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.

The Phantom of the Opera (1943)

Universal’s The Phantom of the Opera, released in 1943, is a rather odd hybrid, part musical and part horror film. The Paris Opera had provided a great setting for Gaston Leroux’s immensely successful 1910 novel but with Nelson Eddy getting top billing in the movie it made sense to put much more emphasis on the music. There’s not much point in having Nelson Eddy as your star if he doesn’t sing.

There have of course been countless film and stage adaptations of Leroux’s novel, including the celebrated 1925 silent version with Lon Chaney while Hammer did their own version in 1962.

As far as this 1943 film is concerned the story starts with violinist and aspiring composer Erique Claudin (Claude Rains) being fired from the Paris Opera orchestra. He had developed a problem with his left hand that affected his playing. Unfortunately being unemployed hits Erique hard. Although he had been well paid he has not saved any money. All his money has been spent paying (anonymously) for singing lessons for up-and-coming soprano ChistineDuBois (Susanna Foster).

Erique is hopelessly in love with Christine but his love is not requited. She has firmly friendzoned him. In fact she has (perhaps without being aware of it) committed the ultimate act of cruelty. She has pitied him.

Erique hopes to revive his fortune by means of a concerto he has written but he becomes convinced that music publisher Pleyel has stolen his work. This has tragic, indeed fatal, consequences and Erique is left horribly disfigured after being doused with acid. He takes refuge in the Opera, not difficult to do since the building is a bewildering warren of literally hundreds of rooms and passageways both above and below ground. He becomes a shadowy presence in the building, leading to rumours that a ghost is stalking the Opera.

Christine has two suitors for her hand, baritone Anatole Garron (Nelson Eddy) and detective Raoul Daubert (Edgar Barrier). Their rivalry provides some comic relief as well as romantic tension and also serves to emphasise the utter hopelessness of Erique’s love.

Erique has plans to advance Christine’s career, by drastic means. He is clearly becoming more obsessed and more unhinged and he has convinced himself that he can still win her love. He will do anything to further his plans, including murder. If necessary multiple murders.

Universal at this time relied mostly on B-pictures and cheap A-pictures but this time they decided to spend some real money (well real money by the studio’s parsimonious standards) and shoot the film in Technicolor. This does cause a slight problem. The musical side of the film is certainly enhanced by the lush visuals but the visuals that suit a musical are not those that make for an effective horror film. The horror parts of the film do look surprisingly atmospheric and spooky but it is a bit jarring switching constantly between lavish musical spectacle and creepy horror picture.

The sets are pretty impressive. Erique’s lair beneath the Opera in particular looks wonderfully atmospheric.

The acting is a bit strange, since Claude Rains is really the only one whose performance is close to what you expect in a horror movie. Everyone else is giving light-hearted musical comedy performances. The cast is likeable enough but they seem out of place in a chiller.

Rains does pretty well. He makes Erique’s behaviour comprehensible and he’s convincingly obsessive. If course we’re going to suspect that his obsession is indeed partly musical, but also partly sexual as well. You don’t spend every cent you have on financing a young lady’s musical career merely because you like her singing. Unfortunately this aspect is so downplayed that the full impact of his tragic obsession is lost.

In the original draft of the script Claudin is Christine’s father. That idea was dropped which was probably a good idea since having Claudin romantically and sexually obsessed would have given the story more punch and would have made Claudin’s situation more tragic, had the screenplay been prepared to go in that direction.

Claude Rains took his role pretty seriously. Prior to the beginning of shooting he learnt to play both the piano and the violin so that he would look convincing when Claudin was playing those instruments.

The real problem is that there’s way too much opera and not enough phantom. This is a musical comedy romance with the horror bits tacked on as an afterthought. And the horror elements don’t have the necessary punch. Partly this is because none of the victims are sympathetic so we don’t really care when the Phantom kills them. Even Christine is not sympathetic enough to make us care too much about her, cheerfully playing with the affections of two handsome men whilst casually ripping poor old Erique’s heart out. In a musical comedy she’d be a successful character and we’d know that she’d end up choosing the right man but for the purposes of this story she’s too worldly and calculating to be the innocent victim in danger from a maniac.

The film also lacks any real sense of mystery, or suspense, or weirdness. We know from the start that the Phantom is Erique and we know there’s nothing supernatural going on. We know why he’s doing what he’s doing and what he’s hoping to achieve.

I’d only previously seen this film on VHS and seeing it again now on Blu-Ray certainly makes a difference. Universal have provided some very desirable extras including an audio commentary and a documentary (which provides some truly fascinating information about the 1925 version as well).

The Phantom of the Opera just doesn’t quite come together. It looks great but it doesn’t deliver the goods as a horror film.

The Invisible Man (1933)

Universal’s 1933 The Invisible Man left me decidedly unimpressed when I last saw it some years back. That was on VHS and I thought that seeing it on Blu-Ray might perhaps improve the experience. It didn’t and I will try to explain why.

The Invisible Man was directed by James Whale who established a very high reputation as a horror director with Universal with films such as Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.

The adaptation, by R.C. Sherriff, takes some liberties with the plot of the original story by H.G. Wells and even greater liberties with the intent of the original.

The movie opens with the Invisible Man making his appearance, swathed in bandages, seeking shelter in an English country inn. He needs a place to work in secrecy. He is a troublesome lodger and soon finds himself ejected from the inn, a procedure to which he takes violent objection. We gradually learn the reason for his invisibility, and for his apparent instability and violence. He has discovered a cocktail of drugs that renders him invisible but with unfortunate effects on his sanity. An invisible man is potentially dangerous; an unhinged invisible man is a very definite danger.

We also learn his identity. He is Jack Griffin, a promising young scientist who disappeared from his laboratory in mysterious circumstances.

The police are soon on his trial, an undertaking which predictably presents them with extreme difficulties and as their pursuit intensifies Griffin’s behaviour becomes increasingly violent and bizarre. He starts to lose interest in finding an antidote to his invisibility drugs, preferring to daydream about the limitless power that he imagines is going to be his.

There are many many problems with this film. It’s possible that the biggest problem of all is James Whale. His insistence on treating the story mostly as comedy not only removes most of the drama and suspense, it also strips the film of any emotional depth. Whale’s contempt for the horror genre is obvious in all his films in the genre and is perhaps the reason he insisted on adding so much ill-advised comedy.

Another weakness is that the Invisible Man is ready clearly deranged and homicidal when the character is first introduced. We never see him as a presumably dedicated and quite human young scientist but only as a murderous madman. The result is that we simply don’t care what happens to him. The sooner he is hunted down and killed the better. There is no element of tragedy to the story. There is no drama and it’s difficult to build suspense when it’s impossible to care about the fate of the protagonist, and in this film it’s actually impossible to care about the fates of any of the characters.

The extraordinarily annoying performance of Claude Rains in the title role, and the excessive ham-fisted comedy, add to the problems.

We also don’t get to see anything of the relationship between Griffin and his fiancée Flora (Gloria Stuart). We don’t get to know Flora at all and Stuart’s performance is lifeless (admittedly the terrible script gives her little to work with). This means there is no effective romance angle to give us a reason to care about either Griffin or Flora. Whale seems to have had zero interest in emotional relationships. This is to an extraordinary degree an emotionally sterile film.

The acting is universally broad, obvious and generally awful. Una O’Connor screeches a lot, which seems to have the limit of her acting talents. She seems to have been one of Whale’s favoured actress and she’s as tiresome here as she is in Bride of Frankenstein.

All of this means that the movie has only one thing going for it, that being the special effects. They are impressive for 1933 and in fact are still pretty impressive today. On the whole though the movie is visually much less interesting than most of Universal’s horror movies of the period, with no real atmosphere.

Universal’s Blu-Ray release looks terrific. Unfortunately it’s let down by a horrifically useless menu system so while there appear to be some tempting extras don’t be surprised if you can’t access them.

Are the flaws of The Invisible Man serious enough to make it not worth seeing? Sadly I’d have to say that the answer is yes. Apart from the invisibility effects I can’t think of a single thing about this movie that works. It’s not just uninteresting, it’s positively irritating.

Avoid this one.

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

It took, incredibly, five years for Universal to come up with a sequel to their 1931 mega-hit Dracula. By the time Dracula's Daughter was ready for release in 1936, after seemingly endless script rewrites and production delays, Universal’s financial woes had come to a head and the Laemmles had lost control of the studio. Dracula's Daughter came in well over budget and well behind schedule. It was a very very expensive film (by Universal’s standards) and unfortunately much of the budget was wasted due to production delays and bad decisions. 

Dracula's Daughter was not a particularly lucky movie for Universal but it is an exceptionally intriguing sequel. This is not just a rehash of the original Dracula story. There are some original and provocative ideas. In some ways it can even be regarded as a more interesting film than Dracula.

The movie opens with Dracula having just been staked by Von Helsing (for some unknown reason the Van got changed to Von for the sequel). Von Helsing is still on the scene when the police arrive and he is duly charged with the murder of Count Dracula. 

Sir Basil Humphrey at Scotland Yard would prefer not to proceed with the charges against the mild-mannered professor but he has little choice. Advised to retain a good KC Von Helsing instead asks to be defended by his former student, eminent psychiatrist Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger). The case against Von Helsing pretty much collapses when Dracula’s body disappears.

Dracula’s body had been stolen by the Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden). She is the Dracula's daughter of the film’s title and she is referred to as such but it’s fairly clear that she is not the Count’s biological daughter (and there’s a further clue later in the movie that supports the theory that she’s not literally his daughter). While it’s not quite explicitly stated it’s obvious that she was one of the “brides” of Dracula. We are told that Dracula turned some of his victims into vampires by giving them his own blood to drink and presumably that was the case with Marya Zaleska.

What’s interesting is that the Countess is a very reluctant vampire. She hoped that Dracula’s death would free her from the curse of vampirism. She now hopes that perhaps psychiatry may be able to help her by giving her the strength and willpower to break the hold that Dracula still exerts over her from beyond the grave. This is the first movie to play with the idea that vampirism might perhaps be a form of psychiatric disorder, or possibly even a type of addiction, or that the link between a vampire and his “brides” might be more a matter of will than blood. These are ideas that have been explored countless times since in both literary and cinematic vampire tales but Dracula’s Daughter deserves credit for being the first to do so.

Garth suggests to the Countess that a person can often defeat a psychological craving by deliberately exposing himself to it. An alcoholic can learn to overcome his craving by surrounding himself with liquor. This suggestion by Garth turns out to be disastrously poor advice and has tragic consequences when the Countess tries it for herself.

The Countess is increasingly desperate to escape her vampiric destiny and she grows more and more convinced that only Garth can help her. If he won’t do so willingly then she knows how to force him to do her bidding. She will force him to follow her back to Transylvania. The stage is set for a dramatic climactic confrontation but unfortunately the ending is rather rushed.

Gloria Holden looks strange and exotic and in fact she looks exactly how one might imagine a lady vampire would look. She’s slightly and subtly strange in behaviour as well as appearance. Her performance is crucial and it works.

Irving Pichel is nicely creepy as her faithful manservant Sandor, who seems to understand the Countess’s predicament (and its hopelessness) more fully than she does. Otto Kruger is very professorial. Marguerite Churchill has fun as his spirited aristocratic assistant Janet. Edward Van Sloan is much too bland and much too dull as Von Helsing.

The movie’s visual style is impressive. Director Lambert Hillyer and cinematographer George Robinson don’t go overboard with the gothic trappings. This is a movie that moves back and forth (very effectively) between the gothic world of vampires and the modern world of science and technology.

The idea of vampirism being linked to sexuality, or more specifically to unhealthy or dangerous sexuality, had been around for as long as vampire tales had been around and it had been a central feature of most stories dealing with female vampires. The idea is there in Johann Ludwig Tieck’s 1800 story Wake Not the Dead, it’s there in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1797 poem Christabel and it’s there in a big way in Sheridan le Fanu’s classic 1871 novel Carmilla. 

Which of course brings us to the most notorious scene in Dracula's Daughter, in which a young woman is lured to the Countess’s studio to pose for a painting and is drained of blood almost to the point of death. The scene certainly does have the feel of a seduction, enhanced by the fact that the girl has partially undressed in order to pose. 

So is Dracula's Daughter the first lesbian vampire movie? Well, there’s there is that one notorious scene (and perhaps one other scene), but those scene certainly can be interpreted in that way without stretching things too far. There is however another possible interpretation. The Countess longs to escape from her unnatural existence and to live as a normal woman. As a result she might well feel considerable jealousy and hatred for other women who can live normal lives, and experience love in a normal non-vampiric way. Her attitude towards Janet tends to support the idea that she might be motivated by hatred of women rather than by lesbian passions.

It’s also obvious that when the Countess attacks a male victim the attack is to some extent a seduction.

My copy of this movie comes from the old Dracula Legacy Collection DVD set. It’s an excellent transfer. 

Dracula's Daughter is an intelligent, ambitious and somewhat complex horror film and is perhaps the most fascinating of Universal’s vampire movies. Highly recommended. 

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a bit of an outlier among the classic Universal monster movies. It came out in 1954, some years after Universal’s monster cycle had ended. It’s also in some ways a typical 50s sci-fi horror offering but it still has some features that link it to the great Universal horror films. It has a sympathetic (or at least partly sympathetic) monster, there’s an emphasis on atmosphere and there’s an emphasis on achieving an impressive visual impact. It’s a movie that looks classier than most 50s sci-fi/horror flicks.

Creature from the Black Lagoon was actually shot in 3D. 3D is a silly idea that Hollywood periodically gets obsessed with. I watched this movie in good old 2D and it looked just fine.

The movie opens with an odd but mercifully brief prologue about the creation of the Earth which is purely an excuse to show off some gimmicky 3D photography.

The actual story begins in the Amazon Basin with the discovery by middle-aged scientist Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno) of an exciting fossil. His former student David Reed is excited as well. Perhaps he might persuade Mark Williams to fund an expedition to look for more such fossils. Mark Williams is David’s employer. Mark is always willing to fund research if the results are likely to attract plenty of public attention and enhance his own reputation. Mark is keen and an expedition is soon assembled.

A decrepit river steamer, the Rita, is hired and they set off. They are not dismayed by a disturbing tragedy involving a couple of Carl’s Indian assistants. The expedition initially seems like it is going to be a washout until someone suggests that they might find something if they’re prepared to push on into the unexplored reaches of the river to find the so-called Black Lagoon. 

What they find is not quite what they expected. Fossils are one thing, but finding a previously unknown ancient life-form is something else when it’s very much alive. The gill man is not just alive but he’s going to be quite a challenge to deal with. He’s probably not going to take kindly to any attempts to capture him and that of course is exactly what the scientists are hoping to do. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game but who is the cat and who is the mouse?

Director Jack Arnold would go on to helm some of the more entertaining science fiction movies of the 1950s including the excellent The Incredible Shrinking Man.

The characters are what you expect in a sci-fi B-movie but the relationships between them are slightly more complex than you might expect. There’s professional tension between the ruthless Mark and the more ethical David but there’s also tension between them over Kay. David and Kay are very much a couple but it’s obvious that Mark isn’t entirely happy about this and that he some interest in Kay himself. Kay seems quite happy to have two hunky young men both lusting after her.

The acting is just a little better than standard B-picture level as well. Richard Denning makes Mark an interesting character, a wealthy successful man who is still driven by uncontrolled ambition and whose ethics are somewhat flexible. Richard Carlson as David is a perfectly adequate hero. Julie Adams plays Kay as mostly a nice respectable girl but also as a girl who is aware of the effect upon men of her sexual charms and gets a certain amount of enjoyment from this.

Of course the great thing about a movie in which scuba diving plays a major role is that it provides plenty of opportunities for the leading lady to cavort about in a bathing suit (and Julie Adams fills a bathing suit more than adequately). And of course the two leading men get to spend much of the movie with their shirts off so there’s eye candy for the ladies in the audience as well as for the men.

The key scene in the movie has Kay going for a swim. Unbeknownst to her the gill man is just below her, following her every move. While he tries to kill every man he encounters he does not appear to be interested in killing her. It’s reasonable to assume that he sees her swim as some kind of mating signal and it’s a signal he’s eager to respond to her. There are some obvious parallels here to King Kong of course. There also seems to be only one creature, obviously male, which further suggests that he is desperate to find a mate and he knows Kay is female and would therefore be (from his point of view) the most suitable mate he can find. The instinct to perpetuate the species cannot be denied, although Kay was hoping to perpetuate the species with someone other than an amphibian swamp monster.

The gill man of this movie inspired countless guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters over the next couple of decades but at the time he was a striking enough monster and he still looks rather impressive in the underwater scenes especially.

The underwater sequences (credited to James C. Havens) were the movie’s big selling point and they are exceptionally well done. On the whole the special effects stand up well.

The pacing might seem a bit leisurely but Jack Arnold knows what he’s doing. He shows us the monster early on because he’s in the happy position (for a B-film director) of having a monster that looks impressive and it makes us sense to give us a look at the said monster as early as possible. We’ve seen the creature but nothing much of a menacing nature happens for quite a while. The creature is there and sooner or later it’s going to come into collision with the expedition members but Arnold builds the suspense slowly.

Having the expedition run from a decaying but picturesque old steamer rather than a modern research vessel is a nice touch.

Creature from the Black Lagoon looks rather splendid on Blu-Ray. It’s a well-paced and quite exciting monster movie with a bit more substance than most and better made than most. Highly recommended.

The Mad Ghoul (1943)

The Universal horror movies of the 1940s are a bit of a mixed bag but The Mad Ghoul does have quite a few things in its favour. Most notably it has the right cast. It has George Zucco as a mad scientist, it has famous scream queen Evelyn Ankers and it has Turhan Bey to add the necessary touch of exoticism.

Zucco plays chemist Dr Alfred Morris who has been researching some strange aspects of ancient Mayan rites. He believes that the Mayans may have used a type of poison gas to induce what he calls a state of death-in-life. He also has a theory about the Mayans’ rather unpleasant custom of tearing out the hearts of living sacrificial victims. He believes they had a means of reversing the state of death-in-life.

With his eager young student and assistant Ted Allison (David Bruce) Dr Morris is determined to prove the correctness of his theory.

At first we assume that Dr Morris is the kind of movie mad scientist who is led into evil through his single-minded pursuit of science without any moral grounding. He scornfully dismisses the idea of morality. He is a scientist and believes there is no good or evil, only true or false. There is however another factor at work in this case. Dr Morris knows a good deal about science but he is a fool when it comes to women. 

The worst thing is that he thinks he knows all about women. And as the old saying goes, there’s no fool like an old fool. Dr Morris’s foolishness about women will lead him to use his knowledge of science for evil rather than good.

Young Ted is also somewhat naïve when it comes to women, and this will have equally disastrous results for him. Ted is engaged to be married to popular singer Isabel Lewis (Evelyn Ankers) but he has an unknown and formidable rival in the person of her accompanist, Eric Iverson (Turhan Bey).

Soon a ghoul is on the loose, robbing graves all over the country. There seems to be some mysterious link to Isabel Lewis. Of course Isabel herself cannot possibly be involved. Reporter Ken McClure (Robert Armstrong) has a theory but he will need some hard evidence before he can go to the police. He has an idea he knows how to find that evidence.

George Zucco is in fine form. Dr Morris is the kind of mad scientist who doesn’t struggle very hard against the temptations of evil but he’s smooth and clever and he’s able to maintain an outward appearance of respectability. People trust Dr Morris. Zucco doesn’t overdo his performance - Dr Morris is a villain but he’s a victim of his own delusions and he’s not entirely unsympathetic.

David Bruce does an excellent job as the hapless innocent Ted Allison. Evelyn Ankers makes a sympathetic and glamorous heroine. Turhan Bey is as suave as ever as her handsome lover.

While the term zombie is never used this can be seen as a type of zombie movie, with a scientific rather than mystical explanation.

One of the great things about this movie is the lack of comic relief. I just can’t tell you what a joy it is to encounter a 1940s Universal horror flick without irritating comic relief. Even the smart aleck reporter is mostly played very straight.

The movie includes many of the staples of Universal horror films with some nicely atmospheric graveyard scenes. The makeup effects (by the legendary Jack Pierce) are effective without being in any way excessive. Universal’s horror films of this era might have been uneven but they always looked good.

The script, by Brenda Weisberg and Paul Gangelin, is serviceable and in fact surprisingly intelligent and has some original touches. Director James P. Hogan spent his career in B-features but he knew his business and his work here can’t be faulted. He gets the most out of the material and the results are quite classy by B-movie standards. Sadly Hogan died of a heart attack shortly before the film’s release.

The Mad Ghoul is one of the five movies included in TCM’s excellent (although hard to find) Universal Cult Horror DVD boxed set. Sound quality is just a little uneven. On the other hand the image quality is superb. There are a few extras. The Mad Ghoul is a neat little horror movie that has been unjustly neglected and is highly recommended. As for the TCM boxed set, it’s pretty much a must-buy for classic horror fans.

House of Frankenstein (1944)

House of Frankenstein, released in 1944, was one of Universal’s infamous (but commercially very successful) monster rally movies. Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster all feature in the film although perhaps rather curiously their roles are not actually central. It’s not really a very good movie but it has its moments and it is strangely enjoyable.

It certainly boasts a formidable array of horror icons in its cast - Boris Karloff, John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr, Lionel Atwill, George Zucco and J. Carrol Naish.

Dr Gustav Niemann (Boris Karloff) has been continuing the work of the notorious Dr Frankenstein and as a result he is now rotting in prison. He still dreams of taking up the great work again but it seems unlikely he will ever be able to do so. Then fate intervenes - the prison is struck by lightning which demolishes the wall allowing Niemann and another prisoner, the hunchback Daniel (J. Carrol Naish) to escape. 

Now Niemann can go back to his experiments but there are two tasks he must first accomplish - he must find Dr Frankenstein’s notebooks and he must get his revenge on the men whose testimony put him in prison. Then, with Daniel as his faithful assistant, he has a whole series of ambitious experiments to work on.

A chance encounter with a traveling Chamber of Horrors show run by a Professor Lampini (George Zucco) provides Niemann with a very useful opportunity - this traveling show will provide a perfect cover for him, allowing him to travel through the countryside without being recognised or attracting suspicion. Professor Lampini is not happy with this idea but he is quickly disposed of.

One of Lampini’s prized exhibits is the skeleton of Dracula. Of course no-one really believes it is the skeleton of the famous vampire but when Niemann removes the stake from the skeleton he discovers that this is indeed Count Dracula and he’s come back to life. 

Resurrecting vampires is just a distraction for Niemann. He is keen to get back to his laboratory, especially after not only finding Dr Frankenstein’s precious notebooks but also the frozen bodies of the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster. Dr Niemann has a particular interest in brain transplants and now he has lots of brains and lots of bodies to play with.

Of course you can’t expect to go around raising the dead and transplanting monster brains without something going wrong. In this case it’s something rather unexpected that goes wrong, the end result of a tragic love triangle between a hunchback, a werewolf and a gypsy girl. It must surely only be a matter of time before the villagers show up with flaming torches and pitch-forks.

The big problem with this movie is that combining so many monsters is an inherently unwieldy idea, especially since none of the monsters really have any logical connection with one another. Edward T. Lowe Jr’s screenplay (based on Curt Siodmak’s story) can’t really resolve this difficulty. The Dracula part of the story ends up being like a short film within a film. The Wolf Man story then takes over with Frankenstein’s Monster only playing a very insignificant part towards the end. In fact the main thrust of the plot is the story of Niemann’s obsession with surpassing Frankenstein’s achievements, combined with the tragic romantic entanglements caused by the arrival of the beautiful gypsy girl Ilonka (Elena Verdugo).

If the various plot strands never do come together very successfully, and if most of the ideas are very unoriginal, it has to be said that this movie is remarkably well executed. Director Erle C. Kenton maintains a frantic pace and provides plenty of thrills and some surprisingly effective visual touches (the vampire bat murder seen only in silhouette being a notable example). Of course Universal always managed to make even their lesser horror movies look terrific. This movie is no exception. The sets are extremely impressive, especially the ice cave. The monster transformation scenes are mostly well done (the werewolf transformation scene is very very good indeed).

The acting is a bit variable. Karloff’s performance is quite interesting if rather low-key - Niemann seems affable, quietly spoken and even kindly but if someone gets in his way he disposes of them with breathtaking ruthlessness. It’s as if he’s so obsessed by his work that killing is merely a minor irritation. Chaney could have played the Wolf Man in his sleep by this time but he does add his characteristic touches of pathos. Carradine is a very sinister and very effective Dracula. J. Carrol Naish makes Daniel both a chilling cold-blooded killer and a sympathetic victim of love gone wrong. Elena Verdugo gives a spirited performance as the gypsy girl. Atwill and Zucco really only have cameo roles (although Zucco makes the most of his very brief screen time).

The Region 4 DVD is noticeably lacking in extras but the transfer is superb.

House of Frankenstein is disjointed and is little more than a jumble of not very original ideas but it’s so well executed that one can’t help forgiving its faults. And it is consistently entertaining. Recommended.

House of Horrors (1946)

House of Horrors was intended by Universal as a starring vehicle for Rondo Hatton, an  actor who suffered from a debilitating condition known as acromegaly. This disease, usually caused by a pituitary tumour, causes severe facial disfigurement. This tragic affliction seemed to make Hatton ideally suited for horror movie stardom but unfortunately medical complications caused his death before the release of the two movies which might have consolidated his stardom. One of these two movies was House of Horrors, released early in 1946.

The movie starts with struggling artist Marcel DeLange (Martin Kosleck) facing another week of deprivation and misery. He was just about to sell one of his statues, until art critic F. Holmes Harmon (Alan Napier) managed to persuade the prospective purchaser that DeLange’s work was utterly worthless. The sale falls through and DeLange, in despair, is about to throw himself in the river when he sees a man struggling in the water. He rescues him. The unnamed man (played by Rondo Hatton) suffers from facial deformities but DeLange doesn’t mind. In DeLange’s tortured mind this man is an outcast like himself, a victim of society’s wickedness.

The artist more or less adopts the man. He wants him to model for his next artistic masterpiece. In the course of conversation DeLange mentions that the reason they are living in abject poverty is the malice of evil art critic F. Holmes Harmon. Soon afterwards the art critic meets with a nasty, and fatal, accident. And it soon appears that such accidents are happening to anyone perceived by DeLange as an enemy.

It’s fairly obvious that DeLange knows what’s going on, but he doesn’t mind. Being an artist he sees himself as a superior being and he thinks it’s only right and proper that anyone who interferes with his glorious artistic career should end up with his spine snapped. If enough art critics are killed his genius will finally be recognised.

There is panic in the city as the spine-snapping killer dubbed The Creeper continues his murderous rampage. The police suspect Stephen Morrow (Robert Lowery), another artist with ample cause to hate F. Holmes Harmon.

Of course there has to be a young glamorous female in the cast. In this case the role is filled by yet another art critic, Joan Medford (Virginia Grey). The police are represented by the wise-cracking skirt-chasing but not very competent Lieutenant Larry Brooks (Bill Goodwin). Joan Medford has found a clue, a sketch of the Creeper, but will she live long enough to do anything with it?

While many of Universal’s 1940s horror offerings are at best marginally related to the horror genre and while this film is structurally closer to being a crime film it does have enough genuine horror elements to qualify as an actual horror movie.

As is the case with even the weakest of Universal’s horror flicks there’s plenty of atmosphere and all the visual trappings of horror that one could ask for. Jean Yarbrough was a competent B-movie director. Universal always had solid technical people working on their B-movies, in this instance the most notable being the legendary makeup artist Jack Pierce.

It’s not a bad story but the principal interest is in the characterisation. This is a movie with two monsters. The Creeper is the obvious monster. He’s almost the kind of vaguely sympathetic monster that so often appears in Universal monster movies although he’s perhaps just a bit too gleefully homicidal to be truly sympathetic. Nonetheless we can see that fate has dealt him a very bad hand and his monstrousness is at least explicable.

Marcel DeLange is more interesting. On one level he is presented as the artistic visionary suffering for his genius at the hands of an uncaring and indeed positively hostile world. On the other hand we have to admit that cynical art critic F. Holmes Harmon is quite correct in his assessment of DeLange’s talent - his only talent is for creating depraved ugliness and in spite of his surface amiability it’s clear that the ugliness of his work reflects the ugliness of his soul. He has a genuine fondness for his cat but he seems to have no real feelings for other human beings. Even his apparent compassion for the Creeper is phony - the Creeper is useful to him but that’s as far as DeLange’s feelings go.

The Creeper at least has the excuse that his behaviour is a result of his deformity and (presumably) the sufferings he has endured as a result. DeLange’s monstrousness is driven by egotism, anger, jealousy and his delusion that his hideous statues are of such towering artistic significance that a human life is of no importance by comparison.

It’s Martin Kosleck’s performance as DeLange that really stands out. It’s a surprisingly subtle performance. He makes us believe at first that DeLange is really a harmless inoffensive and rather gentle man but gradually we come to realise that he is entirely amoral and in fact in his own way more evil than the Creeper. Kosleck played many villains in his career but this remained his favourite rôle.

Robert Lowery and Virginia Grey are perfectly competent while Alan Napier is deliciously nasty as the acid-tongued art critic.

House of Horrors is one of five movies in TCM’s Universal Cult Horror DVD boxed set (the set also includes the Lionel Atwill vehicle The Mad Doctor of Market Street). The transfer is superb and there are at least some token extras.

This is one of the better 1940s Universal horror movies with some genuinely intriguing dimensions to it. Highly recommended.