manners is terrible, falling in love at the drop of a hat and it seems preposterous that someone so dumb could stop Imhotep's 3000-year-old plan while Johann's only real goal here is to look beautiful, which she does...but shouldn't we demand more from women in these films?  One of the bigger issues I'm starting to have watching these back-to-back is that I want to see better parts for women, but I suspect that like even modern horror (save for Laurie Strode), there just aren't that many fleshed-out roles for the ladies of these films (at least with male directors behind the scenes).  As a result, this is fine but hardly special and I see why it gets lower-billing on the Universal Studios' scale.

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon

Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Film: Son of Frankenstein (1939)
Stars: Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We continue on our month of classic horrors with a film that made it on the marathon partially because it was already on my Netflix queue, but mostly because I was so shocked when researching this article how the studio system, while it was generally unkind to actors such as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi when they stopped being bankable, also didn't exploit them as ferociously as I would have expected.  In an era when, say, Myrna Loy and William Powell were playing Nick & Nora every year, stars like Karloff & Lugosi didn't continually reprise their most iconic characters, instead only playing them a few times.  Karloff, for example, only donned the Frankenstein makeup thrice-first for his two classic outings (reviews listed below) and then one last time after Universal, who was suffering after ousting the Laemmles, wanted to take advantage of a recent revival in theaters of Frankenstein movies (a bankrupt LA theater ran Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong as a Hail Mary to make money and the gimmick worked, leading to a second wave of horror movies from Universal).  Son of Frankenstein would not be Karloff's last outing in a Frankenstein picture (he'd appear as a mad doctor in House of Frankenstein, which we'll get to later this month), but it was his last time in the monster's getup, and is famously considered the final "A-Grade" horror movie of its era, as soon the Universal horror films were being made cheaply and more generically.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around, as the title suggests, the son of Frankenstein, named Wolf (Rathbone), who has come back to his father's castle to claim his inheritance, the estate and, most specifically, the laboratory.  The people in the local village loathe Wolf, as they view he and his family as bad omens, and so the only friend to Wolf, his wife Elsa (Hutchinson) and son Peter is a local lawman, Inspector Krogh (Atwill), who lost an arm to the monster as a child.  Despite clear reasons not to do so, Wolf is set to avenge his father, trying to prove his place in scientific history by reanimating the monster (Karloff), with the help of Ygor (Lugosi), who has taken control of the monster and is using him to murder members of a jury that once tried to have Ygor hanged.  As one could expect, Wolf's plans go awry as the monster kills and terrorizes the surrounding countryside, but is ultimately saved by Inspector Krogh, with the monster and Ygor dying while the Frankensteins leave the village, presumably forever (or at least until the next sequel).

One of the harder things about reviewing older movies is trying to figure out what is being played for laughs and what is genuinely supposed to be terrifying.  A contemporary review of the film at the time called it "the silliest picture ever made," but that's hard to digest since many of the horror movies of that era play for camp to modern audiences.  Still, you can see the way that articulate, Shakespearean-trained Rathbone feels a tad ridiculous as Wolf von Frankenstein.  The way that he descends so quickly into the same madness that doomed his father feels hackneyed and preposterous, but it's also quite fun.  Rathbone has such a theatrical flare that he fits right in and feels like an appropriate offspring of Colin Clive (it's alive, it's ALIVE!).  Atwill is a strange oddity in the film (and also feels weird when you think of the chronology of the picture as he feels too old to have been hurt as a child by the monster), and Hutchinson is as generic as you can get as Wolf's clingy, wispy wife.

But the whole point of these films is the monsters, and weirdly it's Lugosi's Ygor and not Karloff's Frankenstein that stands out in a major way here despite Karloff generally being the better actor.  Lugosi basically steals the picture, as Karloff's Frankenstein has been muted and is less defined than in the previous iterations of the series.  Ygor, though, is cruel, funny, and played as much for laughs as he is for fears.  It's hilarious to think that this creepy, nasty guy would so easily fool Wolf, and it's practically like he's breaking the fourth wall with his "behind Wolf's back" sorts of grimaces.  All-in-all, it is, as the Times put it, quite silly, but it's also more fun than I was suspecting, especially as Wolf goes mad, and not a bad way to spend a cloudy afternoon.

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love

OVP: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Film: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester
Director: James Whale
Oscar History: 1 nominations (Best Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Following Whale's previous film, it took a surprisingly long time for Universal to follow-up with a sequel(considering how frequently the studios churned out film series in the 1930's thanks to the studio system, I find it odd that they had to wait four years to get a second film on the docket).  The sequel, far more comedic and generally considered the better of the two films, was the true film I was hoping to catch in the Frankenstein series.  Shall we see if I liked it better?

(Spoilers throughout) The movie shows us the moments immediately following the harrowing "death" of the monster in the last film, but quite instantly you can tell that the movie has switched its tone.  Gone is the heavy-handed attitude of Dr. Frankenstein and his persecuted science, and instead you are greeted with a batty old woman who embraces the Monster's death, and the parents of the young girl, who want to go in for a closer look and end up making it a three-for-one deal at the village cemetery.  The Monster has in fact survived the windmill attack, and goes on rampaging throughout the city.

Meanwhile, Dr. Frankenstein has recovered from what was initially assumed to be death and wants no more of his violent creation, but is forced back into the world of the undead when Dr. Pretorious (the campy Ernest Thesiger), shows him that he has created a series of homunculi (including a miniature King Henry VII, a mermaid, and a devil), and coerces him into creating a mate for the Monster.

The Monster spends this time becoming a bit more "cosmopolitan," aided by a kind blind man who cannot tell that he is a monster (am I the only one who expects Gene Hackman to be playing the character, despite it being forty years too soon?), giving him a penchant for cigars and drink, and this could have worked splendidly if two passersby didn't point out that the Monster was who he was.

The film concludes with the climactic title sequence, when Elsa Lanchester, who had played Mary Shelley in an earlier scene, appears as the intended for Frankenstein's Monster, but instead shrieks and recoils from him in horror.  Dr. Frankenstein and his bride (anyone know why Valerie Hobson played this part instead of Mae Clarke-share in the comments!) are allowed to escape, but the Monster, his bride-to-be, and Dr. Pretorious all supposedly perish in fire.

The movie is a treat, particularly the comedic flourishes Whale takes with the film.  Much has been made about the gay-themed content, due largely to Whale's real-life homosexuality and the campy band of characters, principally Dr Pretorious, but I have to admit that while I acknowledged it, I thought people might be reading into things a bit to see a larger gay-metaphor.  I loved the character choices that Elsa Lanchester made in the film, practically winking to the audience during the opening scene where she's being doted upon by Byron and her husband (...I'll be back!) and then going to the rafters with her Marge Simpson hair and exaggerated arm gestures.  They didn't have a Best Supporting Actress trophy in 1935, but if they had, I think that it would have made a fine addition to the Sound nomination the film received.

So yes, I did like this film better, though they aren't really in the same style to compare the two (comparing the film to Young Frankenstein may be more appropriate).  However, I'd love your thoughts on this classic film.  What did you think of our second outing with Frankenstein?  Did you like the comedic elements better, or do you prefer them to stick to Shelley's original work?  And what Universal Monster do you think we should conquer next?

Frankenstein (1931)

Film: Frankenstein (1931)
Stars: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Boris Karloff, Edward van Sloan
Director: James Whale
Oscar History: No nominations, but it was one of the American Film Institute's Top 100 Movies, so general film history has been pretty kind
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We all have huge gaps in our respective film-watching careers.  For some of us, it's that one nagging classic that you somehow haven't gotten around to for some reason that we can't 100% explain.  For others, it's a particular subset of films (people who have never seen a John Ford western, for example).  And on occasion, it's both.

This was the case for myself with Frankenstein, a legendary film that also happens to be a part of film history that I have largely missed-this is the first of the classic Universal Monster films that I've seen.  During the 1920's and 1930's, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and the Lon Chaney's (Sr. and Jr.) created some of the most indelible images in horror movie history.  The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Phantom of the Opera, the Wolf-Man, Dracula, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man (Claude Rains, but let's not quibble) are a pretty stupendous lineup of great horror film characters, and over eighty years later we're still borrowing heavily from these films.

While I've officially added all of these films to my Netflix queue (I love that there exists a Netflix where you can add any movie from any year to your upcoming viewing list), it's a little odd to see Frankenstein for the first time.  Like other classic movies that you've never seen but are clearly familiar with, every scene is exactly how you'd expect it to be, and there are parts of it that, I have to say it, "come alive" as you're watching.

The entire sequence with the monster becoming part of life is thrilling-Colin Clive's electric call of "it's alive, it's alive" has the same impact whether you're seeing it for the first time or the thirtieth.  It just sparkles with that sort of movie magic that you can't duplicate or deplete, no matter how many times you see it or that it is mimicked.  This is the case with most every moment with the lumbering, terrifying Karloff.  Karloff's performance is excellent, with him resisting persistent talking, and still using his lumbering frame and heavy makeup to impose all of our fears onto the creature.  The movie manages to best use him when you can see his humanity, like the scene with the little girl, where he accidentally kills her and sets the city off on a terrible rampage.

The film is shorter than you'd expect from a classic (I'm always floored when a movie that is so revered clocks in at little over an hour), and despite the length, still has some dull moments.  Mae Clarke, for example, is a bit too damsel in distress for my taking, and any moment of the film that doesn't focus on the creature is very staged.  But the movie jolts and crackles when Karloff is guiding it (which is a good chunk of the film), and has made me excited to investigate the rest of the Universal catalog.

What about you-what films have you been putting off that you should have tackled years ago?  Do you have a favorite of the Universal monsters?  Share in the comments!