The Frightful Fate of a Forlorn Flunky: The Mummy's Shroud

Now Playing: The Mummy's Shroud (1967)

Pros: The performances of the supporting cast, especially Michael Ripper as a harried, put-upon factotum, are a joy to watch; A couple of the mummy's kills are set up masterfully.
Cons: The recycled plot of a reanimated mummy wreaking vengeance on the expedition members that discovered its tomb is as musty and dusty as the mummy himself; The pre-titles sequence set in ancient Egypt lasts over seven grueling minutes.

Blogger extraordinaire Rebecca Deniston over at Taking Up Room has come up with a very simple and original blogathon idea: write about a film or TV show that underwhelmed you when you first saw it, but upon subsequent viewing(s) grew on you. If that concept appeals, by all means head over to her blogathon for more intriguing reassessments.

My choice for the blogathon is precisely no one's favorite of the many technicolor reboots of the classic monsters that Hammer Studios hammered out over a three decade period. Hammer is rightly famous (notorious?) for their Dracula and Frankenstein reboots featuring legendary actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. But they didn't stop with that Dastardly Duo.

From the late '50s through the '70s, Hammer added their own colorful spins to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, 1960 and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, 1971), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), werewolves (Curse of the Werewolf, 1961), and the Mummy saga with four (count 'em!) entries: The Mummy (1959), The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), The Mummy's Shroud (1967) and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971).

Somewhat like Universal's Mummy series, Hammer started out strong with their 1959 offering, starring Christopher Lee as the ancient cloth-wrapped instrument of vengeance, and Peter Cushing as a bookish yet formidable target of the curse. Although lacking in the mystical atmosphere of Universal's 1932 classic with Boris Karloff, 6'5" Lee brought several extra levels of physicality and impending doom to the title role.

1964's Curse of the Mummy's Tomb added some comic relief in the form of a brash, self-centered American entrepreneur (played by Fred Clark), but also leveraged the reincarnation angle to set up a surprise climax. By 1967 and The Mummy's Shroud, it seemed as if Hammer, like Universal's Mummy B pictures of the '40s, had run out of ideas and was in the lather, rinse and repeat mode. (However, they would infuse new blood, so to speak, into the series by adapting Bram Stoker's novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars and releasing it as Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.)

A synopsis of The Mummy's Shroud will seem very familiar to fans of Universal's Mummy franchise:

• An Egyptian royal runs afoul of court rivals and is entombed in a secret location along with his loyal manservant and guardian. Check.
• A 1920s expedition finds the tomb, which sets in motion the terrible consequences for the expedition members. Check.
• A modern-day Egyptian keeper of the tomb warns the expedition to stay away or be cursed. Check.
• The keeper reanimates the mummified guardian of the tomb by reading a sacred text from the royal shroud. Check.
• One by one, the defilers meet terrible fates at the hands of the avenging mummy. Check.

"Is anyone else feeling a sense of deja vu?"

When I first saw The Mummy's Shroud sometime around my high school days (not quite 3000 years ago, but sometimes it feels that way), my reaction was "been there, done that." Mind you, that was a time of pimply-faced adolescence when I couldn't get enough of Hammer's bloody technicolored reboots of the Universal classics I'd been raised on. So of course I was going to see Shroud at the first opportunity, regardless.

But that first viewing was a slog, kind of like sifting through tons of Egyptian sand to find a shard of pottery or two. There was the seemingly interminable pre-titles sequence (lasting over 7 minutes!) depicting the Egyptian prince's flight into the desert to avoid being assassinated, and his lonely death attended only by his loyal manservant. Okay, it was poignant, I guess, and filmed in glorious color with striking costumes, but did it have to be that long?

And instead of being rewarded with a bit of action for making it through the sonorously narrated fictional history lesson, my juvenile self was treated to yet another interminable sequence, this time featuring a pompous, rich jackass bellowing at the help as he arrives at an Egyptian hotel.

Stanley Preston (John Phillips), is the jackass and wealthy financier of the expedition, which includes his son Paul (David Buck). It seems the expedition hasn't communicated with the outside world for some time and is feared lost, and Preston has arrived in Egypt to yell at underlings to do something.

Preston blusters and berates his way through more exposition and back story as his meek and harried press secretary Longbarrow (Michael Ripper) twists himself into a pretzel trying to keep up with his boss's demands. It seemed to take forever in my teen hormone-clouded mind for the film to just get to the expedition camp, where the search party headed up by Preston arrives just in time to learn that they've finally found the lost tomb of the benighted Egyptian prince Kah-to-Bey (played in the pre-titles sequence by Toolsie Persaud).

Longbarrow (Michael Ripper) tries to ingratiate himself with his irate boss.

After being threatened by the sinister self-appointed keeper of the tomb Hasmid (Roger Delgado), the expedition leader, Sir Basil Walden (Andre Morell), wants to be cautious, but the arrogant money-man Preston forces the issue and gets the excavation going pronto, little knowing that he is sealing his, and the expedition's, doom.

Some 45 long minutes into the film, the mummy of the Prince's manservant Prem (played in the prologue by Dickie Owen; the mummy is played by Eddie Powell), finally gets around to his bloody avenging of the tomb's desecration, jump-started by Hasmid's malevolent ministrations.

Okay, so at this point the film goes on to do a credible job of building suspense and an impending sense of doom with the giant mummy lurking in every dark corner of the old city, but man, there's a ton of exposition and dialog to get through first!

Fast forward to 2019, when I was bit by the Hammer mummy bug after a rewatch of the original 1959 reboot. Being the red-haired stepchild of Hammer's mummy series, The Mummy's Shroud seemed to have successfully eluded any streaming services, so I took advantage of a classic horror convention I was attending to secure a DVD copy.

Far older and somewhat more mature, I was more receptive to the character development in the first part of the film that my younger self saw as an unforgivable delay in getting to the good stuff. But it wasn't John Phillips bloviating as Preston that got my attention, so much as master character actor Michael Ripper's wonderful performance as the put-upon factotum Longbarrow.

They never learn. That thing is going to start walking, and it's not going to be pretty.

At this point in Hammer's filmography, Ripper was a very familiar face, popping up in seemingly everything bearing the Hammer name. Many of his appearances were brief, but they were always memorable. Complementing the exotic classiness of stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, Ripper specialized in rough and tumble working class characters, from barkeepers to coachmen to day laborers. He was a relatable everyman who provided a bit of comic relief or a simple, common sense perspective in Hammer's world of monsters and swashbucklers (for more on Ripper and his extensive career, see my friend Barry's tribute to the versatile character actor over at Cinematic Catharsis).

His portrayal of Longbarrow in Shroud is something of a departure -- in the film he is dapper in a linen suit, complete with immaculate hair and pince-nez glasses (not to mention this is one of his heftier roles). At the beginning of the film Preston refers to Longbarrow as his press secretary, but like many underlings of the capricious rich, he has a boatload of "other duties as assigned," arranging hotel accommodations, getting together search parties, booking passage on ships, ad nauseum.

Ripper's poor, harried character doesn't even merit a first name, and the name he does answer to brings to mind "wheelbarrow" -- appropriate, as Preston seems to only see him as an expendable tool to haul around his baggage, real and metaphorical.

Ripper is a wonder to behold, at one and the same time meek, unctuous and efficient; one moment smiling in self satisfaction at a job well done and the next knitting his brow in worry that his master is displeased.

As the expedition members start to get picked off one by one, Preston's former brash self confidence collapses into gnawing fear, and he instructs his flunky to book passage for he and his wife on the next steamship out of Dodge -- against the explicit instructions of the Egyptian police inspector to stay put until the murders are cleared up. You can see the wheels turning under Longbarrow's brow as he wonders, "are you taking me with you?" and we're relieved for the worried assistant as Preston begrudgingly tells him he can book for himself as well.

"I can't take you with me Longbarrow, but here, get yourself something nice out of the hotel vending machine."

Alas, the police get wind of Preston's plan to escape and shuts it down. When yet another expedition member, the photographer, is burned to death in his hotel room, the financier goes into full panic mode and commands poor Longbarrow to get up in the dead of night to make arrangements for the first ship out of port. When Longbarrow realizes that his boss won't be taking him along after all, the look of grief and disappointment on his face is heart rending. And, without spoiling too much, the pitiful assistant's fate is so very, very undeserved (but at least there's some justice in the Mummy universe -- Preston pays dearly for being Preston as the film draws to a close).

I would be remiss not to mention two other supporting actors who help elevate the film from a trite snoozefest to something that, for all its faults, bears a rewatch. Elizabeth Sellars plays Preston's elegantly cool and composed wife, Barbara, who for most of the film keeps to the background with a detached, slightly bemused smile as her husband grandstands and sucks the air out of every room he's in.

"Whoa Preston, you're way too tense! Here, let me give you a shoulder rub..."

With nothing more than subtle facial expressions and some offhand comments, Sellars makes it clear that her character has calculated the trade off she has made -- affluence at the cost of living with a horse's ass -- and decided it was a bad bargain. When her panicked husband tells her to pack up, that they're leaving Egypt, she calmly tells him she's not going. "I'll be alright," she icily informs him. "After all, I didn't enter the tomb." Ouch!

Mirroring Barbara Preston's icy contempt, but hiding that contempt behind a twisted, toothless grin and a cackling, menacing laugh, is Catherine Lacey as Haiti, Hasmid's fortune-telling mother and prophetess of doom for the expedition members. Looking like a prototypical refugee from a central European gypsy camp and armed with a stage prop crystal ball, Lacey complements Sellars' cool detachment, her eyes glinting with mischievous glee at the terrible fates of the English interlopers.

Some viewers will chuckle as Haiti keeps tabs on the tomb defilers by watching their movements on the crystal ball as if it were a TV monitor. But there is one chillingly effective scene with the prop, when Sir Basil, exhausted and on the run from authorities who want to commit him to an asylum, encounters Haiti. Told that he has mere seconds to live by the malevolent soothsayer, Basil blinks wearily as he looks at the crystal ball and sees the cloudy reflection of the mummy creeping up behind him.

Haiti and Hasmid are hoping there's a DoorDash delivery in their near future.

If you need someone to blame, or alternately, compliment for The Mummy's Shroud, John Gilling, who directed and wrote the screenplay from a story by producer Anthony Hinds, is your man. The previous year, Gilling had helmed two Hammer horrors, The Reptile and Plague of the Zombies, filming them back to back at Bray Studios for budget savings. Although not involving popular characters like Frankenstein or Dracula, over the years the two films have acquired a loyal cult following. An earlier Gilling-directed horror film, The Flesh and the Fiends (1960), starring Peter Cushing, is a very good adaptation of the infamous Burke and Hare murderous grave robbers story (see my review here).

While Shroud is nowhere near the top of Gilling's resume, it does represent the end of an era for Hammer, as it was their last film shot at Bray Studios, which had been home to the company for 16 creative and lucrative years.

Another notable feature is the mummy itself. According to Hammer historians Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes, the creature was based on "a genuine relic resident in the British Museum's Egypt rooms of a later, Roman-era body. Its impressive demise, wherein the creature claws away at its own, disintegrating head, was filmed in Les Bowie's Slough studio. It was assistant Ian Scoones' gloved hands that crumbled a dummy wax head filled with fuller's earth, paint dust, and a prop skeleton." [Hearn and Barnes, The Hammer Story: The Authorized History of Hammer Films, Titan Books, 2007, p. 115]

If you haven't seen The Mummy's Shroud (and there's no reason you should have), it still presents challenges to the curious who want to check it out. It doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere, but there are DVD and Blu-ray copies available for those who have some spare change lying around. If you're a Mummy or Hammer completist, you definitely will want to take a look. Or maybe you're a Michael Ripper fan, and want to see him at the top of his game in one of his very best and most poignant Hammer roles. Whatever the reason, "beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet" (as the tagline goes) as you mount your own expedition to unearth The Mummy's Shroud.

In addition to the requisite avenging mummy, The Mummy's Shroud features a fictional ancient Egyptian history lesson.

The Little Old Horror Convention from Pasadena: Monsterpalooza 2026

Okay, so Monsterpalooza is not little (it features hundreds of vendors and exhibits and scores of celebrity guests and panels), nor is it old (unless you think 10 years is getting up there; it's been doing its thing in Pasadena since 2016). What it definitely is for me is accessible, being just a few hours drive from where I live. (For more background on the convention see my post from 2023.)

 

I'm not an inveterate convention goer like some people I know, but neither am I abstemious, having been to 4 horror and fantasy conventions since 2019.

Monsterpalooza skews to a relatively younger audience of 30 and 40 somethings, and it specializes in showcasing practical special effects and makeup, attracting a lot of artists and shops from the greater Los Angeles area.

This year's convention, held at the Pasadena convention Center on May 29-31, also catered to moldy old Monster Kids like myself, with a panel celebrating the 95th anniversary of Universal's Frankenstein and Dracula, a tribute to suit actor, superfan and original Monster Kid Bob Burns, and a talk on the career of Peter Lorre, among others.

Here are highlights from the panels and talks I managed to attend over the three day run (in chronological order):

Paul Williams

At the venerable age of 85, Oscar and Grammy winning composer, songwriter and actor Paul Williams looks like a spry, benevolent leprechaun who has just discovered a pot of gold and wouldn't mind sharing some of it. Williams did share some gold with the audience, in the form of stories from nearly six decades of involvement with the music and entertainment industries.

Williams touched on some very personal career highlights in the hour long interview and audience QandA. He quipped that working with Jim Henson and the Muppets on The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie (1979) was like "being with a bunch of buddies in a tree house." He also poignantly described being inspired by the desert of the American Southwest, and the aspirations of a "land-locked" bird, in writing Gonzo's song, "I'm Going to go Back There Someday" for The Muppet Movie (at first Henson passed on the song, but then changed his mind and told Williams that he would create a scene for it).

Of course, this being Monsterpalooza, a couple of audience members were dressed up as the Phantom of the Paradise (1974), and questions about that production inevitably came up (Williams wrote the music for the film and co-starred as the villain). When asked what it was like working with the Phantom William Finley, Williams complimented his co-star on the pathos that Finley could express with just his one eye visible behind the mask he wore.

Williams also fondly recalled the time he went from the set of Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) to appear on the Tonight Show and engage with Johnny Carson in full Orangutan makeup and costume.

Sybil Danning

Austrian born Sybil Danning was the definitive B movie action heroine of the '80s. In that decade, the statuesque blonde star intimidated and fought opponents in outer space (Battle Beyond the Stars), ancient Rome (The Seven Magnificent Gladiators), the jungle (Jungle Warriors), and gritty urban streets (L.A. Bounty), among other things.

Danning talked about starting out as a model in the late '60s, which resulted in her screen debut as the folklore character Lorelei in a cheap German exploitation film. Just a few years later, she secured a role in the Richard Burton horror-thriller oddity Bluebeard (1972), as well as in Richard Donner's epic hits The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), where she became good friends with Geraldine Chaplin.

Although not realizing it at the time, Danning's role as the "Valkyrie" warrior Saint Exmin in Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars would establish her credentials as an action heroine and typecast her for the next decade. She said Corman was great to work for, but he could be tough, especially when money was at stake -- he fired an actor who kept muffing his lines and causing retake after retake. She is also proud that her iconic performance inspired a Saint Exmin action figure (although to date, it's the only action figure based on one of her characters).

Danning also spoke of the great respect she had for Christopher Lee by the time they made Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (they had made four films together prior to that, including the Donner Musketeer movies). The production was located in the former Czechoslavkia; when the director received his "werewolf" costumes from the producers in the U.S., he was dismayed to find recycled ape costumes from a Planet of the Apes movie. To transform the characters into werewolves, they had to improvise and painstakingly apply small hair appliances over the face and body to achieve the effect, which took hours. Danning reports Lee as being impressed by her stamina and professionalism in submitting to long hours in the makeup chair.

Sybil Danning talks about her co-star Christopher Lee.

Bob Burns Tribute

Bob Burns, who passed away at the age of 90 last December, was a TV and film editor, a special effects designer and gorilla suit actor par excellence (one of his claims to fame was portraying Tracy the gorilla, the sidekick to Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch in the mid-70s TV show Ghostbusters). Bob and his wife Kathy were huge monster and sci-fi movie fans who used their industry connections to rescue props, set pieces and other paraphernalia that had been used in many productions over the years.

Bob and Kathy's famous basement collection included the armature used to animate the first King Kong, the time machine from the George Pal film, and the original wolf's head cane from The Wolf Man (1941), among other amazing finds.

A large panel of movie industry professionals, including makeup maestro and 7 time Oscar winner Rick Baker, paid affectionate tribute to Bob and Kathy as photo after photo of their joyful life, surrounded by human and monster friends, were projected on the backdrop screen. Baker related how he met the Burnses when he was just 13, and hung around with them so much that he considered them his second parents. Bob gave Rick encouragement even as others were saying how impossible it was going to be for him to get into the movie business.

Various panel members related how modest and generous Bob was, contributing a large amount of his time to helping out friends such as special effects and suit designer Paul Blaisdell on his creations, while taking no credit. They also related a story about Bob asking 20th Century Fox for some memorabilia from the Alien movies, and the studio responding by delivering a semi-truck full of props and sets to his door.

The panel also reminisced about how for many years Bob and Kathy would stage elaborate Halloween shows at their house, enlisting technicians, effects people and actors to help them recreate scenes from such films as The Exorcist, War of the Worlds, and Alien. Besides the basement museum, it was another fun, imaginative way for the Burnses to give back to their community.

Dracula and Frankenstein Turn 95

While much of Monsterpalooza is dedicated to later horror fare of the 90s and beyond, this year the organizers enlisted a panel to celebrate the 95th birthday of the Universal monsters that started it all. Julian David Stone, author of It's Alive (2022), a fictionalization of the making of Universal's Frankenstein, led the discussion with co-panelists Antonia Carlotta, host of the YouTube vodcast Universally Me and a descendant of Carla Laemmle, niece of Universal Head Carl Laemmle, and Scott Essman, director, producer, writer and film historian.

The wide-ranging discussion touched on a number of topics and intriguing facts surrounding the production of the the two films and the huge impact they had on the industry:

• Carl Laemmle Sr. made Carl Junior head of Universal's film production at the tender age of 21.
• The father was not a big fan of what came to be known as horror, but gave his son latitude to make his impact.
• Lon Chaney Sr., who was a huge star of the silent era, was slated to appear as Dracula, but died before production could start. Lugosi, who had played Dracula on Broadway and added exotic sexual chemistry to the role, got the nod over more familiar and popular actors. 
• Makeup artist Jack Pierce was disappointed when he found out that Lugosi would be doing his own makeup on the film, but he would soon have his chance to pull out all the stops in creating the look for the Frankenstein monster. 
• Dracula was ground-breaking in that the title character was truly supernatural in origin; prior fright films and villains had been thoroughly grounded in the "real" world, with prosaic explanations for seeming supernatural events.
• Frankenstein was originally slated to be directed by French expatriate Robert Florey with the new hit star Bela Lugosi as the monster. Stories circulated that Florey's test footage with Lugosi did not go well (none of the footage has survived). Meanwhile, Laemmle Sr. was so impressed by James Whale's success with Waterloo Bridge (1931) that he promised him any project of his choosing, and Whale took on Frankenstein.
• The story goes that Whale spotted Boris Karloff in the Universal commissary, on break from a small role in another movie, and quickly realized he had his monster.
• When Jack Pierce and Boris Karloff were at an impasse as to how to make the monster appear more frightening, Karloff suggested making his eyelids droop more severely, and Pierce used mortician's wax to achieve the effect.
• Frankenstein, which had its world premier in Santa Barbara toward the end of 1931, was an even greater hit than Dracula. Other studios realized they needed to jump on the bandwagon. Paramount, which had passed on Dracula, started production of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde with Frederic March (who would win the Oscar for best actor for that role). 
• MGM's Irving Thalberg reportedly demanded his writers come up with something more disturbing than Dracula. The result, Todd Browning's Freaks (1932), was too disturbing for 1930s audiences and ended up being a huge money loser for MGM (which promptly suppressed it for decades after).

Panelists discuss Universal's one-two punch of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931.

Other Panels

• Peter Lorre: Master of Menace. Karie Bible, tour guide at the Hollywood Forever cemetery (where Mr. Lorre is interred) and Dawn Fratini, film historian, gave a lively talk about the life and film career of one of the great character actors of the 20th century. They showed clips from some of his more notable films, including Fritz Lang's M (1931; featuring Lorre in a breakout role as a child murderer), The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), The Raven (1963), and an assortment of cartoons in which Lorre voiced characters based on his iconic looks. 
• Planet Terror. Actor Freddy Rodriguez and FX master and actor Tom Savini reunited to reminisce about the making of the apocalyptic zombie movie. The 2007 film was produced by Quentin Tarantino and released on a double feature with Death Proof (starring Kurt Russell) to recreate the 1970s grindhouse theater experience. They played multiple clips from the movie, including one where Rodriguez whips a gun around at lightning speed, sharpshooter style (which Rodriguez said took months of practice to perfect). 
     Savini paid his co-star a great compliment, saying he was sure at the time that Rodriguez would become the next popular action hero, but the films flopped, much to the consternation of everyone involved. Savini speculated that the order in which the films were screened as a double feature, with frenetically-paced Planet Terror coming first, followed by Death Proof, a thriller that takes some time to ramp up the action, contributed to audiences rejecting both films.

The teeming crowds and enthusiastic panel audiences at the Pasadena Convention Center proved that the classic monsters could cohabitate with the likes of Michael Myers and Art the Clown, if only for a weekend.

Gallery of Monsterpalooza Photos

Ray Harryhausen's creations live again at the Monsterpalooza museum.

This creature needs no introduction.

A waxwork Bob Burns in his Tracy the Gorilla suit.

A Comedy of Terrors.

Even monsters need to keep up with their social media accounts.

Dead Guys & Dolls: The Dead Don't Die

Now Playing: The Dead Don't Die (TV Movie; 1975)

Pros: Creates an atmosphere of darkness and dread in various spots; Some well-executed, spooky sequences.
Cons: The film's protagonist is miscast, and some veteran actors are wasted in small roles; awkward use of clunky expository dialog.

Okay, so I'm a sucker for the made-for-TV horror and sci-fi movies of the 70s. Life was good back then -- my parents broke down and got a color TV, so I could enjoy my favorite late night horror hosts, The Ghoul and Hoolihan and Big Chuck, in living color as they broadcast from the great metropolis of Cleveland.

When I wasn't looking forward to the hosted horror shows, the networks were tantalizing me with their movie of the week offerings that so often included horror, mystery-thrillers and sci-fi. The network execs had finally figured out that broadcasting movies in prime time could be lucrative, and by the early '70s, their own made-for-TV features were capturing eyeballs and in some cases generating eye-popping ratings. For example, as the vampire Janos Skorzeny was draining the blood of Las Vegans in the original airing of The Night Stalker in 1972, he was also racking up a 33.2 rating and 54 share -- monstrously large ratings almost unheard of for scripted TV at the time. Fortunately, the Night Stalker's success guaranteed that there would be many more TV fright features to come.

When I started this blog with the mission to revisit the nearly forgotten B horror and sci-fi flicks of my misspent youth, made-for-TV fright fare was in the mix, but my go-to titles were the generally low hanging fruit of things already in my DVD collection or readily available in cheap public domain collections. Over the years, the list of TV movies available on demand has grown exponentially, especially on YouTube (and with an honorable mention nod to Tubi). It's almost to the point that if you can remember it, you can watch it -- just don't expect a pristine copy in all cases. As a result, I've been wandering the made-for-TV corridors more and more: sample some of the posts here.

FYI, the subject of today's post is not one of those movies I recall fondly from my days in front of the Magnavox console TV. Somehow, The Dead Don't Die flew over my head, under my radar, and around whatever TV guide I was using, because I was completely unaware of the existence of this movie until recently. To further obscure matters, it shares a title with with the very peculiar Jim Jarmusch zombie film starring Bill Murray and Adam Driver (itself rapidly receding from collective memory, as it did not connect with audiences).

I think I was looking up the Jarmusch film when I stumbled, zombie-like, across a reference to the 1975 film and became intrigued. The cast was certainly interesting, with veterans Ray Milland, Ralph Meeker and Joan Blondell, eye candy in the persons of Linda Cristal and George Hamilton, and the always creepy character actor Reggie Nalder mixing things up in a horror tale set in 1930s Chicago.

"What's not to like?" I thought to myself (readers of this blog will probably understand, if not necessarily members of the population at large). Well, to trot out a time-worn cliche, the result is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. Some of the parts are reasonably effective and atmospheric, but we'll get to that in short order.

George "Crispy Colonel" Hamilton plays Don Drake, a sailor who has taken leave to visit his brother, who unfortunately is on death row for the murder of his wife. Before being executed in Old Sparky, the brother (Jerry Douglas) swears his innocence and gets Don to promise that he will find the real murderer and clear his name.

Don is no private investigator, but reasonably, he starts his quest at the scene of the crime -- the Loveland Ballroom, where brother Ralph and his wife had been participating in a dance marathon, and where he had been found passed out in a back room next to his wife's body.

The ballroom owner Jim Moss (Ray Milland) is cooperative and sympathetic, even giving Don the money that his brother had earned in the competition. Something seems off however, when one of the near walking dead marathon contestants drops in a heap on the floor, and Moss roughly tells his attendants to get her out of there before genially resuming his conversation with Don. (For the uninitiated, dance marathons that lasted for days on end were an exploitative fad in the grim days of the the Great Depression, with desperate contestants willing to literally run themselves into the ground for the slim hope of winning prize money. They figure prominently in the celebrated novel and film adaptation of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. The backdrop of the marathon in The Dead Don't Die helps set up its dark atmosphere and prefigures later developments.)

Don Drake (George Hamilton) has a conversation with ballroom owner Jim Moss (Ray Milland) as dance marathon contestants shuffle around like zombies in the background.

Moss sends Don on his way by suggesting he track down Frankie, the trainer who found Ralph with his wife's body -- although Frankie has mysteriously disappeared. At Ralph's gravesite, Don is shadowed by a mysterious and beautiful woman dressed in black. As Don is dining at his hotel, the mystery woman, Vera LaVelle (Linda Cristal), approaches Don and begs him to leave Chicago immediately for his own good. As they're conversing, Don glances out the window and sees what he thinks is his brother Ralph standing in the street.

Linda Cristal as Vera LaVelle looks absolutely funereal. 

Don rushes outside, following Ralph to a shop door, where he disappears. Don barges into the place, an antiques shop, where he is confronted by an old woman, Levenia (Joan Blondell) and the creepy-looking shop owner Perdido (Reggie Nalder). They insist no one came into the shop. Convinced they're hiding something, Don struggles with Perdido, who hits his head hard as the pair fall to the floor. Levenia insists Don has killed Perdido, and while he's looking for signs of life, the woman brains him with a lamp.

Don regains consciousness at Vera's place. The next morning, Don discovers Vera hurriedly packing to leave. She pulls a gun on him, which he grabs. Vera tells the disbelieving sailor that he is in grave danger from Varek, a voodoo zombie master who is enslaving the dead for his own evil purposes.

When Don insists upon meeting Varek, the pair take a cab to a funeral home (an appropriate enough place for a zombie-maker to hang out). The attending undertaker has never heard the name Varek, but directs Don to a room where Perdido's body is on display. As Don approaches the body in the casket, a hideous, rasping voice that seems to be coming from the body identifies itself as Varek, whereupon  the corpse reaches out and grabs Don by the throat.

Tearing himself away, Don is aghast as the dead (?) Perdido climbs out of the coffin and shambles toward him. The panicked man fires several shots into Perdido, to no avail, and then flees the room. 

Perdido (Reggie Nalder) decides to get up and greet the mourners at his own funeral.

Don breathlessly reports the strange events to Lt. Reardon (Ralph Meeker) at the local police station, who wearily decides he has to check it out. At the antiques shop Don is shocked to see that Perdido is very much alive and kicking. Reardon figures he's got a nutcase on his hands.

WARNING: Before you scroll zombie-like to the next paragraph be aware that there are spoilers ahead.

Before all is said and done and the last zombie has stopped shambling, our intrepid protagonist

• has another encounter with Vera, who tells him that she is one of Varek's zombies sent to kill him, but she has broken the Master's spell by falling in love;
• travels with Moss to the cemetery where Ralph is buried to dig up his body;
• is saved from another zombie attack by Frankie the trainer, who reveals that it is he who actually killed Ralph's wife while under Varek's spell;
• finally confronts the Zombie Master in an abandoned warehouse (that also doubles as a zombie cold storage unit), and learns of his plan to use a zombie army to take control of the city and eventually the world.

Ray Milland makes a wardrobe and attitude adjustment for the final act of the film.

If this sounds to you like an overheated Poverty Row B programmer on the order of something like King of the Zombies (1941), with a mad zombie-maker hell bent on world domination, you're not far off. The Dead Don't Die also indulges in a few film noir cliches, including a protagonist on a mission to clear a loved one's name, and a femme fatale who can't decide whether to kill him or kiss him. The plethora of scenes that take place in the dead of night further enhances the noirish atmosphere. 

The 1930s setting is somewhat curious -- the plot could just have easily fit into a contemporary setting. One wonders if the producers had ready access to period sets and costumes and chose the time period to set it off from the other TV movies that were being churned out. On the other hand, the Depression-era dance marathon, with its weary, desperate contestants shuffling like zombies around the dance floor, nicely foreshadows events to come.

Don's unjustly executed brother Ralph (Jerry Douglas) is somewhat miffed at being used as an unwitting pawn.

Unfortunately, fighting against the film's dark atmosphere is the casting of George Hamilton, whose fabulous California tan sticks out like a bronzed sore thumb in a night world populated with pallid zombies. Hamilton could be effective with the right material -- see my post on The Power (1967 -- but in this he wears a constant pained expression as he stumbles around, dazed and confused (at least his pencil mustache fits with the time period).

Playing coy with the villain role is veteran Ray Milland, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend (1945), and in The Dead Don't Die portrays a madman drunk on power. Milland was one of those actors who didn't know how to quit working, and consequently over the years appeared in many beloved B horror and sci-fi movies, including X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963; see my post here) and The Thing with Two Heads (1972), among many others. 

The director, Curtis Harrington, recalled how he offered on the set to burnish Milland's image, but the old pro would have none of it:

"Ray Milland was well past his Academy Award-winning days, but I felt very privileged to work with such a distinguished actor. He was still very handsome and would have looked even more so if he had allowed us to put a toupee on him. But his attitude was the he should be accepted as he was, so he played the part entirely bald. He was open to accepting whatever parts came his way at this point in his career. He told me that he had been talking to his friend James Stewart, who expressed envy at the fact that Ray was working and he was not. James Stewart was still the bigger star, and I doubt anyone would have had the temerity to offer him a part in an ordinary television show." [Curtis Harrington, Nice Guys Don't Work in Hollywood: The Adventures of an Aesthete in the Movie Business, Drag City Incorporated, 2013, p. 172.]

Don Drake finally gets it: the dead really don't die.

Harrington also employed two other veterans, Joan Blondell and Ralph Meeker, presumably for their name value, but both are wasted in bit parts. Joan is just an appendage to Reggie Nalder's character Perdido, but at least as an actress whose heyday was in the '30s, she fits into the period ambience.

Meeker, who was so intense as PI Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (1955), is reduced 20 years later to playing a stereotypical Irish cop whose function is to give the protagonist the stinkeye when he insists that there are dead guys walking around. 

Whatever chills The Dead Don't Die manages to conjure up is entirely due to boogeyman Reggie Nalder's presence. The Austrian-born actor suffered facial burns as a young man, which contributed to a distinctive, gaunt look that made him a natural for certain parts, especially menacing ones. Nalder appeared in a small but key role in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and is perhaps best known for his work in the infamous exploitation film Mark of the Devil (1970), as well as for the Nosferatu-like vampire in the mini-series Salem's Lot (1979).

My heart would leap for joy when I saw ads like this.

For better or worse, Nalder didn't need much makeup to look like a walking corpse. The scene in which Varek's rasping voice seems to be coming from Perdido's dead body lying in the coffin, its mouth stretched back in a deathly rictus, induces real goosebumps. Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the producers recycled Perdido footage in a later nightmare sequence, which ends with a hackneyed shot of a hand breaking through the cemetery dirt to clutch Don's ankle.

Less effective in her part is leading zombie lady Linda Cristal. She starts out mysterious and enigmatic, but the Argentinian actress struggles with her thick accent in relating her incredible and complicated backstory to the disbelieving protagonist. Her character's final exit should have been one of the film's highlights, but crude practical effects and editing veer it into unintentional comedy. Let's just say that the scene brings new meaning to the phrase, "smoldering looks."

Suspense and horror master Robert "Psycho" Bloch wrote the teleplay from his short story. With its clueless, meandering protagonist and clunky expository dialog that slows down the proceedings, the film is not a highlight in the esteemed author's resume. Bloch would go on to contribute better material to such classic TV anthology shows as Boris Karloff's Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hammer's Journey to the Unknown, Night Gallery, and Tales from the Darkside, among others. Bloch himself quipped, "Two years later we [Curtis Harrington] teamed up again for another TV movie, The Dead Don't Die. Maybe they don't but the show did." [RobertBloch.net]

The film may not have been a hit at the time, but over the years it has refused to die, clawing itself out of the grave of forgotten TV movies and into places like YouTube with the help of appreciative fans. If only for corpse-like Reggie Nalder menacing some familiar veteran actors, you should check it out.

The Great Hammer-Amicus Antiques Expo

Regular readers of Films From Beyond are no doubt aware of the bizarre universe that parallels our own, where monsters are the norm (and not just members of the ruling class). Every once in awhile, yours truly is privileged to see through the fragile membrane that separates our universes and report back via this blog -- see my previous reports here and here.

Recently I scored a sensational exclusive: the transcript from the pilot episode of the Hammer-Amicus Antiques Expo, which unfortunately was not picked up by the network in its alternate universe and never saw any further development.

Inspired by this universe’s Antiques Roadshow from PBS, the Expo (or HAAE) invited select participants caught up in the frightful events documented by various Hammer and Amicus films to share their antique finds with the co-hosts, who were uniquely qualified to assess the cultural significance and value of the items. Collectors in-the-know have searched far and wide for a copy of the show’s tape, the original of which is thought to have been reused for an episode of Hammer's This Old House of Horror.

The videotape itself is likely lost to the ages, but after countless hours scouring eBoo, Eeksy and the darkest corners of the Dark Web, I finally secured a transcript of the episode, dog-eared and dusty, but nonetheless complete. Judge for yourself whether or not the monsterverse is immeasurably poorer because the Expo failed to become a full-fledged series.

Jimmy Sanguinarius: Welcome to this debut episode of the Hammer-Amicus Antiques Expo! I'm your host, Jimmy Sanguinarius, and please give a round of applause to my co-host, Robert Black!

Bob: Just call me Bob, Jimmy.

Jimmy: Okay Bob Jimmy! [Winks at Bob] Before we get rolling with our first frightful find, a bit of background. Bob and I are certified MADD - that's Macabre Antiques Dealers and Distributors for the uninitiated. We're here to help our guests uncover the bone-chilling back stories of their finds, and assess their meaning and worth on the open market.

Bob: I'd like to add that I'm excited to be here, and...

Jimmy: First up we have Mr. Van Helsing...

Van Helsing: Doctor Van Helsing.

Jimmy: Doctor Van Helsing. So Doc, what's your specialty?

Van Helsing: I am a doctor of vampirology. I study the scourge of the unholy undead who drink the blood of the living to sustain their infernal existence, and I use that knowledge to eradicate them and their hideous evil from the face of the earth!

Jimmy: Okaaaay... So Doc, what did you bring us?

Van Helsing: These silver candlesticks literally saved my life. I recently tracked down the most cunning and evil vampire of them all, Count Dracula, to his remote castle. We faced off in the Ballroom, and it was not going well for me until I seized upon the idea to tear open the window curtains to let in the dawn's light. Then I picked up the candlesticks, forming a cross -- vampires hate the symbol of our lord and savior -- which repelled him, backing him up into the cleansing light, whereupon he promptly disintegrated. So to me, these are priceless.

Jimmy: [Picking up one of the candlesticks] Okaaaay... first off Doc, these aren't silver, they're pewter, and fairly crude at that. Top grade silver candlesticks will usually have the initials of the silver smith etched into the underside of the base. [Turning one of the candlesticks over] This one says "Made in China," and there's a tag here reading "Property of Hammer Studios."  But all is not lost. These might fetch upwards of 10 bucks at a movie memorabilia auction. But I understand how they might be priceless to you. [Van Helsing's face falls].

"Careful Van Helsing, you're going to scratch that priceless set of candlesticks!" (Horror of Dracula, 1958)

Pewter prop candlesticks: $10

Jimmy: Okay then Bob, who's our next guest?

Bob: Well Jimmy...

Jimmy: Oh, I see someone has brought a human skull for us to examine -- cool! Let's have the owner of this fine specimen introduce himself.

Maitland: I'm Doctor Christopher Maitland...

Jimmy: Whoa, another doctor! Well Bob, I guess we don't have to ask if there's a doctor in the house if somebody faints at the sight of that skull! [Audience laughter]

Maitland: Actually, I'm a doctor of anthropology, as well as a connoisseur of the macabre and esoteric like yourselves.

Jimmy: I don't suppose you're an expert on vampires like our last guest..., wait a second this couldn't be the skull of that Count Dracula fellow, could it?

Maitland: Er, no, but someone just as notorious! This is the skull of none other than Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, the Marquis de Sade!

Jimmy: Oh wait, that's that French guy who invented sadism, am I right?

Bob: To be precise Jimmy, the term "sadism" comes from...

Jimmy: [Picking up the skull] So Doc, how did you come by this bad boy?

Bob: Careful there Jimmy, that skull is reputed to be possessed by the foul spirit of the Marquis de Sade, and is said to haunt and terrify anyone who comes in contact with it, to the point of madness... or even death!

Jimmy [carefully examining the skull]: He seems pretty harmless now... [Grinning] They say the eye sockets are the windows to the soul. So, what's up Doc?

Maitland: Er, uh, one of my associates took it off the hands of a collector who, shall we say, was ready to part with it.

Jimmy: How convenient! But Doc, you're looking a bit run down. I don't suppose you're anxious for someone else to take it off your hands?

Maitland: Well, I have been troubled by persistent nightmares that seem very real. And it doesn't help that some people I know have been dying recently...

Jimmy: Well, maybe we can turn that frown upside down. I don't see any "Made in China" tags on it, so that's a positive. I know quite a few collectors who would give their right arms, and maybe a few other body parts, to own the legit skull of the notorious Marquis, even with its cursed reputation. It could even be worth a cool million...

[Maitland breaks into a broad smile]

Jimmy: ... provided you came into possession of it legally, and you have all the documents proving its authenticity. [Maitland's face falls. Jimmy holds up the skull again.] Alas, poor Maitland, I knew he might be disappointed! 

"Here's looking at you kid!" (The Skull, 1965)

Skull of the Marquis de Sade: $0 - $1 million

Jimmy: Okay, Bob, we have time for one more guest -- who's it gonna be?

Bob: Jimmy, next up is Edward Charlton, and he's brought an item for us to reflect upon.

Jimmy: Ho ho, good one Bob! I see a cloudy antique mirror that looks like it could have come from a haunted house.

Charlton [sniffing contemptuously]: This piece is quite old and unique, a magnificent example of the Rococo style. I got it for a literal steal at a local curio shop. [Smiling wanly] But you're right about its appearance. Some friends and I were inspired to perform a seance after I acquired it.

Jimmy [sizing himself up in the mirror]: And how did that go?

Charlton: Well, er, we tried but couldn't summon up any interesting spirits. Some at the seance were a bit jumpy though.

Jimmy [staring into the mirror]: Either I've gotten a lot paler and have developed deep circles under my eyes, or there's some sort of entity living in this thing.

Bob [looking at he mirror over Jimmy's shoulder]: You're right Jimmy, there's a very agitated, malevolent spirit inside the mirror. It seems to be saying something... [Pauses] Uh oh, it says it wants to be freed from the mirror, and needs sacrifices -- human sacrifices -- to rejoin the world of the living.

Jimmy: Oh, that's a bummer Ed! That's gonna bring down the price at auction, and on top of that, you'll probably have to divvy up the proceeds with the entity. [Charlton's face falls] But you still might get a hundred bucks from a collector who doesn't believe in murderous ghosts that live in mirrors.

"So, if you buy the mirror I'll throw in this cool ceremonial knife..." ("The Gatecrasher" segment of From Beyond the Grave, 1974)

Antique mirror: $100

Jimmy: Well, that's all the time we have today. On behalf of Bob Black and myself, thanks to everyone for coming, and keep an eye out for those frightful antique finds -- you never know when we might roll into your town in the dead of the night!

This post was originally going to be part of the fifth Hammer-Amicus Blogathon hosted by Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry at Cinematic Catharis, but I couldn't get my act together in time. Check out their sites and the blogathon from last year (click the image below):

Frozen with fear: The Man with Nine Lives

Now Playing: The Man with Nine Lives (1940)

Pros: In spite of the low budget and minimal sets, the film maintains great pace and suspense as it winds its way through plot twists and turns; Well acted all-around.
Cons: Scientific purists will guffaw at the script's crackpot take on cryogenics.

This post is part of the "Secret Places and Trippy Houses blogathon" hosted by Rebecca Deniston, whose not-so-secret online lair is the blog known as Taking Up Room. As Rebecca put it in her blogathon announcement,

“One of the most fascinating plot devices in storytelling, whether on the screen or in books, has to be the secret place, whether it’s a literal secret room or a weird house with secret passages, or maybe an underground city, or something that has gone unnoticed. It means that everyone who doesn’t know about these hidden places has to reset their thinking and look at the world differently, which is an interesting mental exercise.”

Not only does The Man with Nine Lives feature a secret passageway and chamber that holds the key to a tragic mystery, it features Boris Karloff as a medical researcher whose ability to look at the world differently is both his biggest strength and weakness.

But first, a bit of background (stop your groaning, this will only hurt a little bit!). We all know that dear Boris was vaulted to worldwide fame when, at the tender age of 43, he first portrayed the classic product of mad science, the Frankenstein monster.

In addition to two more stints as Frankenstein’s creation (Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein), the 1930s saw him portraying monsters, both supernatural (The Mummy, The Ghoul, The Walking Dead), and human (The Black Cat, The Old Dark House, The Raven) to great acclaim.

But as Boris aged, producers flipped the script on him, keeping him in the same old familiar horror films, but increasingly making him the creator of mad science instead of its product. And Boris stepped into the roles as if he’d been dabbling with things better left alone all his life.

Many of the roles took advantage of the real life man -- gentlemanly and gracious -- and mixed in a lot of sympathy for the character along with menace:

• In The Man Who Lived Again (1936), Karloff portrays an idealistic scientist dabbling in soul transference who is driven mad when everything he has worked for is upended by an unscrupulous patron.
• In Before I Hang (1940), he’s a kindly physician sentenced to death row for a mercy killing who gets permission to experiment in prison on a new blood serum, with horrific results.
• In Black Friday (1940), he’s a brain surgeon who saves the life of his professor friend by transplanting a portion of a gangster’s brain into the professor, with… horrific results.
• In The Devil Commands (1941), he’s a grieving scientist who invents a means to communicate with his dead wife, with, you guessed it, horrific results.

Boris had this mad doctor thing down cold.

Later, in 1945’s House of Frankenstein, the story that launched Karloff to fame and fortune came full circle when he played Dr. Gustav Niemann, who revives the Frankenstein monster (along with Count Dracula) for his own evil purposes. Still later, In Frankenstein 1970 (1958), he portrayed a descendant of the original Frankenstein who tries to create a new monster even as he hosts a Hollywood film crew at his castle.

1940’s The Man with Nine Lives gave Karloff, who had already experimented with invisible rays and partial brain transplants, a chance to tinker with yet another esoteric mad scientific discipline. In this outing, he plays Dr. Leon Kravaal, an early pioneer in the use of cryogenics (dubbed “frozen therapy” in the film) for treating aggressive diseases.

As the film opens, we’re introduced to medical researcher Tim Mason (Roger Pryor), who has gotten in trouble with his boss at the research hospital for overselling his new frozen therapy as a cure for cancer (the theory being that slowing down the body’s metabolism and functions through suspended animation will kill the bad cells, or something like that.)

Mason talks over his predicament with his trusty (and lovely) assistant Judith Blair (Jo Ann Sayers), speculating that if he could just talk to or get a hold of the notes of Dr. Kravaal, the preeminent pioneer in frozen therapy, he might be able to perfect his own techniques and prove the therapy’s virtues to the doubters.

Mason and Judith discuss marketing strategies for their new Frozen Therapy.™

The only problem is that Kravaal disappeared, along with a group of local men, 10 years ago in a remote town where he had taken up residence in order to conduct his research in peace.

But of course, medical research, especially mad medical research, waits on no man, disappeared or otherwise. Mason and Judith decide to travel to the remote town in the hopes of finding Kravaal’s laboratory and notes that might provide a breakthrough for Mason’s work.

In their quest, the intrepid duo stumble upon not one, but a veritable plethora of secret places. Let’s count them:

1. The island. For maximum remoteness and to get away from the prying eyes of pesky skeptics, Kravaal had located his lab on an otherwise uninhabited island. A requisite superstitious local, the boat rental guy, tries to warn Mason and Judith off of going to the island, ominously telling them of the men who had headed over there and never returned.
2. Kravaal’s ramshackle house on the island, which looks haunted enough to deter anyone except the most curious and ambitious of medical researchers and their eager assistants.
3. The secret laboratory, which the brave pair only discover when Judith falls through rotten floor boards, enabling them to discover the stairs to a secret sub-basement.
4. An ice-encrusted vault off of the lab, containing the frozen, but still living, bodies of Kravaal and the missing local men.

How's that for a laundry list of secret places in one little, unassuming B movie?

Fortunately Amazon delivers to secret remote islands, so Kravaal can keep his lab well-stocked.

In addition to all those secret places, The Man with Nine Lives packs an awful lot of mad scientific jargon, flashbacks, soulful monologues, fraught stand-offs, and who-will-survive suspense into its economical 74 minute runtime.

Even though most of the movie takes place in the claustrophobic confines of the secret lab and frozen vault, the pacing as one secret after another is revealed makes for a very satisfying, edge-of-your-seat watch.

Words can’t adequately convey all the twists and turns the plot takes in this tale of crackpot science, mysterious disappearances, and amazing resurrections (nor do I want to spoil the fun by revealing too much). Suffice it to say that Mason and Judith have stumbled on a frozen tableau of tragedy, involving a dedicated scientist trying to cure a dying man, and the man’s nephew and local officials convinced that the scientist has already killed his patient.

As a result of the confrontation, Kravaal and his persecutors are all frozen together in the secret vault with no one the wiser — effectively having disappeared for 10 years until their accidental discovery.

"Next time I'm getting a frost-free refrigerator!"

Luckily, they’re revived by trained medical professionals — Mason and Judith — who know what they’re doing. But the relief is short-lived as the passionate and single-minded Kravaal is convinced that he’s closer than ever to perfecting his work — and he’s got a whole lab full of human guinea pigs whom the outside world already considers dead. Bwwwwaahahaha!

Okay, that wasn’t fair — nowhere in the film does Karloff/Kravaal do a mad scientist’s maniacal laugh. Actually, The Man with Nine Lives fits very neatly into Karloff’s other roles from this period — that of a gentle, yet dedicated doctor/researcher/scientist whose work is misunderstood by plodding authorities and colleagues, with those misunderstandings (and Karloff’s dogged persistence in spite of it all) resulting in horrific consequences.

Of course, by this time dear Boris could do this sort of thing in his sleep, but it’s still fun watching him masterfully turning from a gentle (if highly dedicated) soul to a monomaniacal agent of destruction who is willing to sacrifice anyone and anything in his pursuit of mad science. (At one point he offhandedly tells Mason and Judith that “This work is worth a thousand lives like his [the nephew’s]).

"This won't hurt a bit!"

Karloff’s/Kravaal’s murderous intensity as he realizes he’s on the cusp of completing his life’s work is a thing to behold. Similarly intense are the performances of the supporting actors playing the arrogant and uncomprehending local authorities (plus the nephew) who intervened 10 years earlier with tragic results, and who wake up from their frozen slumber none the wiser, and far more vulnerable as they realize they’re in the clutches of a madman who views them as no more valuable than lab rats.

There’s a certain satisfaction in watching these self-righteous dullards — Stanley Brown as the nephew, John Dilson as DA Hawthorne, Hal Taliaferro as Sheriff Stanton, and Bryon Foulger as the Coroner — quake in their boots as they contemplate being sacrificed for science (and they’re so good at blubbering and quaking!).

"We're men dammit, not lab rats!"

Roger Pryor as Mason and Jo Ann Sayers as Judith also do a creditable job as the only two you want to root for — at times they seem to be channeling William Powell and Myrna Loy in their own Thin Man-like mystery (in this case, a “Frozen Man” mystery).

Behind the camera, journeyman director and B specialist Nick Grinde manages to extract maximum angst and suspense out of this odd, claustrophobic little film. Around the same time, Grinde also directed two of Boris’ better mad doctor Bs, The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and Before I Hang (1940) — see my reviews of those two in the post “Hanging out with Boris.” (Somewhat oddly, Grinde would hang up his directing duties by the mid-forties, although he lived many decades after that.)

Screenwriter Karl Brown teamed with Grinde on the same trilogy of mad doctor films. The partnership was a salutary one, as they are among the most lively and unique of all of Karloff’s B pictures.

The three films would make a very entertaining Halloween marathon, and at only an hour and some change for each, that would still leave you time to bob for apples or go on a Halloween scavenger hunt. Just don’t get trapped in some mad doctor’s secret laboratory.

Karloff deals yet again with uncomprehending idiots.

Where to find it: DVD | Streaming