THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944)
Article #22 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-6-2001
Posting date: 8-20-2001

This Val Lewton-produced sequel to THE CAT PEOPLE takes certain themes and characters from the original, and models a completely different movie with those elements. The story involves a young girl who has problems separating her rich fantasy world from the real world; this worries her father, who was the husband of Simone Simon in the original, because he fears she will end up like his former wife, and he tries to suppress her imaginitive side. After the girl sees a picture of Simone Simon, she conjures up an imaginary friend with the same name and appearance as the picture. She also ends up befriending an old (and probably mad) actress who lives in the same town, much to the consternation of the actress’s embittered and neglected daughter.

This is a very personal favorite of mine of the Val Lewton horror films; I wouldn’t pick it as his best, but I saw it as a kid and was very moved by the picture. I’m always fascinated by the ambiguity in this film; you never really know if the imaginary friend is just that or the actual ghost of Irena. It may not be a horror film at all, even though the scene of the lost child in Sleepy Hollow and the final scenes in the actress’s house are as scary as anything you can find out there. As a side note, this is probably the only horror film that is used in Child Psychology classes.

In my last watching, I couldn’t help but make one eerie connection in the movie (WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILER AHEAD); during the child’s encounter with the actress’s daughter in the final scenes of the movie, she sees her as Irena and mistakes her for her friend. During one scene in THE CAT PEOPLE, a strange woman approaches Irena, and calls her a sister. It may be a coincidence, but I find it very striking that both the strange woman and the actress’s daughter were played by the same actress: Elizabeth Russell.

THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954)
Article #21 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-5-2001
Posting date: 8-19-2001

A group of naturalists find themselves trapped in a lagoon on the Amazon river, and at the mercy of a strange fish-man creature.

This movie is considered one of Universal’s classics, and is the first to feature the famous Gill-man creature, the only monster of theirs during the era to inspire sequels. I was fortunate enough to catch this movie in 3D during the revival of that fad in the early eighties; though the movie is strong enough to stand on its own, I found that the 3D did indeed give it a little extra value.

However, I’ve always been somewhat disappointed by this movie. The love angle has never really worked for me, and during my initial posting of this movie, I made the unfortunate suggestion that this aspect of the movie should have been dropped, a comment which netted a very strong degree of negative reaction as you might expect. That it would have stripped the creature of one of his most important character traits, I will readily admit, but I still don’t feel it works as well as I’d like in this movie, though I have no problem of that sort with the immediate sequel. I will retract the comment that the creature should have been left unseen until the end of the movie, though, as someone made the point that the costume is truly amazing and shouldn’t be kept under wraps, a comment I do agree with. At any rate, the disappointment still remains; put it in the category of those movies that I wish I liked more than I actually do.

THE CORPSE VANISHES (1942)
Article #20 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-4-2001
Posting date: 8-18-2001

Bela Lugosi plays a Mad Doctor whose aging wife (Val Lewton regular Elizabeth Russell) is hypersensitive about wrinkles, so he develops a way to restore her youth that involves removing certain fluids from dead beautiful women. He procures bodies by sending orchids with poison gases to brides that causes them to collapse at the altar; he then shanghais the body and takes it to his home.

Generally, the Monogram horror movies of this period weren’t really scary, but they trotted out horror elements with a certain gleeful abandon that was endearing, and they weren’t afraid to court ridiculousness to fill out their storylines. In this movie, the doctor and his wife sleep in coffins for no other reason than to give the heroine a cheap scare (“I find a coffin much more comfortable than a bed,” he says.), and his scheme to obtain bodies seems unnecessarily elaborate; why not just go find a beautiful woman, knock her on the head and drag her body to the house? And in order to outguess the police at every step, I’d expect him to have a more elaborate network of conspirators than an idiot, a dwarf, and their mother.

I guess this all goes to show that you don’t enjoy a Monogram horror movie for its story logic. And at least they had the common decency to use the comic relief sidekick sparingly.

THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927)
Article #18 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-2-2001
Posting date: 8-16-2001

Relatives gather at an old dark house for the reading of a will. The money goes to Annabelle, providing that she is sane. Then mysterious things begin to happen which only Annabelle notices, and when she tries to explain them to others, they doubt her sanity. Is it a plot by someone to get the inheritance. . .?

As you can tell by the above description, this story is loaded with “old dark house” cliches; having encountered the same story umpteen times before, and noticing early on that I didn’t exactly have a pristine copy of the movie, I settled down to what I thought was going to be a long hard ride. To my surprise, I found the movie charming and genuinely amusing, with everyone involved really getting into the sense of fun. This is a movie I’m glad to have seen, and plan to watch again.

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920)
Article #17 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-1-2001
Posting date: 8-15-2001

A mesmerist controls a somnambulist to do his bidding and to exact revenge for perceived slights.

Anybody who has read a book on the history of the horror film knows about this one; Robert Wiene’s surrealist story of Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) and Cesare, the somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) is famous for its bizarre expressionistic sets. The story is reminiscent of any number of movies in which a mad scientist sends out an obedient monster to take revenge for him. The story begins and ends in an insane asylum.

This is one of those classics I’m more apt to watch dutifully than eagerly, but in all honesty, my copy of the movie is neither from a particularly good print, nor does it have a strong soundtrack (both of which can make an enormous difference when watching a silent movie). Once I get a chance to see it under better conditions, I’ll know whether or not it’s a movie I really enjoy versus one that I admire from a distance.

Postscript: I have since purchased a superior DVD version of this movie, and the clarity of the print does indeed make a world of difference; the backgrounds are simply stunning when seen with clarity. I have yet to watch it all in its entirety, but I anticipate a much more enjoyable experience than I have had with this movie heretofore.