Tag Archives: Universal Horror

Retrospective: The House of Frankenstein (1944)

04 Friday Dec 2020

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Some thirteen years after the release of Dracula back in 1931, Universal now had a decent backlog of Universal Monsters in their midst.
After the relative success of Frankenstein vs The Wolf Man, which pitted two of their creatures head to head in its climax, it was a logical step to combine as many as possible into the one film. 

In order for this trick to be pulled off successfully however, requires some clever plot devices to wrangle each intricate characteristic into a believable situation. Curt Siodmak was called upon to carry out this difficult task, which seems a logical choice as he had overseen a lot of the Universal horror movies during the time. His decision was to introduce a new character in Dr. Gustav Niemann, a mad scientist played by Boris Karloff in what would be his last role in the Universal horror franchise. Accompanying him from a prison break is hunchback (another trope), Daniel (J. Carrol Naish), who is willing to carry out Niemann’s demands with the promise of a new body. 

Niemann though only has revenge in mind for the three people who wronged him and sent him to prison. 

This story is really told in two parts; the first part being the revenge on Burgemeister Hussman, which Niemann does by initially killing Professor Lampini and taking on his identity as a travelling showman and his Chamber of Horrors. The show in question just so happens to contain the skeletal remains of Count Dracula with the stake still impaled. Legend has it that if the stake were to be removed, Dracula would once again walk the earth. Naturally this happens, but Niemann convinces the Count (John Carradine) to carry out his task of ridding him of his nemesis with the promise of protection. Once the Count offs Hussman though, the group land in a spot of bother and Niemann quickly reneges on his agreement and ditches Dracula’s coffin, forcing him to submit to the sunlight and ultimately be destroyed. Dracula’s demise seems all too easy and as such renders him slightly useless in the movie and far from menacing.

The latter half of the movie focuses on the resurrection of Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange) and The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.) who were last seen washed away with the flood that submerged the ruins of Frankenstein’s castle. It turns out that they had been frozen in ice, and Niemann thaws them both, once again hoping to use them to his advantage. 

The film is aided by the return of Chaney Jr and the troubled Larry Talbot who continuously serves as the heart of the franchise. Here, a love triangle is formed as he finds himself falling for a gypsy girl Ilonka (Elena Verdugo – who was a descendant of the Verdugo family that founded Los Angeles), rescued by Daniel and Niemann. The former has also fallen for Ilonka’s charms and is then driven by jealousy when his love is not reciprocated, and also by anger from Niemann’s failure not to live up to his promise.

The climax is nicely tied up with a collision of personalities all vying for different means, and when that clash comes it can only lead to the demise of all, be it silver bullet, thrown from the roof, or driven into the swamp quicksand from angry villagers wielding flaming torches.

On face value, Siodmak ticks all the boxes of what can be expected from each of the characters but ultimately, there is nothing new to offer at hand, and because of this the film falls short on satisfaction. It is still a solid production, entertains, but never does enough to lift itself above the standards of its predecessors.

It was great to see Karloff (he definitely owns this movie and deserves to wield the lead antagonist mantle) and Lon Chaney Jr share screen time together, but the chance to have the creatures provide any form of menace are  squandered. 

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Phantom of the Opera (1943)

28 Saturday Nov 2020

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Having explored numerous aspects of Gothic Literature for Universal’s cannon of horror features, it was time to turn their attention once more back to Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera; a tale of a deformed phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House, murdering people to aid the woman he loves, Christine, to become a star.

It was a bold choice as nearly twenty years prior, the production house had successfully released a version starring “The Man With A Thousand Faces” Lon Chaney as the titular Phantom back in 1925. 

It was deemed however, that ample time had passed despite Chaney’s son, Lon Chaney Jr now a contracted player for Universal, which meant that the ‘25 version was still fresh in the minds of some people. Chaney Jr allegedly expected the part to fall to him in order to reprise his father’s role, but the studio elected instead to cast Claude Rains (The Invisible Man). This did not go down well with Chaney Jr. and apparently some bitterness ensued between him and his The Wolf Man co-star.

It has to be said that I have always enjoyed Rains’ performances on screen and this was no exception as he brought a certain level of heart and empathy to his role as Enrique Claudin. Claudin is the doomed romantic, whose heart belongs to Christine Dubois, a soprano that he has been privately funding her singing lessons.

We certainly feel for Claudin, who is a violinist for the Paris Opera House and is let go due to the ailing use of his fingers. Looking to make ends meet, he then ventures to his music publisher in the hopes of getting money from a piano concerto that he has written. Tragedy has struck however, when he learns that the publisher is attempting to steal his work. In a fit of rage Claudin strangles and kills the publisher, only to have the publisher’s assistant throw etching acid in his face, deforming him.

From here on in, Claudin withdraws to the shadows with his new moniker of the phantom, and then goes to extreme measures in order to propel Christine to stardom.

The film plays out well enough and Rains more than holds his own, but it never feels dark or sinister enough to scare or thrill the audience. It doesn’t help that it is peppered with operatics with an upbeat jovial manner, potentially to juxtapose the dark energy that surrounds it. And it is the setting after all, but if that was the aim, then the darker elements needed to be amplified much more.

As it stands, it’s a solid film, but is no match for its predecessor. There were plans for a sequel called The Climax, but a combination of not being able to cast Rains again due to other commitments and problems working through a decent storyline that would work, it failed to materialise and instead would be reworked as a completely different movie starring Boris Karloff.

With Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical aside, the story would not be revisited again until 1962 Hammer Films starring Herbet Lom, then another twenty year abstinence until Robert Englund would don the mask in 1989 for 21st Century Film, and a Dario Argento feature in 1998.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Captive Wild Woman (1943)

27 Friday Nov 2020

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No doubt when Universal were bandying around the idea behind Captive Wild Woman, they thought they potentially had another horror film franchise on their hands in the tale of an Ape Woman with humanistic tendencies.
The result however, was received with mixed feelings, in part due to its abomination of religious doctrination that caused one of several changes to the script, which would ultimately take around two years before it was greenlit.
By this time the kernel of the story had undergone a transformation not unlike its subject that morphed into a hybrid version of the original concept. 

The story gathered together a collection of characters, starting with animal trainer Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) who returns from safari with a series of animals to be used in the Whipple Circus. Chief among these is Cheela, the afore-mentioned gorilla, played by stuntman Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan.

Accompanying Mason is his fiance Beth (Evelyn Ankers, now establishing herself as a stable actor for the studio following The Wolf Man and The Ghost of Frankenstein) whose sister, Dorothy (Martha MacVicar) is suffering from undisclosed health problems. In steps our antagonist and a dialled down John Carradine (The Invisible Man’s Revenge) as Dr Walters.

Walters is your typical mad scientist villain, a carbon copy of Dr Frankenstein with his malicious  pursuit of science at the cost of all those around him. In this instance Walters is hellbent in transforming the gene pull to change a living creature such as the gorilla into human form. He succeeds in doing so but like Frankenstein realises that in order to be truly successful, he must use a human brain and here his bloody pursuit amplifies starting with his assistant, but when this takes a turn for the worse, he sets his sights on Beth.

The human form of Cheela would be played by the exotic Acquanetta, who was a self-proclaimed Native American and would go on to reprise her role in the sequel Jungle Woman. Cheela has a hidden power over creatures which plays well at the circus and she becomes part of the act. She also has a fond connection with Mason and becomes incredibly jealous of his fiance Beth. This puts Beth against two adversaries and the rest of the tale leads to whether or not she will survive.

The film feels a little stale in places as we struggle with the plentiful shots of Mason in the ring taming the wild cats. It does help to have Carradine’s manic performance to keep the audience interested in the outcome, but it does limp along in the process. The surprise is that it generated not only one but two sequels… but more on those at another time.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)

27 Sunday Sep 2020

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Yes this movie is reaped in formula and shuffles along a predicable path to its mortal conclusion, and yet it boasts some strong choices for a third instalment. Namely it’s decision to kill off its lead protagonists from the previous film, The Mummy’s Hand.

Bold in that it’s something you may not necessarily identify with a film from the 1940s, and in doing so, Universal Pictures once more indicates how readily it is to move away from the old and make way for the new despite only a two year gap between both movies.

The film like it’s predecessor delivers an exposition in the form of a flashback so that audiences can be brought up to speed with the franchise narrative. This tale is told from the perspective of Steve Banning (Dick Foran), the hero from The Mummy’s Hand, albeit now an elderly Gent who speaks to his sister, his son John (John Hubbard) and his son’s long term girlfriend Isobel (Elysse Knox). Essentially potential victims in the mix. At the same time we see another passing of the baton with Andoheb (George Zucco) guiding his protege Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey) to reek revenge by restoring Kharis to destroy Banning and his family.

Stepping into the bandaged shoes that were once worn by horror legend Boris Karloff and Tom Tyler comes another legend in horror, Lon Chaney Jr, who had made a name for himself playing the tragic character Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man.

From here on in the film plays with a paint by numbers tale as Kharis is sent to enact revenge and killing off people one by one, starting with the first shock death of Steve Banning. Director Harold Young does a great job of amping up the tension as we the audience can see that Banning’s time is up and fate slowly wields it’s deathly hands around his throat.

In addition the demise of Babe Hanson (Wallace Ford) returns to add to the mythology and serves as a spanner in Bey’s plan and so has to be dispatched in, by the forties standards, gruesome fashion.

The storyline does try to throw in an added element with Bey falling for Isobel and his stunting his trajectory but for the most part it trudges along and delivers an all too predictable ending and underusing Chaney Jr serving as the prototype monster which is a shame.

– Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Strange Case of Doctor Rx

06 Sunday Sep 2020

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The Strange Case of Doctor Rx is a curious oddity indeed as Universal once again struggles to fire a hit outside of the ‘classic’ monster films that they had become synonymous with. Described as a B Movie murder mystery horror, this film crunches and clunks its way through numerous genre changes in gear that it never really hits its stride. Some elements lay sway to the screwball comedies of the era, but freezes more than sizzles with its dialogue. 

With Patric Knowles handed a top billing role (following his support performance in The Wolf Man) as Private Investigator Jerry Church, hired to investigate a series of murders by someone who labels himself as Rx. What is bizarre about the narrative is that it picks up after five murders have already occured which feels like a missed opportunity to build up the suspense.

Church is indeed a hot shot investigator who is at odds with his desire to do what he does best and settle down with his new wife Kit (one of the original scream queens Anne Gwynne). He is ultimately drawn into the mystery however as we too are struggling to comprehend what is actually going on. 

The comedy moments aren’t enough either to lift the audience out of the confusion and fall flat, coming across as befuddling rather than bemusing. 

By the film’s conclusion the script somehow manages to side step a suitable conclusion with Church placed in a dire situation without showing how he is able to escape his plight. It then wrangles a conclusion that is just as perplexing as its premise, leaving me to wonder what I had just watched.

It’s one silver screen lining is the red herring element with the great Lionel Atwill lurking mysteriously in the shadows (Man-Made Monster, The Mad Doctor of Market Street). If only his presence was felt more strongly throughout the movie. It’s absence of mystery is heavily felt and with more work on the screenplay, Universal could have had a very different film on the hands. Missed opportunity.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

23 Sunday Aug 2020

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There’s a warm familiarity about Universal’s fourth Frankenstein instalment. Where other classic monster films have struggled to continue their respective story arcs, the Mary Shelley inspired creature horror manages to breathe new life into the story this far.

Serving as a companion piece to its predecessor, Son of Frankenstein,  the story follows the devious Ygor (Bela Lugosi reprising his role) who managed to survive alongside the creature and tries to exert his power once again.

Despite Karloff’s absence as the walking husk, Lon Chaney Jr steps into the big shoes and dons the bolts effectively. In particular the running theme with the creatures’ connection with a young village girl, Cloestine, a symbol of innocence and purity. In James Whale’s original Frankenstein, this is snuffed out, so the threat hangs in the air despite it coming from a genuine place of curiosity and the need to be like her.

Joining the main players is another strong ensemble with Cedric Hardwicke as Frankenstein’s descendant, Lionel Atwill as the misguided assistant Dr. Bohmer, Ralph Bellamy as the steadfast representative of the law Erik Ernst, and Evelyn Ankers as Elsa Frankenstein (whose name is a delightful nod to The Bride of Frankenstein’s Elsa Lancaster).

The drive in this film is a mixture of writing the wrongs and striving to better oneself. The creature longs to be accepted, Frankenstein sees the opportunity to clear his family name through a brain transplant using a suitable host: not a criminal mind, and Dr. Bohmer driven by the need to be recognised in his profession.

This is Lugosi’s show though and he relishes expanding on the character of Ygor wanting initially to strive away from his deformity but throughout the film transforming this gaze to one of power.

The screenplay written by W. Scott Darling weaves in some weaves in some typical tropes that is instantly recognisable from the franchise such as the lynch mob wielding torches that bookends the film and even places the shocking theme of gassing into the mix, a subject that would have had strong reactions at the time. This combined with the direction of Erie C. Kenton delivers another strong entry into the franchise and Universal Horror.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942)

16 Sunday Aug 2020

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By 1942 Lionel Atwill had firmly established himself as a veteran of the silver screen and rightfully deserves top-billing in this horror / thriller from Universal Pictures.
He hits every note of the titular character in his stride with relative ease, both dialling up the mania and subtly downplaying the more reserved moments whilst still coming across as sinister in his mannerisms.
The narrative quickly shifts from science experiment gone awry when Atwill’s Dr. Benson inadvertently kills his subject when trying to resurrect the dead.
Think Flatliners but on a minimum scale.

Now a fugitive on the run, he goes in hiding on a ship to New Zealand. Unfortunately a police detective had also boarded the ship on a hunch that Benson is among its passengers.
This results in Benson resorting to drastic measures and pushing said detective overboard.
The drama doesn’t end there however, as somehow a fire erupts on the ship causing the passengers to abandon ship and our key players (including Benson) washing up on a remote island.
Once on the island the film starts to show its age, depicting the islanders as savages and easily manipulated by Benson’s medical knowledge when he resurrects one of the villagers from a supposed death (in reality, a stroke) with a potion (adrenaline). It’s a she because this depiction does jar when viewed with a modern lens and shifts the gaze away from the terror that is trying to be depicted.

It is then down to the survivors (all of whom are pretty formulaic) to try and outwit and expose Benson his true malicious  interests without putting their own lives on jeopardy.

The script does suffer from falling into predictable terrain and it could have amped up Benson’s maniacal moments to make his presence more terrifying, but hats off to director Joseph H Lewis for crafting together a fairly decent effort from a very low budget.
With a running time that’s just over the hour mark, The Mad Doctor of Market Street still amazed to entertain.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Wolf Man (1941)

08 Saturday Aug 2020

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The introduction of The Wolf Man would mark the last of the iconic stable monsters to come out of Universal studios during its golden age of horror. Along with it comes arguably one of the production houses’ most tragic characters in Larry Talbot. Talbot’s heartfelt sorrow is all the more pained due to his magnificent portrayal by Lon Chaney Jr, who after impressing in Man-Made Monster finally got to take on a lead-role as the doomed hero. 

In many ways the feature would serve as a signature to the passing of the torch from the old to the new with Chaney Jr ably supported by Claude Rains (The Invisible Man) as Larry’s father Sir John, and Bela Lugosi (Dracula) as Bela the Gypsy. The latter is all the more on the snout as Bela harbours the secret of being a lycanthrope and literally bites Talbot, transforming him and turning him into the monster. 

The strength of the cast doesn’t end there though, and this is part of the beauty of this film and why quite honestly, it still resonates today. With Ralph Bellamy (Rosemary’s Baby), Patric Knowles (Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man), Evelyn Ankers (The Ghost of Frankenstein), but none more striking than Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva, The Gypsy Fortune Teller.
Her role would lend significant weight and drama to Talbot’s plight and add a dash of the mysticism behind the mythology. She would reprise her role once more in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. 

Curt Siodmak would return once more as the screenwriter, in arguably his finest work, which is partly to do with him drawing from his own tragic history of segregation and oppressed Jew under the Nazi regime, a topic that doesn’t get lost in the narrative as Bela and Larry are both marked by the pentagram as part of their curse.

In this story, Talbot returns to his ancestral home to reunite with his estranged father.
Whilst there, he becomes infatuated with a local girl, Gwen, only to succumb to a wolf attack.
At first, Talbot believes that his plight is all too real, but when he heals so swiftly, he starts to question his own sanity, before the physical changes begin to occur.
From here, he withdraws from the world, not knowing who to turn to, afraid of what he might do.

Now that mythology is the stuff of legend, and many have transpired to go above and beyond where it all began with numerous tales of the shapeshifting beast.
The effects have come in leaps and bounds since this film, but a huge nod must go out to make up guru Jack Pierce who would produce the now infamous look from his own personal kit, including yak hair that was glued to Chaney Jr’s face in a laborious procedure.
The Wolf Man would go on to feature in a further four sequels, all featuring Chaney Jr (the only actor to play the role), which is part of its appeal, and one of the key characteristics of Talbot is his ‘nice guy’ personality that is conflicted with this plague. 

The film is iconic and despite being nearly 80 years old, is still solid.
A testament to the talent involved in its creation and Siodmak’s screenplay. As my journey through the Universal horror archive, this was a welcome shift in the positive direction.

  • Saul Muerte 

Retrospective: The Black Cat (1941)

01 Saturday Aug 2020

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The film derives its title from a classic Edgar Allan Poe short story, but its usage should be held lightly as it’s a far cry from its inspiration, only vaguely connected via said black cat who mysteriously arrives when a dead body is found.

Having traversed through the early Universal horror films and into the 1940s, it becomes apparent the strikingly familiar storyline that is at its helm, primarily based on The Old Dark House, which had been a winning formula for the giant film production house. 

The trouble is, this feels all too stale and tired in comparison to its predecessors that I felt beyond caring for the characters plight and you just long for Tim Curry to prop up and “camp” his way through a whodunnit spiel, just to spice things up a bit.

Instead we’re faced with a couple of bungling sleuths in the guise of antique dealers, there to praise the value of some of the elderly Henrietta Winslow’s estate. Henrietta is aware that she is to bequeath her fortune to a greedy family, so she writes up a will against their knowledge with a caveat stating that they will not be able to lay their hands on her money, until her housekeeper Abigail and her many cats have died.

Cue the death of Henrietta, the reveal of her will, and then a pursuit of Abigail from a mysterious assailant, leaving the two antique dealers to try and solve the murder before the night is through and to prevent a higher body count. 

The Black Cat boasts an incredible cast in Basil Rathbone, Hugh Herbert (who admittedly is slightly annoying with his comic relief), Broderick Crawford, Anne Gwynne, the brilliantly melodramatic Gale Sondegaard, a young Alan Ladd (“Shane!”) and a criminally underused Bela Lugosi as the ‘red herring’ character. So it’s a shame then that this is a massive misfire and never utilises the talent on display with essentially an incredibly poor script that tries to rest on intrigue and a narrative template.

It lacks substance and therefore the likes of Rathbone simply have nothing to play with on screen and the comedy moments just doesn’t connect, leaving the whole debacle feeling flat.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Horror Island (1941)

23 Thursday Jul 2020

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Released as a double feature alongside Man-Made Monster, Horror Island would be billed as a mystery horror film but after viewing this 1940s film, it bears similarity to The Dark House, a decade its senior. 

The storyline loosely follows brash and down on his luck Bill (Dick Foran) who is always looking for his next scheme, in a role all too familiar to his portrayal of Steve Banning in The Mummy’s Hand. Like that film, Dick has an offsider to bounce off in the form of Fuzzy Knight playing the role of “Stuff”. Unfortunately Fuzzy doesn’t quite carry the same charisma as Wallace Ford. Instead, the banter comes more from Leo Carillo as the peg-legged sailor Tobias Clump. It’s a shame then that Clump becomes more secondary to the scene as the story develops into a whodunnit.

Clump serves as the instigator to Bill’s quest when he turns up with a treasure map leading to a small island, which Bill owns. When he is informed that the map isn’t genuine, Bill turns this into another plot to get money, by tauting a trip to his island to find the treasure, but claiming that it is haunted, so only the hardiest of people should go. From here a range of misfits are pitted together in search of a thrill or merely to be entertained, among them is love interest, Wendy (Peggy Moran – The Mummy’s Hand).

Once they arrive on the island however, things take a sinister turn as the guests start to be popped off one by one, ala Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None with the prime suspect being a mysterious figure known as The Phantom lurking around behind the scenes.

Considering its 60 minute time, Horror Island  tries to cram a lot in, but in doing so continuously feels like it misses the mark by trying too much. So as such, the movie is neither scary, mysterious, nor comical. Instead it is mediocre, especially compared to some of the other films released around the same time.

  • Saul Muerte