SON OF INGAGI (1940)
Article #271 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-12-2001
Posting date: 4-27-2002

A woman doctor keeps a strange ape creature in a secret laboratory in her house. When she dies at its hands, the house goes to a newlywed couple, who don’t know the creature is still loose.

I found this creaky all-black horror movie to be surprisingly enjoyable; especially interesting are the surprisingly good performances by the monster (played by Zack Williams, though the makeup is pretty bad) and the doctor (I don’t know the name of the actress who played this role); their roles have greater dimension then you would have expected. It’s pretty silly at times, too, with a comic relief detective who manages to escape with his life but loses two sandwiches in the process. This movie has apparently no connection to an earlier film called INGAGI.

SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939)
Article #270 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-11-2001
Posting date: 4-26-2002

The son of Frankenstein inherits the baron’s castle, and there discovers that the monster is still alive and under the control of a vindictive maniac named Igor.

This would be the last time the Frankenstein series would be given a real class treatment by Universal; it’s not the equal of the first two movies, but it’s still pretty good. The shining stars this time out are Bela Lugosi as Igor, one of the best roles of his career, and Lionel Atwill as Krogh, the one armed police inspector. Karloff essays the monster for the last time, but the script really doesn’t give him a chance to develop the monster any further; it’s easy to see why he didn’t want to play the role again after this. Rathbone hated his role, but he does all right; originally I thought he overacted, but I noticed this time that the only times he does this are when he’s trying to put up a front, and his behavior makes sense in this regard. The child actor is truly bad, though; couldn’t they have found someone without a thick southern accent to play the role? There’s lots of other familiar faces on hand, and some wonderful visual moments; one I noticed this time is Rathbone giving a defense of his work to his wife while the portrait of Frankenstein hovers over him in the background.

SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES (1962)
Article #266 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-7-2001
Posting date: 4-22-2002

A vampire seduces the wife of a nobleman, and he has to bring in a special doctor to help cure her of her condition.

Maybe I was in a bit of a cranky mood when I saw this, but I couldn’t help but feel that with all the skulking, cleavage, angry villagers, crosses, stakes, heaving bosoms, and old world castles, there wasn’t a whole lot here I haven’t seen in vampire flicks a thousand times before. The beginning scene is not too bad, and it does get a little bit more novel towards the end, when a child’s life is threatened, but for the most part, I saw little that was new to hold my attention. Perhaps I would have liked it more if I had been in a different state of mind, but so many vampire movies have been made over the years that unless they have something new or novel about them, or are particularly well done, I have little use for them.

SPOILERS

Furthermore, the movie didn’t really know when to end; after the vampire has been dispatched, we have several minutes of footage before the movie comes to its conclusion. No loose ends were tied up, there’s no final twist, nothing to make this footage either interesting or important. Unless I was missing something extremely subtle, this strikes me as a perfect example of unnecessary footage.

SHE-WOLF OF LONDON (1946)
Article #264 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-5-2001
Posting date: 4-20-2002

A woman believes she is suffering from the Curse of the Allenbys, which would cause her to go the park at night and perform werewolf-like murders on people.

MAJOR SPOILERS IN COMMENTARY

This is one of those movies where someone believes they are committing a series of horrible murders. She doesn’t remember them, but she sees evidence, such as mud appearing on her shoes overnight. She breaks off her impending marriage for fear of the curse. In order to help her sleep, her aunt (who isn’t really her aunt, as we find out in the first ten minutes) gives her a glass of milk every night and urges her to drink it all. This isn’t a movie, this is a math problem; just put two and two together and see what comes out.

So there’s no real surprises in this movie. It was shot quickly, but with a certain amount of professionalism. it’s incredibly talky, and quite repetitive.

Nonetheless, there is something almost archetypal about this movie. In some ways, it’s the prime example of the “I just think I’m a monster, but I’m really not” plot that pops up occasionally in horror movies; in fact, from this point onward, I’ll refer to them as “She-Wolf of London” movies. Usually, there’s no monster at all in these movies, but they can surprise you on occasion. Nonetheless, I always find these movies somewhat disappointing and more than a little annoying; in fact, as a general rule, whenever you have a scene where person one is urged by person two to “finish their drink before they go to bed” and the movie then dwells on person one finishing their drink, you can rest assured that person two is the real villain.

Someone asked me to compare it to CRY OF THE WEREWOLF when that was the Movie of the Day, and I couldn’t at that time because I hadn’t seen this one in years. Having seen them both recently, I’d say they’re about equal quality-wise; SHE-WOLF OF LONDON certainly looks more professional, but at least CRY OF THE WEREWOLF has a real monster.