In short: The Undying Monster (1942)

aka The Hammond Mystery

In the English countryside. Oliver Hammond (John Howard), the family's maid, and a spaniel are attacked on a frosty full moon night by what can only have been an animal. The dog is killed, Oliver slightly hurt, and the maid so badly wounded she falls into a coma the family doctor Jeff Colbert (Bramwell Fletcher) does not expect her ever to recover from. Oliver's sister Helga (Heather Angel) is disturbed enough by the attack she's making a trip to London and Scotland Yard for help instead of just calling in the local police. Scientific detective Robert Curtis (James Ellison) and his partner, the rather less scientific Cornelia "Christy" Christopher (Heather Thatcher), clearly two specialists in the rather more curious sorts of crime, get on the case.

Once arrived at the Hammond mansion, it quickly becomes clear to the intrepid investigators that the crime at hand might just have something to do with the family curse which has supposedly caused death and destruction for the Hammond family through the ages. But everyone except Helga seems rather reticent to cooperate with the detectives, as if they'd hide some terrible secret.

I find this adaptation of Jessie Douglas Kerruish's novel rather more interesting than good and effective; in fact, I'm a bit disappointed I didn't actually enjoy watching The Undying Monster more than I actually did, for the film does some things which are rather uncommon and unexpected for its time. There's the clash between John Brahm’s moody gothic expressionist direction and art direction that is clearly brother to the spirit of the Universals, and a pair of detectives with a quite modern and scientific bent (let's look at this werewolf hair under the spectrometer!), the fact that said detectives really feel like an early attempt to take fantastic literature's occult detective - or at least a detective interested in the outré and improbable - into the world of the screen, an effort that would still take a few decades after this to actually lead anywhere. "Not leading anywhere" is the film's main problem I think, with a mystery plot that's so obvious a drunk monkey understands what's going on after the basic situation is set up, the whole science versus the supernatural angle first opened up pleasingly enough but then not really getting explored at all (with added bonus of a "natural explanation" scene that makes little sense after the audience has seen an actual werewolf transformation scene), and actors like John Howard and Heather Angel not being allowed to do much of anything.

Like many minor horror movies of its era, The Undying Monster is just a bit too slight to be really effective on an intellectual level, and seems to lack any courage to follow its own ideas where they lead, resulting in what at times seems more like a series of wasted opportunities than a complete movie.

In short: Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937)

Oh noes! Evil foreigners (J. Carrol Naish and Helen Freeman) kidnap Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond's (John Howard) perma-fiancée Phyllis Clavering (Louise Campbell) shortly before they can get married. It's as if the fiends were in on the series' long running gag regarding the matter. Then, the bad guys proceed to have Drummond, his mentally disabled sidekick Algy (Reginald Denny), and his long-suffering (and enjoying it) butler Tenny (E.E. Clive), jump through various hoops in form of particularly lame riddles that have them racing between the same handful of sets.

Only Drummond's old friend Colonel/Inspector Neilson (John Barrymore) isn't allowed to play, so he follows the rest of the cast around in various silly disguises.

It's been some time since I last took a look at one of the Bulldog Drummond movies. B.D. Comes Back surely isn't the film to suck me back in. Too little are director Louis King's efforts to hide that the script (by Edward T. Lowe Jr.) he is working from doesn't actually have a plot, nor anything much interesting happening in it, even for the generally cheap and simple world of Bulldog Drummond movies. Most of the other films of the series (regardless of who was playing Drummond in that particular week) are at least trying to use their limited options to entertain their audience.

It's not so much that the film's basic set-up is deeply stupid that's the problem here but rather that it doesn't even attempt to distract the audience from the fact all it ever does is have its characters run in circles, doing the same thing over and over again. The resulting effect is a film very close to what a lab rat in a particularly undemanding labyrinth must feel.

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Bulldog Drummond's Revenge (1937)

Notorious evader of weddings Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond (John Howard) is just about to go on his way to Switzerland with his fiancé Phyllis Clavering (Louise Campbell) in tow to marry there, when he stumbles into another wedding-postponing affair.

I don't know what the odds are that a suitcase containing a highly experimental and volatile explosive Drummond's old friend/foe Colonel/Inspector/Whatever Nielson (John Barrymore, in an act of cruelty first-billed despite not being the actual hero of the piece) is trying to keep out of the wrong hands will land directly in front of Drummond's feet, but it does.

Before our hero can do very much about it, the bad guys out to steal the explosive break into his home, drive his and his nit-wit buddy's Algy (Reginald Denny) respective better halves into wild screeching and fainting (there is - alas - a lot of fainting of women in the movie), and escape with the explosive again. This however, as lazy scripting will have it, is not at all the last our heroes see of the explosives nor the bad guys, for everyone will make their respective ways over the channel in the same train and on the same ferry. Drummond, Phyllis, Drummond's Butler Tennison (E.E. Clive), an Algy too easily distracted by villains to leave a train on time, and the exasperated Nielson soon play catch with the bad guys again, one of whom walks around in drag for reasons of being less conspicuous.

Louis King's Bulldog Drummond's Revenge is the first appearance of John Howard as the - in the movies - decidedly non-fascist adventurer Bulldog Drummond, a role he would go on to reprise many a time. In his first film, however, the actor is not as fun to watch as Colman or Ray Milland were in the role. Here - and I've seen Howard's other Drummond appearances in a past so distant I don't dare say anything about later films or I'd turn into one of these IMDB "reviewers" who talk about films they watched once thirty years ago pretending they still know what they're talking about - Howard's Drummond seems neither as silly and charming as Colman's, nor as mad as a hatter as Milland's, and lands at an uncomfortable place where he often just seems not quite as charming as he's supposed to be, as well as just a bit too serious for the film he's in.

How much of that impression is caused by the film's rather dubious script is anybody's guess. Now, I don't expect deep psychological insights or clever plotting from this sort of movie (this clearly was an actual B-movie in the true sense of the word, that is to say, a film meant as the shorter film of a double bill), but I do expect a film to not unnecessarily bank on happenstance to drive its plot further when it might more fruitfully let its protagonists actually do something smart or fun to get to the same point, as it is generally more entertaining when a film's heroes act instead of only ever reacting to things that happen for no good reason. I'm also not too enamoured with the way the film sets up its many "comic" episodes as scenes that seem completely disconnected from what's happening around them, especially since the humorous moments that are actually needed in the plot are the only ones that are in fact funny.

I had also to cope with a certain degree of disappointment when I realized that the film uses its female characters strictly to nag and faint and get threatened a bit, which stands in strange contrast to the other Drummond's I've seen where the women all were allowed some degree of independence (most of all Heather Angel in the Milland Drummond) despite being kidnap fodder and eye candy. I know, this was made in 1937, but Bulldog Drummond's Revenge isn't doing much else to distract me from its flaws, so I don't see why I should ignore them.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,mystery,comedy,louis king,john howard,john barrymore,louise campbell,reviews