Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Bride of Frankenstein is the celebrated 1935 sequel to Universal’s 1931 hit Frankenstein. Both movies were directed by James Whale, a man with an extraordinary and to my mind slightly mystifying reputation as a great director of horror movies.

We start with a rather unnecessary prologue featuring England’s most degenerate poets, Byron and Shelley, listening to Shelley’s wife Mary continuing her story where the novel left off. And the movie then takes up the story at the exact point at which the 1931 Frankenstein ended, with the monster incinerated in the burning barn and the body of the hapless Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) being returned to his castle and to his grieving fiancée Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson).

Henry Frankenstein is however not quite dead. He recovers and is determined to forget all about his terrible experiments. The arrival of his old teacher, Dr Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), changes all this. Pretorius has been working (in a particularly bizarre way) on the creation of artificial life as well, and he wants Frankenstein’s help. He intends to get that help, even if he has to resort to extreme methods to persuade Frankenstein.

Pretorius wants to create a female monster, a mate for Frankenstein’s original monster. The monster, like its creator, survived the fiery furnace and now is now roaming the countryside causing mayhem and trying to make friends, which in turn creates more mayhem. The monster’s wanderings will eventually bring him to Frankenstein’s castle where Pretorius will use him to force Frankenstein’s hand.

Finally, after an hour of mostly irrelevant sub-plots and maudlin interludes, the movie kicks into high gear as Frankenstein and Pretorius bring the monster’s mate (played by Elsa Lanchester) to life with unexpected and catastrophic results.

James Whale clearly had no genuine interest in horror films and no real respect for the genre. As in most of his horror efforts he insists on playing far too many scenes as comedy and unfortunately comedy was something for which he had little flair. The entire movie seems to be intended as a mockery of the horror genre, and of Mary Shelley’s original story and quite probably mockery of the audience as well. To make sure that the movie’s impact as a horror film is blunted as much as possible Whale agains calls on the services of Una O’Connor who had almost single-handedly wrecked The Invisible Man. She throws herself into her task of wrecking The Bride of Frankenstein with great enthusiasm.

Many many writers worked on this film so perhaps it’s not surprising that the final script is a little disjointed and unfocused.

The acting is extremely uneven. Apart from the appalling Una O’Connor we get more unfunny comic relief from E.E. Clive as the burgomaster. Colin Clive is dull, as he was in Frankenstein. Ernest Thesiger is mannered and arch and while he tries hard to be the personification of evil and vice at times he becomes just irritating.

On the credit side Elsa Lanchester is memorably bizarre in her dual roles as Mary Shelley and as the monster’s bride but gets little screen time and little time to do any actual acting. Karloff is good, as always, although he strongly disagreed with the decision to make the monster speak. Dwight Frye as the sinister Karl is another bright spot.

The scenes involving Dr Pretorius’s miniature people are technically impressive but they’re silly and pointless and they greatly weaken the film.

While the script, direction and acting are uneven the superb visuals do much to compensate for the movie’s other weaknesses. The bringing to life of the monster’s bride is a spectacular visual tour-de-force. Whale seems suddenly to come to life, throwing one stunning image after another at us. There’s some superlative editing also in these scenes. The movie is well worth seeing just for these absolutely superb sequences.

Whatever its weaknesses this is technically an exceptionally well made motion picture. The sets are excellent. The Bride’s makeup effects are terrific. John J. Mescall’s cinematography (he described the lighting approach he used as Rembrandt lighting) is magnificent. James Whale had worked as a set designer and apparently had quite a bit of input into the impressive art direction of the film.

Universal’s Blu-Ray presentation looks great and there are plenty of extras, including an embarrassingly worshipful audio commentary.

Bride of Frankenstein is certainly a vast improvement on Whale’s The Invisible Man. It has some very very good moments. The changes of tone are somewhat disconcerting. For most of the earlier part of the film it just doesn’t quite work, perhaps mostly because it’s obvious that James Whale never really wanted to do the film in the first place. The last twenty-five minutes though are as good as anything that has ever been achieved in a horror movie. Despite the reservations I have about it Bride of Frankenstein still has to be recommended.

Tower of London (1939)

Universal’s Tower of London, released in 1939, is an historical drama rather than a horror movie. However the presence in the cast of Boris Karloff and Vincent Price, as well as Basil Rathbone, makes it of considerable interest to horror fans. Roger Corman directed an inferior remake in 1962.

The story of the rise and fall of Richard III is so dramatic that it would be almost impossible to make a dull movie on the subject. And this movie is certainly far from dull.

Basil Rathbone has the starring role as Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later to become King Richard III). His brother King Edward IV (Ian Hunter) reigns. The previous king, the mad Henry VI, is a prisoner in the Tower of London. Henry VI’s son tries to wrest the throne from King Edward but is defeated and killed by Gloucester at the decisive Battle of Tewkesbury.

Edward IV has two young sons so the succession seems assured and clear-cut. The King however is suspicious of his brother the Duke of Clarence (Vincent Price). He is not suspicious at all of the Duke of Gloucester, although he should be. Gloucester is a skillful and subtle plotter and he is determined to gain the throne for himself. In a rather nice touch the movie has Gloucester manipulating puppets in a puppet theatre, each puppet representing one of the people who stands between him and the throne.

There are numerous fairly complex sub-plots. I’m not really sure it would be possible to keep track of the complex inter-relationships and the byzantine machinations of the leading figures without having a reasonably good knowledge of the history of the period. The motivations of many of the leading characters are exceptionally complicated. This is especially true of the Duke of Clarence.

Despite the complexities of the plot the movie moves along at a brisk pace and there is plenty of drama.

Basil Rathbone was always a splendid villain, and in this movie Richard is most certainly a villain. He is cold-blooded and calculating, and a patient and remorseless schemer. This is one of the more subtle screen portrayals of Richard III and one of the most believable - Rathbone’s performance makes it possible to understand how Richard could have got away with his plotting for so long, hiding it under a veneer of charm. 

Vincent Price plays Clarence as something of a fop, a man whose ambitions would be dangerous if he had the strength of character to back them up. The scene in which Clarence’s love of Malmsey wine catches up to him is rather well played.

The movie’s claims to being a horror movie rest mainly on Boris Karloff’s performance as Mord, the Duke of Gloucester’s chief executioner and general-purpose evil henchman. Mord is partly crippled by a misshapen foot, a clever echo of Gloucester’s own deformity (although Gloucester’s hunchback is downplayed in this movie). Mord is a classic Karloff villain.

The weakness of the movie is that we’re not really left with any sympathetic characters to identify with. Rathbone’s performance is good but it’s perhaps makes him an overly two-dimensional villain with the result that the audience might find itself not caring too much who comes out on top in the movie’s endless power struggles. The closest thing we have to a hero is John Wyatt (John Sutton), but he’s rather bland and too much of a peripheral character to count as a real hero.

Rowland V. Lee directed the production from a screenplay by his brother Robert N. Lee. Rowland V. Lee’s career included a number of horror and adventure movies, including the superb Son of Frankenstein, so he must have seemed a sound choice to helm this one. He does a competent if uninspired job. The battle scenes benefit from being dark and chaotic but suffer from being markedly unexciting. Universal were trying to keep the budget within reasonable bounds but they were also to a large degree aiming the movie at their traditional horror market which may also explain why it was shot in black-and-white. The production ran well over schedule and over budget although it managed to turn a profit.

Towards the end Tower of London suddenly becomes more of an adventure movie, in fact a bit of a medieval heist movie. And Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone deliver some genuine horror moments.

This movie features in Universal’s five-movie Boris Karloff Collection DVD boxed set. The transfer is quite superb. The boxed set itself is a worthwhile buy for horror fans.

Tower of London is a fairly entertaining historical melodrama with enough gruesome touches to keep horror fans happy. Rathbone and Karloff are the main reasons for seeing this film although Vincent Price has his moments as well. Had it been released on its own I wouldn’t recommend this as a purchase but since it’s included in a boxed set that is worth buying for other reasons there’s no reason not to give this one a watch.

The Ghoul (1933)

Boris Karloff, then at the height of his popularity, returned to Britain in 1933 to make The Ghoul for Gaumont-British Pictures. This often overlooked Egyptian-themed horror movie had been floating about for years in very sub-standard editions until its release on DVD, in a very fine transfer indeed, by MGM.

The Ghoul was clearly an attempt to cash in on the enormous success of The Mummy the year before.

Boris Karloff plays Professor Morlant, an ageing and ailing Egyptologist who believes he can cheat death by means of a fabulous jewel looted from an Egyptian tomb. By means of this jewel Anubis will give him eternal life.

Unfortunately for the professor quite a few other people know about this jewel and they all want it, in some cases for its mystic properties and in others simply for its monetary value.

As Professor Morlant dies he assures his faithful servant Laing (Ernest Thesiger) that he will return from the dead. Since this happens early in the film the audience will certainly believe him even if Laing doesn’t.

After Morlant’s death the various parties seeking the jewel converge on his very gothic house. Unfortunately at this point the movie becomes more of an Old Dark House comedy thriller rather than a horror movie. It will return to horror eventually, with mixed success.

The first third of this movie is actually quite good. It builds the gothic mood successfully enough and it achieves a certain creepiness, mainly due to Karloff’s performance as the professor who already looks like a corpse before he is dead.

The motley collection gathered at the house includes Morlant’s heirs, young Ralph Morlant  (Anthony Bushell) and his cousin Betty Harlon (Dorothy Hyson). Betty drags along her friend Miss Kaney (Kathleen Harrison) whose job it is to provide the obligatory painfully unfunny comic relief. Also present are a young clergyman (played by a very young Ralph Richardson), Professor Morlant’s shady solicitor Broughton (played by Cedric Hardwicke) and the inevitable mysterious Egyptian Aga Ben Dragore (Harold Huth).

Nothing notably happens for quite a while as the film gets badly bogged down but finally Karloff does reappear to deliver a certain amount of horror.

The fairly strong cast assembled by Gaumont-British for this picture deserved better material. Karloff is effectively creepy, while Ernest Thesiger overacts outrageously and fairly amusingly.

The failings of The Ghoul are many. The basic idea is good but the script does little with it. The pacing is too slow, especially in the middle stages. The payoff is a rather disappointing cop-out. Comparing it to The Mummy merely emphasises its weaknesses. While The Ghoul boasts some reasonable sets and does have some gothic atmosphere it lacks the visual brilliance that Universal brought to their horror films of this era. Director T. Hayes Hunter is competent but sadly uninspired. There are a few good visual moments, especially early on. The funeral scene is quite creepy and atmospheric.

MGM’s DVD is superb. Picture quality is extremely crisp, contrast is good and there is no sign whatsoever of print damage. Sound quality is good as well. The lack of extras is a slight disappointment but MGM are to be commended for making this relatively little known   horror movie available in such a pristine state.

The Ghoul is not a terrible picture. It’s certainly no worse than most of Universal’s 1940s efforts. It’s just not a very good picture. It illustrates the important truth (one that Universal understood in the 30s but forgot in the 40s) that if you want a good horror movie it helps to have a good script and a director and a cinematographer with a genuine feel for the material, and you need to keep the focus on the main horror plot as much as possible. Boris Karloff fans will be reasonably satisfied by his performance. Worth a look as a rare example of a 1930s British horror movie that at least tries to deliver some genuine chills, and does at times partially succeed.

The Mummy (1932) on Blu-Ray

The Mummy has always been one of my favourites among Universal’s 1930s horror movies. My DVD copy being a very poor one it was not difficult to convince myself that the Blu-Ray release would be a worthwhile purchase.

I’ve always thought that The Mummy can be best appreciated by being seen as both a horror movie and a tragic love story. It was slightly unusual among Universal’s early horror offerings in not being based on a classic of gothic literature, although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories Lot 249 and The Ring of Thoth were certainly influences. Interest in ancient Egypt was already high when the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen by a British archaeological expedition in 1922 ignited a full-blown craze. Nina Wilcox Putnam’s original screenplay was drastically rewritten by John L. Balderston. The movie was originally going to be about Cagliostro but it eventually evolved into a story much more closely focused on ancient Egypt.

The movie opens with a superbly mounted suspense set-piece as an assistant to Sir Joseph Whemple’s 1921 dig unwittingly restores to life the mummy of the high priest Imhotep. The mummy then disappears. A decade later a mysterious Egyptian named Ardeth Bey (Boris Karloff) leads another expedition to an extraordinary find, the tomb of the Princess Ankh-es-en-amon. The audience already knows that Ardeth Bey is in fact Imhotep.

As the story unfolds we learn of the tragic love of Imhotep and Ankh-es-en-amon. Imhotep believes that a young half-American half-Egyptian woman named Helen Grosvener (Zita  Johann) is Ankh-es-en-amon reincarnated and he is determined that this time their love will endure.

While Imhotep/Ardeth Bey is certainly ruthless and is certainly a danger to anyone who gets in his way he is never a true monster. He has no interest in killing random strangers or in destroying civilisation or in ushering in a reign of evil. All he wants is to have Ankh-es-en-amon restored to him and for the two lovers to be united forever. He is thus, even by comparison with some of the rather sympathetic Universal monsters, a very sympathetic monster indeed. Karloff doesn’t just make him sympathetic; he gives the character a great deal of weight and dignity. If it’s not Karloff’s greatest performance it’s certainly among his very best.

It remains a mystery why anyone ever thought David Manners, who plays Sir Joseph Whemple’s son Frank, was worth pushing as a potential star. He had the matinee idol looks certainly but he was always much too bland. Fortunately there’s a fine supporting cast here with Edward Van Sloan being particularly good as Doctor Muller, who is Helen’s doctor as well as Sir Joseph Whemple’s close friend and also happens to be the expert in the occult that such a movie has to have.

This movie also benefits from having one of the best female leads of any of the Universal horror pictures. Zita Johann was known mostly as a stage actor and although her performance is a little stagey that actually suits both the movie and her role perfectly. Most importantly she looks convincingly exotic without coming across as a femme fatale.

This was Karl Freund’s first movie as a director and he not only brought the film in on time and on budget, he also added the kind of visual flair and sophistication you would expect from a man who was one of the greatest of all cinematographers. Despite the potentially lurid subject matter Freund avoids sensationalism. He clearly wants to entertain but he also wants us to take the love story seriously, and he succeeds on both counts. And the movie delivers the chills that a horror movie requires.

Universal had not been making horror movies for very long when this one was made but they were already very very good at the technical side. Jack Pierce’s makeup for Karloff is perfect, striking the right balance. It is creepy but it still gives Karloff’s character the dignity that the story requires. The sets are wonderful and in general this is one of the handsomest horror films ever made.

The Blu-Ray boasts a superb transfer. It is loaded with extras although personally I found them to be rather disappointing. The commentary track is unfocused, partly because there are just too many people involved, but more seriously they simply have not done their homework (their most egregious error being to credit H. G. Wells as the author of the two short stories that inspired the movie even though a minimal amount of research would have told them that the stories were in fact from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). There’s a documentary as well but it’s rather superficial.

What matters though is that The Mummy is one of the greatest of all horror movies and it looks magnificent on Blu-Ray.

The Raven (1935)

The Raven is one of the lesser known Universal horror movies of the 30s and it’s a bit of a neglected gem. This 1935 production was one of the several occasions on which Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were paired and it gives both actors a chance to shine, although it’s Lugosi who dominates and effortlessly walks off with the acting honours.

Supposed adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s works generally have little actual Poe in them and this movie is no exception. Poe is however a influence on one of the major characters so I guess Universal felt they were entitled to claim it as a Poe adaptation.

Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware) is gravely injured in an automobile accident. The doctors fear that little can be done to save her. Her one chance would be if Dr Vollin could somehow be persuaded to take on her case.

Dr Richard Vollin (Bela Lugosi) is a great surgeon now retired from practice and devoting himself to his obsession with Edgar Allan Poe. With great difficulty Judge Thatcher, Jean’s father, persuades Vollin to save his daughter. Jean is soon fully recovered. She is seeing quite a bit of Dr Vollin. He’s a rather fascinating man and he did save her life and it doesn’t occur to Jean that seeing so much of him might not be entirely appropriate. Her motives seem innocent enough. She is intrigued by his devotion to Poe and even choreographs a dance routine inspired by Poe (she is a professional dancer). Her dance routine is actually a key scene (and is quite effective), marking the point at which Vollin’s fantasies take over from reality in his mind.

While Jean may think her friendship with Vollin is harmless her father does not share her views. He fears that she will become infatuated with the doctor. In fact, as he discovers when he broaches the subject with Vollin, it is the doctor who has become infatuated with the young woman.

Vollin seems to relate Poe’s obsession with the lost Lenore in his poems to some event in his own life. In any case he has clearly started to see Jean as some kind of embodiment of Poe’s Lenore. Vollin has no intention of giving her up and then fate offers him a means of overcoming her father’s objections, in a permanent and fatal way. As we will discover Dr Vollin likes permanent and fatal solutions, especially if they’re slow and painful. An escaped killer, Edward Bateman (Boris Karloff), shows up on his doorstep. He believes that his life of violence and crime is a result of his ugliness. He has been told that Dr Vollin has the skill to alter a person’s face, to make an ugly person attractive. This is what he wishes Vollin to do for him. But Vollin has his own plans for Bateman.

This is one Karloff-Lugosi pairing in which Lugosi gets a role just as meaty, and in fact in this case much more so, as Karloff’s. Dr Vollin is of course a dangerous madman but he’s a cultured and sophisticated madman as well. This is the kind of part Lugosi relished and he makes the most of it. Karloff got top billing and was paid twice as much as Lugosi for this film. While this shameful treatment by Universal must have rankled at least this time Lugosi could console himself with the knowledge that he’d landed the plum role, and the biggest role as well.

Karloff is overshadowed but he is not entirely left out in the cold. Bateman is as mad and as dangerous as Vollin but he’s a somewhat tragic figure. Tragic monsters were meat and drink to Karloff and as always he extracts just the right amount of pathos without veering into excessive sentimentality or self-parody. The problem is that Karloff never could play American mobsters convincingly. Initially he seems ill at ease and seriously miscast but once Vollin transforms Bateman into a monster the problem becomes relatively unimportant. Karloff couldn’t play American mobsters but he could certainly play monsters.

This movie is also a joy to fans of the two great horror icons because not only are they both present, they have plenty of scenes together. The manipulative and grotesque relationship between these two very different madmen is the key to the film and it plays out quite effectively.

Irene Ware gets to do a great deal of screaming. She’s perfectly adequate in her role. A weekend house party hosted by Dr Vollin, a party that will end as the kind of party Poe would have imagined in his nightmares, gives an array of character actors the opportunity to practise their over-acting skills. They’re there to provide the totally unnecessary and inappropriate comic relief. Fortunately screenplay David Boehm and director Lew Landers (billed under his original name Louis Friedlander) keep the focus on Lugosi and Karloff as much as possible.

One of the great strengths of Universal’s horror movies of this era was the studio’s ability to provide such movies with exactly the right kind of sets and to make them convincing and interesting. The Raven doesn’t boast the glorious visual excesses of The Black Cat or even Son of Frankenstein but it still looks great and Dr Vollin’s Poe-inspired chamber of tortures should be enough to keep fans happy. The Pit and the Pendulum device is a particular highlight.

Lew Landers was a competent journeyman director. His most valuable contribution to this film is that he keeps things moving along at a very brisk pace.

This movie had popped up on DVD before but the transfer on the disc included in their Bela Lugosi Collection is a significant improvement. There’s some grain but if anything it adds to the atmosphere. More importantly the contrast is excellent. Sound is very good as well and overall Universal have done a fine job. The set itself (comprising five movies on a doubled-sided DVD) is an absolute must-have for any self-respecting fan of these two great horror actors or of the Universal horror movies in general.

This movie’s biggest problem has always been that it was a Poe adaptation that appeared a year after an earlier Universal Poe movie, The Black Cat, a movie that was in every way bigger, more ambitious, more spectacular and more successful (and was a box-office smash hit). In fact The Black Cat is one of the all-time great horror movies. The Raven can’t compete with that. What you need to do is to to forget the comparisons. The Raven is a much more modest effort but it’s great fun and it features one of Lugosi’s most enjoyably outrageous performances. Highly recommended.

The Strange Door (1951)

The Strange Door was released by Universal in 1951 and with Boris Karloff as one of the featured stars you might assume this is going to be a horror movie. It isn’t, well not really. It’s more of a gothic adventure movie with just a dash of swashbuckling and just enough horror to spice the dish. Whatever genre it belongs to it’s a highly entertaining little movie.

This production is included in Universal’s Boris Karloff Franchise Collection although as we will see Karloff is not the star.

Denis de Beaulieu (Richard Stapley) is a young nobleman in 18th century France and he’s a bit of a scoundrel. In fact he’s such a ne'er-do-well that his father has disinherited him. He’s the perfect choice for a dastardly plan that the wicked Sire Alain de Maletroit (Charles Laughton) has been cooking up. Denis finds himself set up as a murderer and thus has no choice but to comply with de Maletroit’s scheme. Just to make sure de Maletroit has him kidnapped and imprisoned. The plan is to marry him off to de Maletroit’s niece Blanche (Sally Forrest). At this stage we don’t know exactly what the ultimate object of the scheme is but we’re in no doubt that it’s suitably villainous.

Denis might be a wastrel and a drunkard and an all-round cad but he’s not totally evil. In fact he’s not evil at all. He’s simply young, impetuous and reckless but now that he learns he is to be part of a plot that may endanger both the life and the honour of a charming young lady he suddenly discovers his chivalrous side. He might be wild and irresponsible but he is still a gentleman, and blood will out. He had never imagined himself as a hero but since the rôle is forced upon him he will do the best he can.

The Sire de Maletroit is surrounded by a rather vicious bunch of henchman, the most notable being Corbeau (William Cottrell) and Talon (Michael Pate). His château incorporates all the usual features of a feudal dwelling place including a dungeon and torture chamber which de Maletroit puts to good and frequent use. He has a mysterious prisoner locked up in the dungeon. The servant Voltan (Boris Karloff) knows the secret of the prisoner in the dungeon; in fact Voltan knows a number of secrets.

Denis and Blanche hate each other at first sight. Blanche had hoped to marry a gallant young officer and she considers Denis to be no better than de Maletroit’s ruffians. In time they will both come to revise the hasty opinions they have formed of each other. If they are to foil de Maletroit’s scheme they will need to work together and they will need help, help which comes from an unexpected ally. It all leads up to a splendidly melodramatic finale.

Joseph Pevney is the man in the director’s chair and he handles matters with considerable efficiency. Pevney had the sort of career typical of the honest journeyman director, making a lot of B-features and ending up doing a great deal of television work. A few years after this movie he helmed the very underrated Joan Crawford film noir Female on the Beach. Jerry Sackheim’s screenplay is based on a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson (whose stories often very entertainingly combine gothic and adventure elements).

Boris Karloff has only a supporting part and although he is very good he is not really given the opportunity to stretch his acting wings. The real star is Charles Laughton and he’s in magnificent form. Laughton always relished this kind of part and he makes de Maletroit an outrageously over-the-top melodrama villain. Laughton in full flight was always a joy to watch and he doesn’t hold back.

Richard Stapley (or Richard Wyler as he was also known) makes a fine hero, being equally convincing as the dissipated rake of the first half of the film and the reluctant romantic hero of the second half. Sally Forrest is adequate if rather anaemic. Australian character actor Michael Pate plays a villain as usual, and plays him well.

The movie has the distinctly gothic atmosphere you expect from Universal at this period. They’d been making gothic movies for twenty years by this time and they certainly knew how to do the thing properly. Universal really had no equal when it came to impressively gothic visuals in black-and-white. The sets and costumes are up to their usual high standards as well.

One might take issue with the inclusion of a movie like this in Universal’s Boris Karloff Franchise Collection since Karloff is only a supporting player but the set does give us a chance to see some interesting movies not previously available on DVD. If the other movies are of similar standard to this one then I’ll certainly be well satisfied. There are no extras but the transfer is superb.

The Strange Door is sheer unadulterated fun from beginning to end and can safely be given a very enthusiastic recommendation.

The Black Cat (1934)

The Black Cat is one of the most highly regarded of Universal’s 1930s horror movies (there are many who rate it as the best of them) and it’s a movie that lives up to its reputation.

Director Edgar G. Ulmer didn’t know it then but this would be the first and last time in his career that he would have a generous budget and the resources of a major studio behind him. His affair with, and subsequent marriage to, the wife of Universal boss Carl Laemmle’s nephew would see him banished to the world of the Poverty Row studios. In fact he ended up at PRC, the absolute bottom of the rung. Ulmer later became the darling of the auteur theorists and his low-budget movies are today taken very seriously indeed.

The Black Cat was an idea that had been kicking around Universal for quite a while. Finally Ulmer and Peter Ruric came up with a screenplay that was deemed to be acceptable and the green light was given. The movie was released in mid-1934. It received venomous reviews from critics but the public didn’t care and they made it Universal’s biggest hit of 1934.

The budget was modest compared to some of Universal’s other early horror movies but Ulmer was always a fast and efficient worker and he got the maximum benefit out of the budget.

Edgar Allan Poe’s name was given prominence in the publicity for the film but the story as filmed has no connection with anything ever written by Poe (although it does capture some of Poe’s spirit).

A young American couple, Peter Alison (David Manners) and his new wife Joan (Julie Bishop), are travelling through central Europe on the Orient Express when they meet a distinguished Hungarian psychiatrist, Dr Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi). Dr Werdegast is returning home after an absence of many years. During the First World War he had become a Russian prisoner after the Austro-Hungarian fortress of Marmorus had been betrayed to the enemy, a betrayal that cost the lives of thousands of men. Dr Werdegast believes that the man who sold out the fortress was his old friend Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). He also blames Poelzig for the deaths of his wife and daughter. Dr Werdegast is returning to take his revenge.

Poelzig is now a renowned architect. His ultra-modernist home was built on the ruins of the  Marmorus fortress. The charabanc in which Peter and Joan Alison and Dr Werdegast are travelling crashes on a mountain road in driving rain. The driver is killed but the passengers survive, although Joan is slightly injured. They make their way on foot to Hjalmar Poelzig’s house. Dr Werdegast and Poelzig will become involved in a dangerous game, with Joan as the stake.

That’s really all there is to the plot. This thin story was one of the faults for which the movie was lambasted at the time of its release but it proves to be an unimportant weakness. This is a movie that relies on atmosphere, stunning visuals and bravura acting and these elements are present in such quantity that no-one is likely to notice the threadbare nature of the script.

The Black Cat was the first movie to pair Universal’s two horror icons, Karloff and Lugosi. Karloff landed the more interesting and colourful role but Lugosi gives such a superb and subtle performance that he is no danger of being overwhelmed by Karloff. The performances of these two great stars complement each other perfectly. The other players are of no importance, and in fact it’s hard to think of a movie in which David Manners was important. Lucille Lund as Karen looks suitably mysterious while Julie Bishop (known at the time as Jacqueline Wells) manages to scream on cue.

Ulmer started his film career as an art director and it’s the brilliance and decadent extravagance of the visuals that makes this one of the great horror landmarks. This movie abandoned the gothic imagery of earlier Universal horror films. That decision turned out to be a masterstroke. The extreme modernist look of the house and of the interiors proves to be far more alienating, weird and threatening than tired gothic visual clichés.

The striking images provide the perfect accompaniment to the outrageously decadent and bizarre themes with which the screenplay is packed. Pretty much every evil and every perversion and every form of madness that the screenwriters (and the audience) could imagine will be found here, from necrophilia to Satanism. Hjalmar Poelzig has a room in which he keeps his collection of perfectly preserved corpses, including that of Dr Werdegast’s wife. It’s a shocking idea made even more eerie by the visual presentation of it. This blending of bizarre ideas with bizarre images continues throughout the movie. Every other element of the movie, from the acting to the music, is exquisitely and artfully blended to absolute perfection.

This is one of the five movies in Universal’s Bela Lugosi Collection DVD boxed set. I’d seen this movie a few years ago in a terrible print on a budget DVD. The difference between that awful print and the excellent print included in this boxed set is striking to say the least.

The Black Cat is one of the masterpieces of the horror genre. A movie every horror fan must see.

The Ape (1940)

No-one has ever made more mad scientist movies than Boris Karloff. The Ape is a very typical example of the kind of role that Karloff did so well - the gentle dedicated scientist who is led to evil by his ardent but misguided desire to help people.

In this 1940 Monogram feature Karloff plays Dr Bernard Adrian, a country doctor who is obsessively committed to the search for a cure for polio (actually the disease is referred to simply as paralysis in the movie but I think it’s a fair assumption that it is in fact polio). It was polio that took his only daughter so his hatred for the disease is personal. Frances Clifford (Maris Wrixon) is one of his patients, a young woman confined to a wheelchair as the result of this illness. Dr Adrian is determined that he will make her walk again.

Dr Adrian is regarded with some suspicion by the townsfolk. It’s just as well that they don’t know exactly what he’s up to or they’d be a lot more suspicious. Luckily no-one has connected the disappearance of so many of the town’s dogs to Dr Adrian. The doctor believes he is close to finding the cure. Only one step remains, but that step is a big one. The arrival of the circus in town will unexpectedly give him the chance to take that step.

The star attraction of the circus is a ferocious gorilla. The gorilla’s trainer hates the animal because it killed his father. The reason it killed his father was that he was tormenting it, a practice that the son continues with spiteful obsessiveness. But on this particular day he goes too far and he meets the same fate as his dear old dad. Severely mauled, he is taken to Dr Adrian’s surgery.

This is too good an opportunity to be missed. The man is going to die anyway so the good doctor extracts some spinal fluid - the ingredient he needs to perfect his cure. It seems like a stroke of good fortune for the doctor but things turn out rather differently.

After mauling its trainer the gorilla (which is of course a guy in a gorilla suit) escapes and starts ravaging the countryside, spreading terror and death wherever it goes. The connection between the escaped gorilla and Dr Adrian’s experiments isn’t going to be too difficult for the experienced horror movie fan to figure out.

This is a typically low-budget Monogram production but the rather spartan production values don’t matter too much. A guy in a gorilla suit is a guy in a gorilla suit after all, regardless of the budget. As with so many cheap 1940s horror movies this one relies very heavily indeed on the star quality of its lead actor and in a role so perfectly suited to his talents Karloff is not going to let the side down. Dr Adrian is a kindly dedicated man who simply cares too much. His determination to find a cure leads him astray. No matter how many times Karloff played this sort of role he could still make it work.

As with a lot of movies made by Poverty Row studios the lack of that pool of talented character actors that all the major studios had is the movie’s weak point. The supporting players are rather feeble, although Marus Wrixon does her best. France’s well-meaning but dumb boyfriend Danny (Gene O’Donnell) is particularly irritating.

William Nigh directed a lot of B-movies. He gets the job done but don’t expect anything startling. The only thing the Poverty Row studios demanded of a director is that he stick to the very tight shooting schedules necessitated by a very low budget. Curt Siodmak, who co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Carroll, did some interesting things in his time but this movie is not exactly a highlight of his Hollywood career.

This movie is included in Mill Creek’s 20-movie monster pack. The transfer is what you’d expect from a public domain movie released by this company. Picture quality is generally acceptable but there is a lot of print damage. Sound quality is acceptable. Given the insanely low price of this set there’s nothing to complain about.

The Ape has really only two things going for it - it has Boris Karloff and it has a guy in a gorilla suit. For me that’s enough to make this otherwise rather shoddy movie worth watching, but I’m a very big fan of both Karloff and guys in gorilla suits.

The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942)

The Boogie Man Will Get You is a horror comedy made at Columbia in 1942, with Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre in the starring roles. Horror comedies are far from being my favourite sub-genre but this one does have a certain charm. And more importantly, it has some genuine laughs.

Professor Nathaniel Billings (Boris Karloff) owns a colonial-period tavern which he is very anxious to sell, due to a crippling mortgage inflicted on him by Dr Arthur Lorencz (Peter Lorre). Dr Lorencz is the mayor, coroner, justice of the piece, public notary and sheriff of the town. In fact he holds every public office it is possible to hold. Professor Billings believes his prayers have been answered when a slightly eccentric young woman arrives and (much to the Professor’s surprise) actually wants to buy this dump, which she fondly imagines can be turned into a charming hotel. She has no experience in running hotels, but she has cash and that’s good enough for Professor Billings, and for Dr Lorencz.

Unfortunately her ex-husband shows up. He wants to save his ex-wife from her folly, but it is too late. The contract has been signed, with due formality and with the sort of wildly inappropriate Latin quotation of which Dr Lorencz has a ready supply.

Professor Billings makes one stipulation when he sells the tavern. He asks to be allowed to continue his scientific experiments in his laboratory in the basement, a request to which the new owner readily agrees. Professor Billings is trying to create a superman who will win the war. Sadly so far all he has created is a series of corpses of unlucky travelling salesmen whom he persuaded to serve as subjects for his mad experiments.

When Dr Lorencz gets wind of Professor Billings’ project he is anxious to become a partner and collaborator, science being a hobby of his. Once Lorencz joins in the craziness accelerates.

While this was not a big-budget production it does boast a pretty impressive mad scientist’s laboratory with some pretty cool gadgets such as the capsule thing in which the unlucky experimental subjects are placed.

Boris Karloff displays a ready talent for comedy in this movie. He is both genial and totally bonkers. Peter Lorre of course was extremely gifted at comedic roles and both of these fine actors over-act outrageously. They prove to be a superior comedy team. Both Professor Billings and Dr Lorencz are equally mad. Dr Lorencz goes nowhere without his Siamese kitten which he keeps in an inside pocket of his jacket, a kitten with an unerring nose for crime and corruption.

The supporting actors, including Jeff Donnell in drag as Billings’ housekeeper, do their best  and are generally fine although the movie is of course totally dominated by the antics of Karloff and Lorre.

Lew Landers was a prolific director of B-movies in various genres and does a capable enough job, although all he really needs to do is let Karloff and Lorre do their thing.

This is one of the four movies included in Columbia’s extremely good Boris Karloff: Icons of Horror Collection. There are no extras but the transfer is exceptionally good.

The Boogie Man Will Get You is good-natured fun that is hard to resist and the presence of two great actors in full flight is enough to carry the movie through its modest 66-minute running time. Highly recommended if horror comedies are your thing, and even if they aren’t it’s worth giving this one a chance.

Before I Hang (1940)

In Before I Hang (a curiously  appropriate title although not quite in the way we initially expect), made by Columbia in 1940, we once again see Boris Karloff as a mad scientist sentenced to death, and of course we fully expect that once again he will cheat the executioner. You have to wonder why any executioner would bother to try to hang Karloff!

This time Karloff is Dr John Garth, a kindly doctor who has been working on a serum to defeat old age. Unfortunately when he tried it on a human subject it failed, and Dr Garth took pity on his elderly patent and ended his sufferings. Not surprisingly this resulted in his being charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to hang.

Dr Garth is convinced he was very close to success with his serum, but tragically it seems that now he will never get the chance to complete his experiments. Then fate takes a hand. The prison doctor is a great admirer of Dr Garth’s work and he convinces the sympathetic warden to allow Dr Garth to continue his work in prison until the date of his execution.

Dr Garth now has just three weeks to perfect his serum.

Of course when you’re working in a prison hospital you have to work with the materials that are to hand. If you need blood then the most convenient source is condemned prisoners. But that means working with murderers’ blood! And who can tell what might happen if the experimental subject is inoculated with a serum made from murderers’ blood?

Dr Garth does perfect his serum, and the results seem more than promising. But the serum has other results as well, which Dr Garth could not possibly have predicted.

This is the sort of role at which Boris Karloff excelled - he gets to play a gentle kindly man who only wants to serve humanity and he gets to play a terrifying monster as well. As usual Karloff is equally effective in both roles and he gives us a monster with whom we can sympathise to an extraordinary degree. We desperately want things to turn out well for Dr Garth but of course we know that since this is a horror movie that’s not very likely. Dr Garth’s struggle to overcome the consequences of his one scientific mistake is both tragic and moving, and this is due almost entirely to Karloff’s greatness as an actor.

The supporting cast comprises the sort of fine character actors who helped so much to make this period of movie-making a golden age. Evelyn Keyes doesn’t get enough to do as Dr Garth’s daughter Martha but what she does do she does well.

Director Nick Grinde was one of those solid journeyman directors who rarely reached any great heights but were good at bringing in B-movies on time and on budget and could be relied upon to produce satisfactory results in just about any genre.

As with so many horror movies this one explores the theme of science trying to do too much, to go too far. In the world of horror movies this is always a dangerous thing to do. As Dr Garth tells a young colleague, in the war that science wages against death there will be casualties. It’s by no means an anti-science movie; it merely points out that scientific advances always come with a price.

This movie is one of four in Columbia’s excellent Boris Karloff: Icons of Horror Collection. The transfer is of very high quality although it’s lacking in extras. But at the price this set is a must-buy for all serious horror fans.

Before I Hang is a solid horror B-movie that would be reasonably entertaining anyway but Karloff’s performance gives it that extra something that elevates it a little above the usual B-movie standard. Recommended.

The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)

The Man They Could Not Hang is a 1939 Columbia horror flick starring Boris Karloff as a mad scientist.

Dr Henryk Savaard (Karloff) is a brilliant scientist who has come up with an amazing breakthrough that will revolutionise surgery. He has invented a mechanical artificial heart which allows him to kill a patient and then bring him back to life. As he explains, you can’t repair an engine while the engine is running. You switch off the engine, do the repairs, and then restart the engine. It’s the same with the human body - if you can bring it to a complete standstill the surgeon has enough time to do the necessary repair work while the patient is technically dead, after which the patient can be revived.

He naturally needs to put his theories into practice, and a young medical student volunteers to be the first human subject (Dr Savaard has already tested his theories successfully on animals). Unfortunately the medical student’s girlfriend panics and calls the police. Dr Savaard pleads with them to give him time to revive the young man but the police surgeon decides that Dr Savard’s theories are dangerous nonsense and refuses. As a result the young man dies and Dr Savaard is charged with murder.

Dr Savaard stands trial and is condemned to death. He is naturally very embittered about his experience and vows to take his revenge on the fools who have condemned him - the jury, the judge and the police surgeon. Of course he won’t be able to carry out his plan of revenge if he is put to death. Or will he? Putting a man to death who knows the secret of life and death is not an easy matter.

This is a classic mad scientist film. The mad scientist starts out as an idealistic and humane man who only wants to benefit the human race, but misunderstood and condemned he is transformed into a homicidal madman.

This is the sort of role Karloff always played so well. It gives him the opportunity to be both a crazed monster and a gentle sensitive man. Karloff plays both sides of Dr Savaard’s personality to perfection. The supporting actors are all quite adequate but Karloff dominates the movie completely.

Director Nick Grinde spent his entire career making B-movies and he does a competent if not unspectacular job, and he doesn’t commit the cardinal sin of low-budget film-making - he doesn’t allow the pace to flag. He keeps things moving, and with a reasonably good story and a fine actor like Karloff that’s enough.

The settings for both the mad scientist laboratory and the revenge scenes look reasonably impressive. The visuals are nothing spectacular but they’re effective enough.

The movie raises the usual questions that mad scientist movies raise. How far should science go? Are there territories that should be off-limits to science? Should scientists be free to pursue their researches no matter where those researches take them? The movie doesn’t really draw any profound conclusions about these matters, other than suggesting that the dangers of science going too far are real, especially the dangers to the scientist himself.

The biggest strength of this movie is Karloff’s subtle performance as a man who tries to be a benefactor of mankind only to find himself labelled as a madman and a murderer. Karloff pretty much carries the movie single handed and he’s more than equal to the task. This is an entertaining movie even if it reaches no great heights and it can certainly be recommended to fans of 1930s horror and to Karloff fans.

This movie is released on DVD as part of Columbia’s Icons of Horror: Boris Karloff collection. There’s a lack of extras but it’s a nice clean print.