The Scoop: I watch this crap so you don't have to.
Why should you bother watching "The Gorilla"? This one is only for the morbidly curious who want to see Bela Lugosi's career in mid-decline. Here he plays straight man (as does the similarly-declining Lionel Atwill) to the tragically unfunny Ritz Brothers who are trying to solve the mystery of a serial killer in an old mansion.
They don't get much more boring than this. Even eight hours of Andy Warhol's camera trained on the Empire State Building will entertain you more than "The Gorilla."
Seriously, I can't recommend this movie to you less. I shouldn't even be writing about it, and you shouldn't even be reading about it. As it is, we've all just wasted a few precious minutes of our finite lives on it, not to mention all the irreplaceable fossil fuels we've just burned up by using our computers to deal with it. Let's all just cut our losses now and move on. Please, just move on.
Best Line: "But how could a monkey write those notes to Uncle Walter?"
Side Note: The costumes were designed by Gwen Wakeling, who would go on to create Barbara Eden's iconic costume for "I Dream of Jeannie."
The Scoop: This dreary, stagy backstage musical chronicles the life of a vaudeville singer (played by real life vaudeville star Harry Richman) who hits the big time, forgets the little people who helped him, then eventually goes blind after drinking bad alcohol. Oh dear god, will the melodrama never stop?
Richman isn't a bad singer, although his style, typical of the vaudeville stage at the time, seems a little foreign to modern ears. His acting is a little over the top, though. But his costars -- including Joan Bennett and James Gleason -- hold their own better. The film was directed by Edward Sloman and the story was supplied by John W. Considine Jr., with the script by William K. Wells and Gleason.
Released during the depths the Great Depression, this surely did nothing to cheer up its audiences. Even the greatness of Irving Berlin's title song can't help it, although it was the first in a long line of films to use it. But at least the '30s slang is really goofy.
Best Line: "Yer lettin' a society dame make a chump outta ya!"
Side Note: Richman tried to create a movie career for himself with this film -- obviously, it didn't work. He only starred in two other movies. Unimaginatively enough, every character he played was named Harry.
The Scoop: Gather your torches and pitchforks! It's time to storm the castle!
This Columbia production does a good job of capturing vaguely old Eastern European milieu of the classic Universal horrors of the same period in this story aristocratic twin brothers battling an ancient family curse.
"The Black Room" stars an old Universal hand, Boris Karloff, who is at his best playing the twins -- diabolical Gregor and saintly, crippled Anton. We start with a brief prologue, in which the family castle's ancient torture chamber is walled off to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy of the family's ruin -- namely that the younger twin will kill the older. Flash forward a few decades and Gregor, who has inherited the family's baronage, invites Anton, who has been living abroad for year, back home. Anton discovers that the villagers all hate Gregor since he's essentially a serial killer who has been abducting the young women of the village, raping them, then killing them in "the black room," for which he has discovered a secret entrance. From there, we get the obligatory double-crosses, twin role switching and eventual triumph of good over evil that we expect. And of course, the prophecy comes true in the most ironic way possible.
The plot is pretty predictable and formulaic. This was obviously an attempt by Columbia to steal some of Universal's thunder, and the trite screenplay by Arthur Strawn and Henry Myers, shows this. But "The Black Room" is worth watching, though, not just for Karloff's typically fine acting, but also for the direction of Roy William Neill and the cinematography of Allen G. Siegler. Together, they create a rich Gothic atmosphere, with plenty of oddball touches.
Especially fascinating is how heavily Catholicized this film is. Huge crucifixes and statues of the Virgin Mary abound, given prominence in many establishing shots. Even the many chases between the village and the castle (through landscape that, anachronistically, is straight out of an early Western) pass several Catholic icons.
It's an odd mix, but it works. Thanks to the efforts of Neill, Siegler and Karloff, the film rises above the banality of the genre programmers it was meant to join.
Best Bit: The dog objects!
Side Note: Two different dogs were used to play Anton's loyal hound -- one male and one female. The difference is obvious on screen, sometimes even from shot to shot.
The Scoop: The screwball comedy featuring the fast-talking reporter and the madcap heiress was a genre that was done to the death in the 1930s, and unfortunately "Love is News" was one of the murder suspects.
Maybe I'm being a little too hard on this movie, since its heart seems to be in the right place, and it does have its amusing moments. In fact, it's mostly charming. But there are also a lot of bland screwball clichés on parade, as well as a needlessly convoluted plot.
The story, in a nutshell, involves a cynical, amoral newspaper man (Tyrone Power) who scams his way into an exclusive interview with a celebrity heiress (Loretta Young), who in turn gets back at him by starting a media frenzy by saying they are engaged. This upends the reporter's life and he must tangle with his cantankerous editor (Don Ameche), the heiress' ex-fiancé (George Sanders) and a whole host of cloying stock characters to set the record straight, before true love finally wins out in the end.
"Love is News" was not the best screwball comedy produced in the era, but it was also far from being the worst. Power and Young have a good chemistry on screen, but they were no Hepburn/Tracy or Grant/Russell. This film had the potential to be a whole lot better, but just wasn't. In all, it's a good light entertainment, but not the place you want to start in exploring the screwball comedy genre.
Best Bit: Either the booze checkers game, or the George Sanders photo flipbook.
Side Note: Director Tay Garnett must have gotten on famously with Young. This was the first of three films they made together, and he also later directed several episodes of her TV show.
Companion Viewing: "His Girl Friday" (1941), "Woman of the Year" (1942) and "Bringing Up Baby" (1938).
The Scoop: What would Halloween be without the king of the vampires?
An iconic milestone of horror cinema, "Dracula" made Bela Lugosi a star, made Universal Studios a mint and established the archetypes for all vampire movies to follow.
The script, by Garrett Fort, is a loose adaptation of the immensely popular Hamilton Deane/John L. Balderson play, which in turn was a loose adaptation of the classic Bram Stoker novel. The end result bares little relation to the source material, but that's beside the point. What makes this film a legend is Lugosi's threatening, sexually-charged performance as the undead Transylvanian count who wants to move to London to continue his bloodthirsty ways. Lugosi reprises his performance from the play here, as does Edward Van Sloan, who plays Dr. Van Helsing.
This film marked the high point of Lugosi's career (in only his first American movie) and would dominate his psyche for the rest of his life. It also (along with Boris Karloff's performance in "Frankenstein" that same year) firmly injected the horror genre into the modern consciousness.
Despite its legendary reputation, though, "Dracula" has sequences that are as stagey and talkative as any creaky melodrama of the period. It is considered the crowning achievement of director Tod Browning's career, although it is reported that his drinking problem got so out of hand during the shoot that cinematographer Karl Freund had to step in to do much of the direction. This is evinced best by the contrasts in quality between the moody, gothic atmospherics of the Transylvanian scenes (attributed to Freund) and the stodginess of the London scenes (attributed to Browning). By this point, all of Browning's best work was behind him, left behind in the silent film era, while Freund would go on to be a successful genre director in his own right.
Despite its flaws (armadillos, anyone?), "Dracula" remains a landmark of the genre and a must-see for any serious film fan.
Best Line: Either "I never drink... wine," or, "The children of the night -- what music they make!"
Side Note: In spite of being a runaway success and matinee idol for starring in the stage version, Lugosi was the last choice to play the role of the bloodsucking count on film. The producers and other studio executives thought Lugosi did not have the star quality to carry the movie and went through several alternatives, thoroughly ignoring Lugosi's active petitioning for the role. The actor who was finally chosen to play Dracula was Browning's frequent collaborator, the great Lon Chaney, who died just before filming began. When the other contenders weren't available on such short notice, Lugosi was finally given the role simply to keep the production on schedule. Despite playing the title character, Universal wound up paying him only half of what they paid the other principal actors.
Companion Viewing: "Dracula (Spanish Version)" (1931) and "Frankenstein" (1931).
The Scoop: This is an unjustly forgotten classic. It could've been just another standard 1930s-era shocker which, to today's viewer, can be an acquired taste. But what raises it above that is the performance of Boris Karloff.
Karloff plays John Ellman, an innocent man framed and executed for murder, who is brought back to life by a scientist Edmund Gwenn's experimental process. Ellman then uses his new lease on life to solve the crime and bring the real killer to justice. This character is no mere zombie, but a normal man angered by his wrongful conviction, haunted by the memory of his own death and (perhaps) driven by a higher power.
This kind of material should have just been a run-of-the-mill programmer, but it was made at Universal, then at the height of its first era of horror, which meant they could secure Michael Curtiz as director and Karloff in the starring role. Curtiz does a capable job making the potentially bland source material into something compelling, but once again it is Karloff who steals the show. He brings a touching humanity to the role, making this just one of several movies that prove he had what his fellow horror icon Bela Lugosi never did -- range.
Best Line: "Why did you have me killed?"
Side Note: Upon its original release, "The Walking Dead" was banned in Finland.
Companion Viewing: "The Return of Dr. X" (1939) and "Black Friday" (1940).
The Scoop: In the proud tradition of such roadside exploitation pulp as "Reefer Madness" comes this similar cautionary tale about the evils of narcotics. The subject this time is cocaine, which is much less benign than marijuana, but the cinematic results are just as goofy. The genre's full capacity for breathless hysteria is brought to bear on this story of a small-town brother and sister who are led to The Big City by a taste for the nose candy, where they fall into crime, prostitution, racketeering and -- worst of all -- swearing.
Obviously, this is another classic. It hasn't attained the legendary cult status of "Reefer Madness," probably for the simple fact that it wasn't embraced by the '60s counterculture the way that film was. If the hippies' drug of choice had been coke instead of pot, "The Cocaine Fiends" might have wound up being a much bigger part of our cultural history. (Of course, you could argue that if coke had been their drug of choice, Woodstock would have looked like something out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel instead of simply being a mud-caked lovefest.)
This film, like "Reefer Madness," "Slaves in Bondage," "Marihuana" and others, was born out of the roadshow circuit that flourished across rural America between the two world wars. Most often made by churches or morality groups, these films purported to offer education and advice on how to deal with many of the problems facing young people -- mainly drugs, sex and white slavery. The reels were driven from town to town by showmen who would often set up tents to show the films if the small towns they were visiting did not have movie theaters.
These movies tended to draw big crowds, not only because they were the only show in town, but also because audiences got to see a little titillation on the way to the film's spoon-fed moral message. It was this last fact that was seized on my many cheapie exploitation producers who found that they could get audiences for their sex-and-violence stories and skirt the mainstream film industry's production codes by appending ham-fisted moral messages to their work.
The genre was eventually killed off, first by World War II, and then later by the wave of postwar prosperity that brought urban entertainment to every corner of the country. But the films live on as high camp relics of a very different age.
Best Line: "Tonight I'm gonna take you on a sleigh ride with some snow birds."
Side Note: This is a remake of an earlier film called "The Pace That Kills" (1928) and footage from this was later edited into "Confessions of a Vice Baron" (1942) -- all three films were directed by William A. O'Connor.
The Scoop: Directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich, this lavish epic is the pinnacle of their eight-film cinematic partnership.
Based on the diaries of Catherine the Great, "The Scarlet Empress" tells the tale of her hard, brutal rise to power in 18th century Russia, going from being naive Princess Sophie of Prussian to becoming Empress Catherine II. Dietrich is at her best, at turns sexy and ruthless, and the film is a visual treat. Von Sternberg's direction and Bert Glennon's moody cinematography highlight the sumptuous costumes and elaborate, meticulously-designed sets. It all adds up to a worshipful, erotically-charged love letter to one of history's commanding personalities -- which applies as much to Dietrich herself as to Catherine. Von Sterberg conflates the two, which would ordinarily be a problem, but here it becomes one of the film's strengths.
There is plenty of sex, deception and passion on display -- all sorts of things here to please the modern fan. "The Scarlet Empress" is von Sternberg's greatest film, and one of the finest historical dramas of the '30s.
Best Line: "There is no emperor -- there is only an empress."
Side Note: Despite the lavish production design, von Sternberg was still budget-conscious. For expensive crowd scenes, he reused footage from Ernst Lubitsch's film "The Patriot" (1928).
Companion Viewing: "Queen Christina" (1933) and "Elizabeth" (1998).
The Scoop: Like the carnival denizens it features, this movie -- the creative pinnacle of director Tod Browning's career -- was reviled and disowned by the system that spawned it.
Browning was an American original, growing up in the circus to become a sideshow huckster. That experience served him well as he made the jump into the wild filmmaking world of the early silent era. He eventually teamed up with makeup master Lon Chaney to make a series of gruesome and perverse classics, such as "The Unholy Three" (1925), "The Unknown" (1927) and "London After Midnight" (1927).
In 1931 he was assigned to direct Bela Lugosi in "Dracula," which became a runaway success, firmly establishing the horror genre in the United States and single-handedly saving Universal from bankruptcy at the height of the Depression. With that success under his belt, Browning was given his choice of projects, so he chose something close to his heart -- a story about the circus side show freaks he spent much of his childhood around. Although it was driven with a promotional campaign that emphasized the stars' deformities (alternate titles included "The Monster Show" and "Nature's Mistakes"), the film is actually a humane exploration of their plight in a world that hates and exploits them just because of the way they were born, and starred real-life sideshow performers.
Harry Earles is the midget Hans, who acts as the informal leader of a close-knit group of freaks and sideshow performers in a traveling circus. When a beautiful trapeze artist (Olga Baclanova) discovers that Hans has an inheritance that has made him absurdly rich, she and her strongman boyfriend (Henry Victor) plot to steal Hans away from his midget fiancée (who is strangely enough played by Daisy Earles, Harry's sister) to get the money. This, of course, draws the ire of the freaks, setting up the classic final scenes.
Despite being somewhat stagey and running short (mostly due to cuts enforced by the studio and the Hays Office), the film maintains a menacing, macabre undertone that can still shock today.
Universal executives kept the project at arm's length and, after their initial release obligations, quickly buried it. It existed as a nearly-forgotten cult film (and was completely banned in the United Kingdom) until its long-overdue revival in the '60s, after Browning's death. Now considered a classic, it effectively ended Browning's career (although his growing alcoholism playing a big hand in that, too.)
Best Line: "One of us! One of us! We accept you! One of us!"
Side Note: Although for most of the freaks this was their only movie appearance, Johnny Eck ("The Half-Boy") also appeared in two Tarzan movies and an episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies."
Companion Viewing: "The Unknown" (1927), "Chained for Life" (1958) and the photographs of Diane Arbus.
The Scoop: This brilliant political farce from the Marx Brothers features their finest work. And it's one of those true classics that, if you haven't watched it in a while, you owe it to yourself to revisit it. And if you haven't seen it at all, then by all means close this window right now and surf straight on over to Netflix or Amazon to pick it up.
Groucho is Rufus T. Firefly, the new leader of the bankrupt nation of Freedonia, who declares war on a neighboring nation to impress a wealthy dowager (played by that eternal Marx foil, Margaret Dumont). Harpo, Chico and Zeppo are assorted hangers-on who get in on the fun. While the Marxes had had great success in film before this, "Duck Soup" is where they really came into their own as movie stars. It is the first film in which they managed leave behind the staginess of their early productions to combine the lessons they learned from years on the vaudeville stage with the strengths of the film medium.
Besides being one of the funniest movies ever made, with the trademark Marx anarchy in its full flower, it is also one of the most astute political satires ever put on film. The script (credited to four different writers, but obviously heavily expanded upon by the brothers themselves) expertly skewers the contemporary European politics that would eventually lead to World War II. But don't think it's dated -- it still has plenty to say to us today, because nations at war are not so different from each other, no matter the time or place.
Best Bit: Rufus: "Awfully decent of you to drop in today. Do you realize our army is facing disastrous defeat? What do you intend to do about it?" Chicolini: "I've done it already." Rufus: "You've done what?" Chicolini: "I've changed to the other side." Rufus: "So you're on the other side, eh? Well, what are you doing over here?" Chicolini: "Well, the food is better over here."
Side Note: At the time of the film's release, the town of Fredonia, N.Y., complained about the similarity to the town's name and requested that it be changed in the script. In response, the Marx Brothers insisted that the town change its name instead, and the matter was eventually dropped.
Companion Viewing: "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worry and Love the Bomb" (1964) and "A Night at the Opera" (1935).
The Scoop: Strangely enough, although filmmakers frequently turned to horror themes in the silent era, it took Hollywood until 1935 to make its first film about the werewolf legend. But the movie Universal produced here still holds up as one of the best.
An English botanist (Henry Hull) returns from Tibet with a rare flower and a case of lycanthrophy. Pretty soon, bodies start turning up around London and the hunt is on.
The gothic creepiness is top-notch, the characters are more fleshed out than many other horror films of the period, and the story still gives the legend a fresher twist than later movies. Even the makeup by Jack Pierce (also the creator of Boris Karloff's legendary makeup for "Frankenstein") is first rate. This makes a much better companion piece to Universal's other '30s monster movies than the much more popular, but inferior, "Wolf Man" (1941).
Best Line: "Imagine bringing a beastly thing like that into Christian England!"
Side Note: Universal loved Karl Hajos' score so much that they reused it in several later feature films, as well as the "Flash Gordon" serials.
Companion Viewing: "Dracula" (1931), "Frankenstein" (1931) and "The Mummy" (1932).
Take a Look: Except for a Windows-only pay-per-view on MovieLink and some comedy clips on YouTube, there isn't anything to be had online, which is a shame. So, here's this instead. (You knew it was coming, didn't you? There's no way I could make it through a review without using this reference):
The Scoop: Although he's remembered mainly for "Frankenstein" (1931), this is the essential James Whale film. Given more creative freedom, he made a film full of eccentric humor, moments of poignant tenderness, creepy sexuality and a few subversive touches.
The plot, from the J.B. Priestley novel "Benighted," is a cliché by now -- a group of travellers are forced to take shelter from a storm in a remote mansion full of sinister goings-on. Whale and the cast have great fun tweaking the conventions, although many of the more dysfunctional aspects of the family living in the mansion are glossed over in deference to the Production Code. (But the hints are still there, if you look for them.)
The cast, all in tip-top shape, includes Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Melvin Douglas, Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart (a full 66 years before her Oscar-nominated performance in "Titanic"). This film is one of those rare treasures that doesn't deserve its obscurity.
Best Line: "No beds! They can't have any beds!"
Side Note: The family's patriarch, 102-year-old Sir Roderick Femm, was actually played by a woman, Elspeth Dudgeon. She was billed as John Dudgeon to get her gender bending past the censors.
Companion Viewing: "The Cat and the Canary" (1927) and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1976).
The Scoop: For a short time in the early days of the sound era, before subtitling and dubbing came into their own, Hollywood studios solved the problem of supplying films for the foreign marketplace by filming alternate language versions of their productions that were exact line-for-line replicas. Many were second-rate hack jobs, but some, like this version of the Bela Lugosi vehicle, are top-notch, even surpassing the English versions.
This alternate version of "Dracula," directed by George Melford (with language assistance by Enrique Tovar Avalos), was shot after hours on the same sets as the English version. However, the stodginess of Tod Browning's film is supplanted by a gorgeous gothic mood that is only hinted at in the more well-known version. The script, too, features little flashes of the underlying sexuality of the story which never made it into the English-language version. In addition, Melford elicited stronger performances from his Spanish-speaking cast, especially Lupita Tovar (as Eva, the count's love interest) and Pablo Alvarez Rubio (as Renfield).
Carlos Villariás was a ham who couldn't match Lugosi's charisma in the title role, and Spanish speakers may notice the mismatching accents and wooden line readings. But these turn out to be minor quibbles given the excellence of the rest of the production.
The film was initially given a VHS release with English subtitles, but is most widely available now as part of the "Dracula Legacy" DVD collection without subtitles. However, the closed caption function can be used to provide English subtitles. At any rate, don't overlook this obscure gem.
Best Bit: Renfield's seduction by the three brides of Dracula.
Side Note: Shortly after production finished, Tovar married the film's producer Paul Kohner, who went on to be one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood. Their daughter Susan Kohner was nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role in "Imitation of Life" (1959).
Companion Viewing: "Dracula" (1931) and "El Mundo de los Vampyros" (1960).
The Scoop:
