Month: August 2015

Shadow of Chinatown (1936)

SHADOW OF CHINATOWN (1936/I)
(Serial)
Article #840 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-1-2003
Posting Date: 11-28-2003
Directed by Robert F. Hill
Featuring Bela Lugosi, Herman Brix, Joan Barclay

When an ambitious entrepreneur hires a mad scientist to scare competitive business out of Chinatown, she ends up with more than she can handle when his madness gets the best of him.

Title check: I didn’t notice Chinatown casting any shadows in this serial, but I suppose they couldn’t call it SHADOW OF BELA.

Let’s face it; there are some movies and serials that you largely remember for one special moment. In this one, one of the cliffhangers has the hero lying unconscious on the ground outside of his home. The villain plans to kill him by suspending a fishbowl over the hero’s head (you know he’s serious about this method of doing the hero in because he takes the precaution of removing the fish from the bowl). I think this is supposed to kill him by having the sun’s rays be magnified by the glass in the fishbowl, thus frying our hero, and though there’s a possibility that I might be wrong, I still think this is the most preposterous cliffhanger I have yet to see in any of these movies. This is a fairly weak serial; the pace is lethargic, the villain seems to be a rather minor threat (despite being played by Lugosi), and it certainly doesn’t seem well thought out. There are some really bizarre sequences and plot elements here; there’s a policeman who believes the hero is the culprit because the murders and attempted murders match those of a book the hero has written; the fact that some of these attempted murders are tried on the hero himself doesn’t seem to have much weight in this matter. There’s a montage of destruction in the final episode that simply doesn’t make any sense at all, and at least one cliffhanger has just too many shots of people giving meaningful looks to each other (they weren’t supposed to make any noise). As far as Lugosi serials go, I’m afraid I’d have to opt for THE PHANTOM CREEPS over this one.

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The Mysterious Mr. Wong (1934)

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG (1934)
Article #839 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-1-2003
Posting Date: 11-28-2003
Directed by William Nigh
Featuring Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Arline Judge

An oriental criminal tries to recover the twelve coins of Confucius so that he will become a powerful ruler.

Title check: There is nothing Wong with this title (okay, you can slap me for that).

What we have here is your typical low-budget yellow peril potboiler with an evil archcriminal and a wise-cracking reporter (look at the cast and figure out who plays who). It starts out well with a creative montage of death scenes, but it bogs down all too quickly afterwards once the plot shifts to the reporter who spends more time romancing the girl than hunting the criminal. Both Lugosi and Ford can be fun in their respective parts, but you have to be in the mood for this sort of thing, and I really wasn’t; maybe I just watched it at the Wong time (okay, you can slap me again). The dark side of coin collecting.

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Don’t Take It to Heart (1944)

DON’T TAKE IT TO HEART (1944)
Article #838 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-30-2003
Posting Date: 11-27-2003
Directed by Jeffrey Dell
Featuring Richard Greene, David Horne, Patricia Medina

Plot Description: Huh?

Title check: See plot description.

What kind of movie would take the pains to introduce a ghost in the first few minutes of the movie, and then consign him to the status of a minor character for the rest of the movie? It would be the same type of movie where everyone is in agreement on the pronounciation of the name of the village of Chaumpuyt (sounds like Compit), but cannot agree on the pronounciation of the most common surname of its inhabitants (Bucket). In case you haven’t figured it out, this is a comedy, and an exceedingly strange one at that, full of curious eccentrics and bizarre jokes. What plot there is seems to revolve around a plot of land that was once set aside for grazing but has now come under the control of a rich man who no longer allows animals on the property. The movie takes most of its satirical jabs at the law profession during a trial scene in which the two sides engage in a bewildering barrage of legalese. Ernest Thesiger also shows up to enliven the proceedings. This is certainly one of the oddest comedies to come down the pike in quite a while.

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A Place of One’s Own (1945)

A PLACE OF ONE’S OWN (1945)
Article #837 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-30-2003
Posting Date: 11-27-2003
Directed by Bernard Knowles
Featuring James Mason, Margaret Lockwood, Dennis Price

An old couple buys a country house in which they hope to spend their retirement, only to discover that the place is haunted.

Title check: Appropriate in it’s own ironic way, nonetheless, it still sounds more like it should be the title of a sentimental comedy.

Some movies are easy to describe; this is essentially a less scary British take on THE UNINVITED. There’s not much in the way of surprises here, but there are a couple of good scary scenes (generally involving piano music) and the acting is quite good, even if Mason and Barbara Mullen are too young to be playing the old couple (though I had to double-check the cast list before I realized that James Mason was playing the old man). Keep your eyes peeled for Ernest Thesiger; if you don’t know he’s in the movie, you may not recognize him when he appears. Enjoyable enough, but minor.

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The Dybbuk (1937)

THE DYBBUK (1937)
Article #836 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-29-2003
Posting Date: 11-26-2003
Directed by Michael Waszynsky
Featuring A. Morewsky, R. Samberg, M. Libman

A man betrays a pact that he made that his daughter will marry the son of a close friend, and as a result, his daughter becomes possessed by the spirit of his friend’s dead son.

Title check: A dybbuk is the soul of a dead man that takes possession of the body of another, and that is exactly what this movie is about.

I found this one very interesting. It is a rare example of Yiddish cinema, and the story is steeped in Jewish rites, traditions and culture. There are numerous fantastic elements; the aforementioned possession, a wandering spirit known as the Messenger comes on the scene at several points, and Satanism is part of the mix as well. It’s not an easy movie to watch; it’s a solid two hours long, and the style is somewhat akin to that of IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART ONE, with surreal touches reminiscent of VAMPYR, though the story itself is simple and straightforward. I’m almost tempted to call it a musical because of the ways that music and dance all play essential roles in the way the story is presented. I can easily see some people being very bored by this one, but I found the milieu of the events to be so rife with mystery and evocative ritual that I really felt transported to another world, and it’s a movie that I would gladly watch again. It’s simply one of those movies that was a unique enough viewing experience for me that I’m willing to overlook its flaws.

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The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS (1940)
Article #835 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-28-2003
Posting Date: 11-25-2003
Directed by Joe May
Featuring Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, Nan Grey

A man about to be executed for the murder of his brother becomes invisible in order to get free to prove his innocence.

Title check: The title is a bit misleading, as the invisible man in this one is a different person than the one in the original, but I don’t see how they could have come up with a title that reflected that concept that wouldn’t have been pretty clumsy.

This sequel to the original THE INVISIBLE MAN has some nice points and some weak points. I’m a little disappointed with the cast; Sir Cedric Hardwicke never really develops a character (the script really doesn’t give him much of a chance), and Vincent Price is only so-so in the title role, though I think at later stages in his career after he had more experience under his belt, he would’ve been excellent. As it is, the scenes of his madness are never as convincing or enticing as Claude Rains’s scenes in the original; in fact, overall, I think this movie is largely better when it follows its own path and ignores the original movie than when it tries to emulate that one. On the plus side, the police investigation shows that the police have learned a thing or two from having dealt with an invisible man in the past (the policeman’s trick with the cigar smoke makes for a very effective scene), and there are at least two other memorable sequences here, one involving a fight on a track hauling bins of coal, and another in which the invisible man borrows the trappings of a scarecrow (Price’s most effective scene here). All in all, a fairly uneven sequel to a classic.

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Drums of Jeopardy (1931)

DRUMS OF JEOPARDY (1931)
Article #834 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-27-2003
Posting Date: 11-24-2003
Directed by George B. Seitz
Featuring Warner Oland, June Collyer, Lloyd Hughes

A mad scientist takes revenge on a family of nobles when his daughter dies as a result of having had an affair with one of them.

Title check: The “Drums” of the title are actually gems from a necklace that are sent to the members meant to die. They end up playing very little role in the story.

I found this to be a very interesting variation on the typical horror revenge plot. The movie spends more than the usual amount of time establishing the reasons for the doctor’s desire of vengeance, and also establishes that he doesn’t know which of the family members is responsible, thereby making it more understandable as to why he seeks vengeance on the family as a whole. It’s actually more of an action thriller than either a horror or science fiction movie, though it has elements of both. My favorite character, however, is the comic relief Aunt played by Clara Blandick, whose sensibilities are so offended by the mad doctor’s actions that she vows to give him a piece of her mind, and she actually does this (in a hilarious scene) when she is captured.

One interesting item about this movie is the character name of Warner Oland’s mad doctor; he is Boris Karlov. That someone would like to capitalize on Karloff’s name as a horror icon is no surprise; what is odd is that this movie may actually predate FRANKENSTEIN, which is the movie that made Karloff famous. Is there an explanation? I have one. The character’s name was Karlov already; he is known as Gregor Karlov in the 1923 version of the movie. Director George B. Seitz and Warner Oland had worked together once before, in a 1917 movie called THE LIGHTNING RAIDER, a movie which also featured an actor by the name of Boris Karloff. I believe that when they made this movie, they remembered the actor who had almost the same last name as the title character, and decided to use borrow Boris’s first name as well.

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Doctor Syn (1937)

DOCTOR SYN (1937)
Article #833 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-26-2003
Posting Date: 11-23-2003
Directed by Roy William Neill
Featuring George Arliss, Margaret Lockwood, John Loder

A pirate who has supposedly died twenty years ago is actually running a smuggling ring while disguised as a parson.

Title check: It’s the name of the parson. Note that “Syn” is a homonym.

This is the movie of which NIGHT CREATURES is a remake, and for the most part, the movies are quite similar. The horror elements are even more downplayed in this one; though the existence of phantom horsemen does appear in the plot, they are rarely seen and not played for horror. This earlier version has a more marked sense of humor about the proceedings (particularly a good sequence where the smugglers hoodwink the King’s revenuers by sending them on a wild goose chase to find the phantom riders), and it’s less muddled than the later movie on the level of making it clear as to whom the movie wants you to sympathize with (despite being a pirate and a smuggler, Dr. Syn is obviously the one you’re going to root for). Arliss is great in the title role (as was Peter Cushing in the later movie), but the Hammer movie did have the all-around better cast, particularly in the role of Mipps. This one also ends quite differently than the Hammer version, but the ending feels rushed and a bit contrived (particularly in the convenient way it despenses with the mulatto). It’s still worth catching because of the fun story and Arliss’ s performance.

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Fly-By-Night (1942)

FLY-BY-NIGHT (1942)
Article #832 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-25-2003
Posting Date: 11-22-2003
Directed by Robert Siodmak
Featuring Richard Carlson, Nancy Kelly, Albert Basserman

A doctor is kidnapped by an escapee from a sanitarium, and later finds himself accused of murder when the escapee is killed with one of his scalpels.

Title check: It’s an okay title for a movie about a man on the run from the police.

Once the murder is committed and the doctor is about to be arrested, he tries to prove his innocence by threatening the police with a gun, breaking and entering the apartment of a woman artist able to sketch his appearance, kidnaps her and takes her car, purposefully wrecks it while stealing a car from one of those big trucks that haul new cars around (the driver of the truck doesn’t notice a thing), and in general acts in such a way that even if he was innocent of the murder, he’d still have to face a hefty prison sentence for all of his infractions. This is all supposed to prove to me his sincere desperation to prove his innocence; unfortunately, it tends to convince me of his shortness of gray matter or that he caught whatever illness the sanitarium escapee had. Perhaps it’s just as well that the movie turns from a Hitchcockian thriller to a comedy at this point; it goes a long way towards excusing some of the bizarre situations in which he finds himself. It’s all pretty far-fetched and ridiculous, but it’s funny enough to have kept my attention in its own nutty way, though my mind came to a dead halt for about ten minutes when someone uses the phrase “patriotic panties” (I am not making this up). The opening has a strong horror feel, and there is a science-fictional touch to some of the final revelations, so that is why the movie belongs at least marginally to the fantastic genres.

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Darkened Rooms (1929)

DARKENED ROOMS (1929)
Article #831 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-24-2003
Posting Date: 11-21-2003
Directed by Louis Gasnier
Featuring Neil Hamilton, Evelyn Brent, Doris Hill

A photographer decides to become a phony spiritualist in the hopes of making a fortune.

Title check: The title is evocative and appropriate; in fact, it’s better than the movie.

This very early talkie is actually not quite as static and creaky as you might expect from a movie from this time period, and the basic premise is kind of promising; there are plenty of phony spiritualist movies out there, but this is the only one I know of that deals with someone just starting in on the profession. Still the movie has some major problems; some of the dialogue is painfully bad, and the acting is horribly wooden in spots, and the combination of the two tends to make the movie unintentionally funny at times. The ending is also a problem; it’s way too pat for a movie that aspires to be a serious drama. In fact, I strongly think this movie would have fared better if they had decided to make it a comedy instead; a number of the situations certainly show some real comic promise if you look at them in the right way. As it is, I see it as largely a misfired curiousity.

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