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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
CINEMA
Volume 14
A CRITICAL GUIDE TO HORROR

FILM SERIES
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A CRITICAL GUIDE TO HORROR
FILM SERIES
KEN HANKE
R Routledge
Taylor &. Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1991
This edition first published in 2014
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the U SA and C anada
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Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1991 Ken Hanke
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eISBN: 978-1-315-85201-0 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415-72642-9 (Volume 14)
eISBN: 978-1-315-85581-3 (Volume 14)
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A CRITICAL GUIDE TO
HORROR FILM SERIES
Ken Hanke
GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC. • NEW YORK & LONDON

1991
© 1991 Ken Hanke
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hanke, Ken, 1954-

A critical guide to horror film series / Ken Hanke.
p. cm. — (Garland reference library of the humanities; vol.
1214)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8240-5545-4 (acid-free paper)
1. Horror films—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series.
PN1995.9.H6H36 1991
791.43 '616— dc20 9 1 -1 9 9 5 2
CIP
Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper

Manufactured in the United States of America
In memory of ray father,
who started me on "monster movies.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Introduction xiii
The Tod Browning-Lon Chaney Films 3
The Warner Oland Fu Manchu Films 13
The Universal Dracula Films 23
The Universal Frankenstein Films 33
The Universal Mummy Films 51
The Lionel Atwill Films 59
The Invisible Man Films 71
The Karloff-Lugosi Films 79
The Tod Slaughter Barnstorming Films 91
The Columbia-Karloff "Mad Doctor" Films 105
The Bob Hope Comic-Horror Films 113
The Bela Lugosi Monogram Films 119
The Val Lewton Films 141
The George Zucco PRC Films 155
The "Inner Sanctum" Films 169
The Wally Brown-Alan Carney Films 177
The Hammer Frankenstein Films 181
The Hammer Dracula Films 195
The Hammer Mummy Films 207
The Roger Corman-Poe Films 215
The "Psycho" Series 225
The George A. Romero "Dead" Films 237
The Dr. Phibes Films 245
The Exorcist Films 251
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Films 263
The Omen Films 273
The Halloween Films 281
The Friday the 13th Films 293
The Nightmare on Elm Street Films 303
The Stuart Gordon-Lovecraft Films 313
Index 321
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I must acknowledge the great contribution

to this book by my dear friend John Micheal Prestage, who not
only provided the chapters on the Hammer films, but also spent
many laborious hours copying the credits for many of the films
in this book, as well as spending many more hours exchanging
viewpoints (occasionally without violence) on most of them. I
probably could have done it without you, Micheal, but it would
have been much less enjoyable— and less of a book.
My sincere thanks also go to the usual crew of supporters and

helpers who generously (as ever) gave their time and good will
to the project:
Donald Bevis
Richard Bojarski
Danny Burk
Ray Cabana
John Foster
Jeanne Hanke (for renting films I was too embarrassed to rent)
Shonsa Hanke
Michael Lasseter
John McCarty
Greg Pitt
John and Robbie Roberts
Ken Russell (AKA: The Great Man)
PREFACE
The idea of doing a book on horror film series was both an

outgrowth of my life-long love affair with the genre, and as a
reaction to the generally negative tone that has come to bear
on the more recent genre works for their tendency to continue
within a series frame rather than create wholly new works. The
criticism, while often well-founded on an individual film or
series, seems strange to me in that many— if not most— of the
horror films since the genre came into being have been part of
a series. Whether these have been series films in the sense of
continuing characters in a connected story (e.g., the Dracula
films) or part of a group of films built on (or around) the
concept of a particular star in a series of similar films
(e.g.,the Bela Lugosi Monogram films), the results have been
series films. And these series films have enriched the genre
with such films as The Black Cat, Bride of Frankenstein, The
Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Face at the Window, I_ Walked
with a. Zombie, etc. ("Granted, they have produced just as many
films that did nothing to enrich the genre, but this seems a
small price to pay for what the series concept has otherwise
given us.)
In writing this book, it was my aim to take a fresh look

at horror film series as series, and, I hoped, to arrive at
a better understanding of how the genre has thrived in this
format for most of its history. In so doing, I hope I have not
only put the more recent rash of horror film series into a
clearer perspective, but shed some new light on films we have
known (or think we have known) for years.
INTRODUCTION
The motion picture industry has always recognized a good

(or at least profitable) thing when it has seen one. As soon
as a film proves to be a popular success, there is no doubt
that it will be followed by a wave of imitations or variations
from every possible source— and, if possible, by a direct
follow-up film. If this sequel film is successful, chances are
that a series of such films will follow. This is perhaps no
where more evident than in the horror film and seems particu
larly to be the case at the present time with its apparent
non-stop barrage of films followed by ever-growing Roman
numerals. (While the horror genre seems to have laid claim to
this generic form of non-titling, it should be noted that it
was not Exorcist II that started the mania, but rather the
1957 British science fiction film Quatermass 2_, though this
has been obscured to American audiences who saw the film as
Enemy from Space on its initial release.)
It can be argued that the fantastic short films of Georges

Melies are in reality the first horror film series, but for
all intents and purposes the concept of a series of similar
films in the genre started when the director-star team of Tod
Browning and Lon Chaney decided to follow their successful
collaboration on The Unholy Three (1925) with The Black Bird
(1926), and from there went on to produce five more films of
an horrific nature in a conceptual series that ended only
because of Chaney's death in 1930.
A horror series in the more accepted sense of a continuing

story did not occur until Paramount's short-lived run of Fu
Manchu thrillers in 1929, 1930, and 1931* This, however, was a
rather limited success, and it was not until Universal started
to produce its famous 1930s horror films that the horror
series caught fire.
xiv A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series
It now seems peculiarly apt that Universal should have

been the cause of it all, since perhaps no other studio so
completely typifies the series mentality. Under the guidance
of founder Carl Laemmle, Universal was both quick to grasp a
profitable idea and slow to let go of it. Often as not the
studio had no earthly idea why a particular film or concept
worked, but they were only too happy to repeat it— or make an
attempt. As a result, comical Cockneys who had worked so well
in James Whale films like The Invisible Man and Bride of
Frankenstein would suddenly turn up in non-Whale projects like
Werewolf of London and The Invisible Hay where they stuck out
like the tacked-on appendages they were. In Universal*s view
it never seemed to drop into focus that the talent responsible
for a successful film might in some obscure way have a bearing
on that success. They were quite content to believe that the
studio had done the film as if by magic and that they could
just as magically reproduce it. Strangely enough, this often
worked (albeit accidentally). The studio did intend to retain
Bela Lugosi for Frankenstein, but rather than use director Tod
Browning and screenwriter John L. Balderston (two forces that
were clearly instrumental in the success of Dracula) , they
commissioned a script from Robert Florey, who was also set to
direct. Ultimately, Balderston did work on the script, Lugosi
was replaced with Boris Karloff, and James Whale directed. It
was indeed a kind of magic.
Curiously, the idea of continuing a story did not at once

occur to the studio. Instead they produced non-series films in
the same genre, and while this was in part due to the lack of
enthusiasm from Lugosi to reprise his Dracula role and Whale
to make another Frankenstein picture, it seems very short
sighted on their part. Bride of Frankenstein, of course,
changed all that and the rest is history. Even when the studio
changed hands and adopted a brief policy of not making horror
films (until it was economically impossible not to return to
what Universal did best), the series attitude held strong with
the "Crime Club" mysteries and a string of Deanna Durbin films
that were series films in everything but name. Indeed, it was
in this later incarnation that the horror series began to pick
up the bad name it carries to this day with the studio's
tenacious tendency to pursue an idea long after its value had
passed with often silly Frankenstein, Mummy, Wolfman, and
Invisible Man pictures. It almost seems that once they had
started they didn't know how to stop until every last vestige
of the original audience gave it up or died.
Introduction xv
Universal was not alone. Most of the studios tried to

create some kind of horror series when they saw the profits
that could be made from such films. Warner Brothers started
Lionel Atwill on a series with Doctor X and Mystery of the Wax
Museum, but in an unusual move the actor ended up continuing
in this vein as a free-lance artist at a variety of studios
(including Universal) with varying success. Great Britain
entered the game through the auspices of shoestring producer-
director George King with a series of films in which Tod
Slaughter recreated his famous stage melodramas. And so it
went. Horror series came and went. Some were good. Many more
were not, but it was the series concept that kept the genre
alive--and kept our heroes in gainful employment, if it comes
to that.
The tendency to peer down one's nose at series films fails

to take into account that the leastimpressive decade in
horror film history, the 1950s, is also the only decade in
which horror series films did not thrive (at least until
Hammer came on the scene in the latter part of that decade).
It is undeniable that many of the best horror films are
isolated works, especially in today's climate. The truly out
standing horror films of recent vintage— Gothic, Angel Heart,
The Lair of the White Worm, The Fly— have not been series
films. The closest series films have come are usually (and
significantly) in the first entry— A. Nightmare on Elm Street,
Re-Animator— but this isn't a given as witness Dawn of the
Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2^, and The Exorcist III.
Even lesser series like the Friday the 13th films with its
surprisingly superior (in a relative sense) sixth installment
are occasionally capable of better work later in the day. What
needs to be remembered overall, though, is that it is the
popular success of many of these downgraded series films that
keeps the horror film going— often more so than the isolated
great films— and, like it or not, it seems unlikely that the
fruitful marriage of horror and the series film is going to be
divorced in the foreseeable future. With this in mind, we
would do better to attempt to understand this marriage and its
pluses (they do exist), as well as its minuses.
Tod Browning and Lon Chaney on the set of The Road to Mandalay (1926).
Tetsu Komai, Evelyn Selbie, and Warner Oland in The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu
(1930).
Irving Pichel and Otto Kruger in Dracula1s Daughter (1936).
Boris Karloff and Dwight Frye in Frankenstein (1931).
Zita Johann and Boris Karloff in The Mummy (1932).
Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, and John Wray in Doctor X (1932).
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in The Black Cat (1934).
Richard Fiske and Boris Karloff in The Devil Commands (1941).
Hairy Terry and Tod Slaughter in The Face at the Window (1939).
JOHN CARRADINE
GEORGE ZUCCO
Lobby Card for Voodoo Man (1944).

Douglass Montgomery, Paulette Goddard, Bob Hope, and John Beal in The Cat and the Canary (1939).
Noel Madison and George Zucco in The Black Raven (1943).
The religious procession from The Leopard Man (1943).
Paul Kelly, Jean Parker, and Lon Chaney, Jr., in Dead Man's Eyes (1944)
Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Peter Cushing, and Olga Dickie i
Horror ofDracula (1958).
Vincent Price, Mark Damon, and Harry Ellerbe in House of Usher (1960).
Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in The Mummy (1959).
Anthony Perkins in Psycho III (1986).
Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971).
Viveca Lindfors and George C. Scott in The Exorcist III (1990).
Ken Evert, Bill Johnson, Bill Moseley, and Jim Siedow in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986).
Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween II (1981).
Kane Hodder in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989).
Heather Lagenkamp in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
Barbara Crampton and David Gale in Re-Animator (1985),
A Critical Guide to
Horror Film Series
THE TOD BROWNING-LON CHANEY FILMS
The Unholy Three (1925)

The Black Bird (1926)
The Road to Mandalay (1926)
London After Midnight (1927)
The Unknown (1927)
West of Zanzibar (1928)
Where East Is East (1929)
While it is debatable whether or not the bulk of the

Browning-Chaney films can be called horror pictures in the
strict sense (two films— Outside the Law [1921] and The Big
City [1928]— clearly are not), there is no denying that their
tone is unmistakably horrific. The overall and inescapable
impression goes beyond that which we normally attribute to
works of artistic merit into the realm of the truly "sick."
These are obsessive, twisted, unhealthy works of an undeniable
auteurist director and actor— fascinating, but with the sense
that were these tangible items one would shy away from
touching them. Unfortunately, the films are so obsessive that
they often fail as films. At bottom, the pair are simply too
much auteurists and not sufficient craftsmen. The collabora
tion allowed both men to wallow in their obsessions with
sublime disregard for much else. As a result, both Chaney and
Browning (sometimes with the same material) did their best
work with other people serving as a balance.
The first significant Browning-Chaney work is 1925's The

Unholy Three, a singularly bizarre tale that worked rather
better when Chaney remade the film under Jack Conway as his
only talkie in 1950. Visually, the film is a typical American
silent with a nailed-down camera, scenes that play in medium
long shot for far too long, and a very workmanlike concept of
cutting. The closest Browning gets to stylishness is in such
isolated moments as when he presents the Unholy Three (Chaney,
Harry Earles, Victor McLaglen) as looming shadows when they
5
4 A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series
first hatch their nefarious scheme, and even this is marred by

the pointless use of a dissolve rather than a straight cut or
a pull-back shot to show the overall scene. At other times,
his lack of technical skill (or his concern for such) is down
right embarrassing. Particularly sloppy is an "exterior" with
Chaney and Mae Busch playing against a painted backdrop
pressed into service as a woodland glade with their shadows
carelessly cast on the all too obviously flat surface. At its
best as a film The Unholy Three is merely competent. Often it
isn't even that. The film's importance lies solely in its
thematic concerns.
The storyline of the film is one that only an obsessive

pair like Browning and Chaney could have deemed believable in
the first place, and suitable to the silent film in the
second. After all, a silent film that relies on its main
character's abilities as a ventriloquist for purposes of plot
is fighting an uphill battle from the onset. In essence,
ventriloquist Chaney, strong man Victor McLaglen, and midget
Harry Earles are two-bit carnival performers with a penchant
for petit larceny, which Chaney hopes to turn into grand
larceny through a plan he claims is "so simple that it scares
you." This "so simple" plan requires the trio to fade out of
sight and re-emerge with Chaney in drag as Mrs. O'Grady,
proprietor of a parrot shop, with McLaglen as "her" son-in-
law, Earles as her grandson, and girlfriend Mae Busch as
Chaney's granddaughter. In this guise Chaney will sell non
speaking parrots that appear to speak (thanks to his ventrilo
quism) until the owner gets the bird home, necessitating a
call to Mrs. O'Grady, who can then arrive on the scene to case
the premises for a robbery later that night! If this is a
simple plan, one would truly love to hear Chaney’s version of
a complex one! Complicating matters is the romantic involve
ment of store clerk Matt Moore with Busch. Why they even need
such a dangerous addition as an outside employee is never
explained, but it is his attention to Busch, combined with
Chaney's jealousy, that sends Earles and McLaglen on an ill-
fated robbery without Chaney in which a man is killed. Despite
the fact that Chaney has an ethical code that appalls him at
this murder, he then frames Moore for the crime, only to
ultimately give himself up to save the young man at Busch's
urgings.
Convoluted as all this seems, the bare plot does not even
allow for such off-center Browningisms as a gorilla (actually
a much smaller ape ineptly photographed on scaled-down sets in
slow motion and intercut with the players reacting in terror
to the non-existent menace) brought on for the simple purpose

of colorfully doing away with McLaglen, nor does it touch on
many of the director's central themes. Apart from the under
lying unwholesoraeness of the perverted set-up itself, The
Unholy Three presents us with most of the catalogue of
Browning-Chaney obsessions, as well as the filmmaker's central
weaknesses as a dramatist. As is to be expected the main
characters are outsiders. The midget Earles is the most
obvious outsider owing to his physical difference, yet
strangely Browning does not sentimentalize the character as he
would later do with the same actor in Freaks (1932). Rather,
Earles' character is wholly despicable throughout the film.
His only redeeming characteristic is his odd— almost per
verse— attachment to the strong man and even this goes by the
wayside when he decides to let the gorilla escape and kill his
friend. Less obvious is the strongman whose difference is
marked only by his simple-mindedness and stupid, hulking bulk.
Stranger than either is Chaney's Echo, an outwardly normal
human being who literally chooses to become a kind of freak by
turning himself into kindly Mrs. O'Grady. It is this sort of
willful freakishness that sets Browning's work apart from that
of James Whale. Whale empathised with his characters who did
not fit into traditional patterns of normalcy, Browning revels
in them. Whale's characters represent something more profound
and important than themselves, Browning's are simply different
for their own sake (the major exception being the characters
in Freaks), or they are motivated by their difference through
circumstances and a desire for revenge. More often than not,
Browning's characters are off on an elaborate con game.
Browning's preoccupation with characters whose main claim

lies in their being extraordinary con men out to "fool the
suckers" is perhaps more unsettling than his sado-masochistic
fascination with physical deformities and mental aberrations.
In The Unholy Three nearly all the characters (save for the
lifeless and uninteresting overripe male ingenue) are not only
conning the world at large, they are constantly conning each
other in ever more involved schemes. Only Chaney and Mae Busch
are shown to have a code of honor about these con games.
Chaney is properly horrified when his unholier henchmen murder
(and then boast and laugh about the act) a robbery victim,
while Busch can't bring herself to hold out on Chaney
concerning a stolen watch. (Chaney's response to the affair of
the watch— "I'm glad you done that, Rosie. Money got that way
never does you no good"— clearly indicates a warped moral tone
suggesting that a sucker gets only what he deserves, while a
con man like himself should be treated with greater respect.)

It is Busch's adherence to this Browning "code of honor" that
earns her freedom from Chaney to go with the man she loves,
despite her deal to stick by the ventriloquist if he'll save
Hector. Having honored her bargain is sufficient for both
Chaney and Browning, but only because that bargain was made by
one con artist to another. (What is hard to swallow— as is
often the case with Browning— is Busch's devotion to Hector, a
classic sucker if ever there was one, in whom Browning himself
obviously has no interest beyond purposes of the plot.) The
thing that is so disturbing about this attitude isn't its
moral ambiguity, rather it is the suspicion that Browning
views himself as a great con man and his audience as the
suckers who are to be fooled. This suspicion becomes even
harder to shake in subsequent films.
Despite its legendary status almost everything about

Browning's version of The Unholy Three pales next to Jack
Conway's remake. True, the remake is an almost identical copy
of the Browning original, but it moves much more smoothly and
is altogether more involving. The careful introduction of
Chaney's pet gorilla (a more effective man in an ape suit
approach than in the silent) makes the ending less disjointed,
and Chaney's accidental lowering of his voice while in drag on
the witness stand is better drama than his confession in the
silent, while his incarceration for his crimes at the film's
fade-out is certainly more believable than Browning's facile
title about the law being "kind" and letting the character go
free. Plus, the mere fact that the film is a talkie plays in
its favor since Mrs. O'Grady's "talking" parrots are a much
more convincing device with sound as opposed to the jarring
and ridiculous cartoon balloon titles Browning used.
Somewhat better made but altogether less interesting is

The Black Bird, a still Browningesque tale of the underworld
with Chaney as a notorious gangland figure known as "The Black
Bird," who masquerades as a crippled mission house keeper
known as "The Bishop" (in this the film is similar to Wallace
Fox's Bela Lugosi Monogram opus, Bowery at Midnight). All of
the major Browning-Chaney obsessions are here— from the
admiration for underworld figures to the two-dimensional
(almost satirical) romantic leads to the presentation of man
reduced to the level of an animal ("The Black Bird") to the
mocking of the suckers. Indeed, The Black Bird is one of the
duo’s most incisive and contemptuous indictments of the bulk
of humanity as suckers. When "The Black Bird" meets his end,
he dies as "The Bishop" repeatedly muttering, "I'm foolin'
'em, I'm foolin' 'em." So well does his ruse succeed that a
derelict remarks, "God will be good to you, Bishop, because
you were good to us." Even in death a Browning-Chaney hero has
it over the suckers. Despite its obvious borrowings from The
Unholy Three, The Black Bird lacks that film's macabre
undercurrents and is closer in spirit to Browning's more
straightforward (to the extent that any Browning work can be
called straightforward) gangland drama, Outside the Law.
If The Black Bird looks backwards to Outside the Law and

The Unholy Three, then The Road to Manadalay, while still a
lesser work, looks ahead to one of Browning's most perverse
Chaney vehicles, West of Zanzibar. In the main the film is a
rather trite father love drama with Chaney stoically proving
his basic decency by attempting to prevent the marriage of his
daughter to one of his underworld confederates. Apart from a
somewhat startling make-up (one eye blinded by a cataract--an
effect achieved with, of all things, the white of an egg),
Chaney's role as Singapore Joe is pretty much stock good-bad
man stuff complete with the standard romantic view of the
gangster figure so beloved by Hollywood and elevated to near
worship by Browning. As is common in films of this type— the
self-sacrificing father of whose identity the daughter (so
virtuous that she works in a store selling religious ephem
era— a touch that may or may not be intended as satirical) is
unaware— neither the motivations, nor the father's devotion
are wholly believable, and Browning's world view is consider
ably too complex to successfully encompass the "blood-is-
thicker-than-water" sentiment and have us swallow it whole.
The long lost London After Midnight may well be the

quintessential Browning-Chaney vehicle if only because here
the pair have dropped the mask entirely. No longer is the
viewer in on the game, but rather he is being duped along with
the suckers in the film. Having Chaney play both Burke the
hypnotist and the film's "vampire" (the role was split between
Lionel Barrymore and Bela Lugosi in Browning's talkie remake,
Mark of the Vampire) is only partly a conceit. True, the story
is of the type where a wholly preposterous rational explana
tion is used to soften the material for an audience it was
thought would not accept a supernatural one, but if this is
the only reason for such a conclusion why did Browning retain
the concept in his post-Dracula remake when it was known that
an audience could and would accept the supernatural? Once the
stunt of having Chaney surprise the audience by revealing
himself as the bogus vampire was gone there could be little
value in holding onto the amazingly convoluted explanation
that the whole affair had been an absurdly involved ruse to

trick a murderer into re-enacting his crime— that is unless
Browning could no longer resist expressing his own contempt
for his audience. Both London After Midnight and Mark of the
Vampire for all their atmosphere are basically masterful con
games played on the viewer as much as the characters of the
film. With another filmmaker this might be taken as a playful
game, but Browning's general humorlessness makes this
conclusion untenable— and makes the man one of the most
dubiously intentioned of all filmmakers.
The Browning-Chaney perversity reached its peak in The

Unknown, a masterpiece of "sick" filmmaking without ever being
quite a masterpiece itself. There are enough kinks, quirks,
and generally unwholesome elements in this outing for a dozen
films. This round the pair go the idea of fooling the suckers
one better— the con-man is here so adept at his game that he
fools himself, thereby becoming one of the contemptible
suckers. Chaney plays Alonzo, an "armless wonder" performing a
knife throwing act (with his feet) in a circus. Not too
surprisingly given the filmmaker and star, the armless act is
a blind, affording Chaney the chance to commit various and
sundry burglaries without suspicion (the scheme is only
slightly less mad than the one in The Unholy Three). This
time, however, Chaney is also covering up an actual deformity
(a weird double thumb) with his act. Moreover, his armless
status gives him an edge with his knife-throwing partner,
Estrellita (Joan Crawford), since this odd young lady has
developed an aversion to men's arms. Nothing in the dialogue
actually explains the source of this particular problem,
though the woman does complain of being perpetually mauled and
groped— something most attractive women manage to deal with
without becoming Browning neurotics in the bargain. As usual,
Chaney is taken for something he is not by the characters of
the film. Not only is his armless state taken at face value by
everyone concerned, but his obvious mental imbalance and
tendency to double cross just about anyone goes unnoticed. The
irony here is that his advice for strongman Malabar (the
handsome but far from muscle-bound Norman Kerry) in that
gentleman's pursuit of Estrellita (to take her in his arms),
while designed to put the fellow out of the running for her
affections, turns out to ultimately win the girl for Chaney's
rival! While this inadvertently good advice is working its
spell, Chaney retires to a hospital where he blackmails a
surgeon into amputating his arms so he can both marry
Estrellita and avoid capture as the man who strangled her
abusive father. For once, the con-man has fallen for his own
pitch and become that which all along he had been fooling
others into believing him to be— and, to make him the ultimate
sucker, the gesture is for nothing since he no sooner returns
than his lady love announces her intentions of marrying
Malabar. Somewhat anti-climactically Chaney then attempts to
have Malabar torn apart by wild horses only to be trampled to
death himself while saving Estrellita from this fate.
In many ways, The Unknown is the best of the extant

Browning-Chaney collaborations, marred only by the director's
penchant for relatively boring compositions, immobile
camerawork, and a tendency to rely too heavily on the
plasticity of Chaney's face to work its emotional pull on an
audience. The best of Browning a£ a filmmaker (not as an
obsessive using film to revel in his obsessions) lies in the
undeniable atmosphere he can sometimes generate and that
atmosphere calls for a more unusual setting than The Unknown
provides. Browning's most stunning achievements usually lie in
the queasiness he creates by means of touches and subtle
atmospherics. While we may marvel at the sheer perversity of
The Unknown the film itself is devoid of the little moments
provided in films like Dracula and Mark of the Vampire by
Browning's often arbitrary insertions of shots of crawling
predatory animal life. Nor does it offer the truly ghostly
feel of the single glimpse of a wholly unexplained borzoi
wandering through the foggy background during a nocturnal
journey to the vampires' crypt in Mark of the Vampire. The
Browning-Chaney film that comes closest to delivering this
kind of frisson is West of Zanzibar.
Nearly as perverse as The Unknown, West of Zanzibar is a

far more atmospheric work due in no small part to its other
worldly jungle locale— a locale Browning underscores with
truly skin-crawling inserts of more than usually repulsive
(rather than merely being wet, the animals are crawling
through mud and slime) reptile life with which this world
teems. The story is a revenge affair (no more believable than
average within the Browning-Chaney formula) with a peculiarly
sick and ironic twist that works again to turn the Chaney
protagonist into the sucker victim of his own con. When
Chaney's wife supposedly runs off with Lionel Barrymore (who
in the process of stealing the woman manages to break Chaney's
back, leaving him a cripple) only to return home dying with a
young child, Chaney concludes that the child is Barrymore's
and concocts a typically convoluted revenge scheme. Taking the
child under his "protection" he parcels her off to be raised
in an African brothel until she reaches adulthood at which
point he has her brought to him in his newfound jungle kingdom

where he controls the natives with conjuring tricks they take
for magic (even here the Browning-Chaney fascination with the
con game is given free reign). Upon her arrival Chaney begins
the process of totally degrading the girl until she is little
better than a wild animal. Not only are her attempts at escape
fruitless, but Chaney dangles the hope of reuniting her with
her father at every opportunity. In order to do this he
continually "diverts" Barrymore's shipments of ivory until his
old enemy comes calling to find out what the game is. Having
thus brought the supposed father and daughter together,
Chaney's plan is to kill the man so that the girl— by native
custom— will be burned alive on his funeral pyre! In the
meantime, though, the girl has found regeneration in the arms
of an alcohol-soaked doctor (Warner Baxter) for whom she has
also been a salvation (the romance here is better than usual
in Browning's work with both characters having some depth and
substance). More, Barrymore reveals that the girl is actually
Chaney's own daughter. Unfortunately, this news arrives too
late to prevent Barrymore's murder and Chaney is forced to
attempt to trick the natives with a disappearing cabinet in
order to save his daughter's life. This time, however, his
trick fails to impress the chief ("No believe") and he is
himself burned alive while the doctor spirits the girl (still
ignorant of her parentage) away to a presumably new life of
happiness.
Strangely, for all its basically unwholesome atmosphere,

West of Zanzibar emerges as one of Browning's more likable and
warm creations, and its more outrageous aspects pale in
comparison with William Cowan's talkie remake, Kongo (1932).
Chaney may have one scene where he hugs a chimpanzee, but in
the remake Walter Huston sleeps in a weird loft with such a
beast that acts almost as his alter ego, while Baxter's
alcoholism is transformed into Conrad Nagel’s addiction to
some esoteric native drug, the effects of which he is purified
of by going through cold turkey withdrawal while plunged into
a swamp so the leeches will draw the poison from his system!
For once, someone outdid Browning and Chaney in terms of sheer
weirdness of detail, though, without their obsessive vision,
the strangeness of Kongo never seems quite so disturbing as
that of West of Zanzibar.
The final Browning-Chaney offering, Where East Is East, is

more in line with The Road to Mandalay, emerging as a
decidedly lesser work in which the obsessive quality of the
duo's most intense collaborations is unsatisfyingly replaced
by the sheer mechanics of those obsessions. Chaney plays Tiger

Haynes, a man driven to a Browning-styled revenge scheme when
(in a characteristically "unnatural" move) his daughter's
bridegroom is subjected to the advances of the girl's mother,
who wants the young man for herself! The storyline is
sufficiently odd for a Browning-Chaney film, but it seems
deliberately so and the plot device of betrayal was wearing
thin. What Browning and Chaney rather than Browning and Lugosi
would have made of Dracula— quite a different story than their
usual— is anybody's guess, though it is difficult to imagine
Chaney for all his versatility in the title role.
Unique and fascinating as they are, the Browning-Chaney

films too often fail as drama and almost invariably fall short
in terms of stylishness to completely convince the viewer of
their actual artistic merit. They are important works, not in
the least because they represent the first time an attempt was
made to create wh'at can be termed a series of horror— or at
least horrific— films around both a star (or star-director
combination) and a theme, even though the films themselves do
not tell a continuing story. As such, they are worthy of
serious consideration regardless of any reservations we might
have in terms of their individual quality.
The Unholy Three. 1925* MGM. Producer: Tod Browning. Screen

play: Waldemar Young. Story: Tod Robbins. Photography: David
Kesson. Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Joseph Wright. Editor:
Daniel Gray. Director: Tod Browning.
Players: Lon Chaney, Mae Busch, Matt Moore, Victor McLaglen,

Harry Earles, Harry Betz, Edward Connelly, William Humphreys.
7 reels.
The Black Bird. 1926. MGM. Screenplay: Waldemar Young. Story:

Tod Browning. Photography: Percy Hilburn. Editor: Errol
Taggart. Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Arnold Gillespie.
Director: Tod Browning.
Players: Lon Chaney, Renee Adoree, Doris Lloyd, Owen Moore,

Lionel Belmore. 7 reels.
The Road to Mandalay. 1926. MGM. Screenplay: Elliott Clawson.

Story: Tod Browning, Herman Mankiewicz. Photography: Merritt
Gerstad. Editor: Errol Taggart. Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons,
Arnold Gillespie. Director: Tod Browning.
Players: Lon Chaney, Lois Moran, Owen Moore, Henry B.

Walthall, Kamiyama Sojin, John George. 7 reels.
London After Midnight. 1927* MGM. Screenplay: Waldemar Young.

Story: Tod Browning. Photography: Merritt Gerstad. Editor:
Harry Reynolds. Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Arnold
Gillespie. Director: Tod Browning.
Players: Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall, Percy

Williams, Conrad Nagel, Polly Moran. 7 reels.
The Unknown. 1927* MGM. Screenplay: Waldemar Young. Story: Tod

Browning. Photography: Merritt Gerstad. Editors: Harry
Reynolds, Errol Taggart. Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons,
Richard Day. Director: Tod Browning.
Players: Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Norman Kerry, Nick de

Ruiz, John George. 6 reels.
West of Zanzibar. 1928. MGM. Screenplay: Elliott Clawson,

Waldemar Young. Story: Chester De Vonde, Kilbourne Gordon.
Photography: Percy Hilburn. Editor: Harry Reynolds. Art
Direction: Cedric Gibbons. Director: Tod Browning.
Players: Lon Chaney, Lionel Barrymore, Mary Nolan, Warner

Baxter, Roscoe Ward, Kalla Pasha. 7 reels.
Where East Is East. 1929* MGM. Producer: Tod Browning. Screen

play: Waldemar Young, Richard Schayer. Story: Tod Browning,
Sinclair Drago. Photography: Henry Sharp. Editor: Harry
Reynolds. Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons. Director: Tod
Browning.
Players: Lon Chaney, Lupe Velez, Estelle Taylor, Lloyd Hughes,

Louis Stern. 7 reels.
THE WARNER OLAND FU MANCHU FILMS
The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929)

The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu (1930)
Paramount on Parade (1930)
Daughter of the Dragon (1931)
Venerable bewhiskered grandfather of horror film series in

the sense of a continuing storyline, the long neglected Oland
Fu Manchu pictures are more blood and thunder melodrama than
outright horror with Fu portrayed in a much less outrageous
fashion than one finds in Karloff's 1932 impersonation of Sax
Rohmer's Oriental arch-fiend. Moreover, the stories of the
films boast precious little variation, so that the feeling is
less of three different films in a series (discounting the
Paramount on Parade skit) than one of the same film three
times. Similarly, the first two films being made at the dawn
of sound, they tend to creak a little at the joints. These
reservations noted, the Fu Manchu films nonetheless have
several things going for them— a certain visual grandeur, a
deliciously theatrical tone, screenplays that don't know the
meaning of restraint, and Warner Oland's insidious Dr. Fu (as
well as O.P. Heggie’s impression of Clive Brook as Sherlock
Holmes in his portrayal of Nayland Smith in the first two
films).
To understand just how dated the films are one need only
look at the opening of The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, which
opens with a remarkably cumbersome barrage of explanatory
titles— "China— 1900— the Boxer Uprising," "For the first time
in history, nine nations united against a common enemy, The
Boxers— 'Society of Harmonious Fists,'" and "One after another
the white defenses of Peking fell— the British Legation became
the last stronghold against the Oriental Horde." Indeed, it
seems for the moment as if this is going to be one of the best
movies the viewer has ever read! Fortunately, the brief
depiction of the uprising itself is surprisingly elaborate,
13
though marred by typical early talkie sound effects that sound

as if someone fell into the percussion section of an orchestra
pit. In the midst of all this we find the kindly, benevolent
Dr. Fu Manchu, "friend of the white man," who claims his home
safe from any attack since "even the coolies in the street
know that I am dedicating my life to mankind." This proves not
to be the case when a stray British shell whizzes into his
sanctum sanctorum killing his wife and child, quickly turning
Fu into the evil genius we all know and love. Concocting a
long range revenge scheme, Fu decides that the white child,
Lia Elthamm left in his care "shall be the means of my
vengeance."
Jumping ahead to 1920s London (via explanatory title, of

course), the film soon becomes a parade of Fu's attempts to
dispose of the Petrie family— and Nayland Smith's ("the
greatest criminologist alive") attempts to thwart the Doctor.
Fu does manage to dispatch General Petrie (Charles A.
Stevenson) with a dose of poison gas at the old boy's 80th
birthday party, but then Smith takes charge and things become
more difficult for the villain in a series of serial-like
encounters between the two. The delight of all this lies in
the outrageous verbal sparring of the pair, which in itself
often leads to momentary disaster for one or the other. It is,
for example, mostly through sheer verbosity that Fu makes his
first escape from Smith, calling out, "Sorry to disappoint
you, Smith, but perhaps we'll meet again! I have many hiding
places!"
A great deal of the action takes place at an old dark

castle, Redmoat Grange, to which Smith packs off the remaining
Petries— Sir John (Claude King) and his son, Dr. Jack Petrie
(Neil Hamilton) in an attempt to keep them out of Fu's reach.
It isn't an especially successful attempt, though, when their
chauffeur is lost to Fu on their way to the place, not to
mention the fact that Lia (now grown into an unbelievably
awkward Jean Arthur and in love with the youngest Petrie) is
under Fu's hypnotic control. "Better for them they had a cobra
in their midst than that girl," enthuses Fu. Things quickly
become very wild and woolly indeed with lights going out,
attempted murders, disappearing heroines, and comic relief
William Austin asking his dog, "Phyllis, do you think I'll
ever live to eat tomorrow's marmalade?" Servants vanish, phone
lines are cut, Lia is hypnotized into stabbing Sir John Petrie
(her dagger finding its mark in a mummy substituted by Smith),
Fu disposes of Sir John, and Lia and Jack end up in Fu's
clutches.
It is in the last section that the film truly catches fire

in the verbal duels of Fu and Smith. Failing in his attempts
to hypnotize the girl into murdering Jack ("I congratulate
you— and you, too, Doctor, for your prodigious mental victory!
I think he would rather die by your hand than to suffer the
death of a thousand deaths!”), Fu dashes all hope of their
escape. "I'm afraid my somewhat weird and Oriental methods
have misled your Occidental mind into believing this is
nothing but a gigantic melodrama in which the detective's
arrival at the last moment produces the happy ending. Don't
deny it— I can see by your face it is so. Permit me to settle
that idea once and for all," gloats Fu, revealing that he has
also kidnapped Smith. "As you can see, you can scarcely expect
the usual ending," observes Fu. What Fu has not reckoned with
is the devotion of his servant, Fai Lu (Evelyn Selbie), to the
girl she has raised. Fai Lu replaces Smith with one of Fu's
henchmen and a henchman for Smith, turning the tables on Fu
Manchu. Having lost the battle, Fu downs a cup of his poisoned
"guest tea" and expires, admitting to Smith, "After all,
Inspector, our story ends in the usual way."
Without being an especially good film, The Mysterious Dr.

Fu Manchu does manage to be consistently entertaining with its
oversized performances and gigantic sets (the sets are an
interesting forerunner of those used by director Rowland V.
Lee in his masterpiece, Son of Frankenstein [1939])• Through
out the picture Oland is never less than fascinating, even
when required to spout some pretty unlikely dialogue along the
lines of, "Gods of my ancestors, I have been blind! These
whites are barbarians! Devils! Fiends! They have slain my
lotus blossom! They have slain my little son— blood of my
blood! Hear me, great gods of ray race! Hear me! I swear by the
emblem of the House of Fu that I shall wipe out the stain with
the lives of the foreign devils, father and son, to the third
generation!" When the dialogue is good— as in his exchanges
with Heggie— Oland rises to the occasion. "I tell you this
maniac has caused the death of a score of men," claims Heggie
at one point. "Fourteen to be exact," corrects Oland.
Generally speaking, Oland has the last word, as in their final
encounter where he gloats over the bound and gagged Heggie,
chivalrously assuring him, "As a matter of courtesy so that no
one will know I was the victor and you the vanquished, I
assure you that your body, if it ±s_ found, will be quite
unrecognizable." Beyond question, it's a showcase for Oland
and he seizes it with both hands.
Slightly better made is The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, which

is little more than a continuation of the first film. At least

the overwhelming run of explanatory titles from the first film
are here turned into a more manageable (but no less
expository) newspaper interview given by Nayland Smith
(Heggie) at F u ’s funeral, which starts the film. Not too
surprisingly, Fu isn't dead at all and pops out of a trap door
in his coffin as soon as the mourners have departed,
commenting, "As nice a funeral as I could wish for,” before
getting down to business. "And now, Chang, we have work to
do," he informs a sidekick (Tetsu Komai) and sets off to
continue his attacks on the last of the Petries.
Fu's game plan involves exacting revenge during Jack

(Hamilton) and Lia's (Arthur) wedding, which is being held at
Lady Agatha's (Evelyn Hall) country house (a bit less
impressively sinister than Redmoat Grange, but still very much
in the Rowland V. Lee mold with the overbearing architecture
pressing down on the players). "Although they have not seen
fit to send me an invitation, I shall be an interested— though
invisible— guest," chortles Fu, who appears out of a cupboard
during the ceremony to dispatch Fai Lu and alert them of his
presence. This action does put a danper on the festive
occasion, and soon the house is completely under siege with Fu
kidnapping Jack and Lady Agatha. The latter is a most
unreasonable "guest," who thinks nothing of telling Fu exactly
what's on her mind— "What do you mean by carrying on in this
fashion? Frightening women half out of their wits and making a
game of murder!" She even goes so far as to state, "If you
knew what's good for you, Dr. Fu, you'd give up this melodra
matic business and get back to China!" This is too much for
Fu, who good-naturedly gags her so that he may have the last
word— "I quite agree with you. I shall look forward to
continuing our discussion at some other time." His good humor
is shortlived, though, when it turns out that the kidnapped
Petrie is in reality Nayland Smith. "Fool! Imbecile! You have
brought the wrong man!" rages Fu, who then excuses the blunder
to Smith with an apologetic remark about the "servant
problem!" "Did my resurrection puzzle you?" inquires Fu.
"Exceedingly— you see, I attended your funeral," explains
Smith. "I was deeply touched. I promise you I will return the
compliment," Fu assures him before explaining the nature of
the "poison" he took that produced the semblance of
death— something he had previously used on numerous victims.
"The beauty of it is that apparently they die. Then they awake
after three days to find themselves in a coffin— buried alive!
Then they really die. The thought of inflicting two deaths on
a victim delights my sense of humor," confesses Fu.
A plot to kill Smith's mind with yet another mysterious

potion (its effect demonstrated on the inept kidnapper— "The
potion paralyzes the brain immediately and very soon he will
be completely demented!") fails when Smith summons help by
firing a flare from his trick cigar case up the chimney.
However, a wounded Fu ("I am only slightly wounded,
Inspector— you see, it is not the end of the story, only the
end of a chapter!") makes off with Lia, whom he subjects to
the potion in order to force Petrie to operate on him and
remove the bullet! Ultimately Fu holds the three at bay with a
hand grenade that he threatens to detonate unless Smith will
commit suicide. Rather foolishly, Fu opens the doors to the
river— in order to dispose of the grenade when Smith
acquiesces--and Smith seizes the opportunity to send the arch
villain to a watery grave. "It's all over, Petrie. There are
no more chapters," comments Smith with unwarranted assurance
under the circumstances.
In truth, there are two more chapters to the Oland series,

but there aren't really any more full-fledged stories. Lee
directed Oland in a skit called "Murder Will Out" for the
revue film, Paramount on Parade. This curio from the early
sound era is difficult to judge as a film since much of its
original running time was made up of Technicolor footage that
is no longer known to exist, making the film shy of 34 minutes
of screen time in the current prints. "Murder Will Out" was
fortunately shot in black and white and is part of the extant
version. This fanciful sketch pits Fu against Paramount's
primary screen detectives of the era, Clive Brook's Sherlock
Holmes, William Powell's Philo Vance, and Eugene Pallette's
Sergeant Heath from the Powell-Vance series. Despite the usual
Lee trappings, the major point of interest here lies in the
very on-target satire of that most irritating convention of
detective fiction— the amateur sleuth's need to show up the
official representatives of the law. When the scene opens we
find Fu standing over a man he has just stabbed and shot. It
seems the unfortunate victim "doubted I was a murderer, so I
killed the disbeliever," or so Fu tells Sgt. Heath, who
naturally prepares to arrest the self-confessed miscreant. At
this moment Philo Vance arrives (in a gliding mummy case!)
determined to eliminate any other suspects. "When Fu Manchu is
pleased to commit a murder, there are no other suspects,"
beams Fu. "There must be other suspects. There are always
other suspects," insists Vance, ultimately deciding, "If
necessary, I shall make other suspects." With this Sherlock
Holmes arrives to "deduce," "There's a murdered man in this
room— there are four men in this room, one of whom does not
move. He is obviously not asleep since if he were asleep there
would be riveters at work next door, which there are not. As
he is not asleep, he is obviously murdered." Vance may want
suspects, but Holmes is off on a tangent of his own concerning
non-existent pearls that either are or aren't missing. "White
devils! Am I to be arrested or not?" erupts Fu. When he learns
that this obvious and easy solution isn't flashy enough for
the detectives, he has Heath uncuff him and he shoots both
Holmes and Vance dead. "That's just dandy, Fu!" beams the
sergeant, who cuffs the doctor again. "I had to do it— it was
the only way I could convince them that I was a murderer,"
confesses Fu, who then releases himself from Heath's
handcuffs, dumps the corpses through a trap door, and, most
shockingly, literally flies away like an oversized Oriental
butterfly. Hardly great, the little scene is still a pleasant
footnote to the Fu Manchu series.
More seriously intended is the final entry in the series,

Lloyd Corrigan's Laughter of the Dragon. Corrigan certainly
had the credentials for the project, since he had been
involved on the scripts for the first two films, and while he
lacks Lee's sense of architecture he keeps the film moving at
a good clip. Unfortunately, the film is only partly a Fu
Manchu entry, concerning itself mostly with his daughter's
efforts to finish his revenge scheme for her late father. In
the film's favor are the early scenes with Fu, which are just
as agreeably overdone as those in the first films.
Again, the film opens with a seemingly endless array of

explanatory titles, most of which recap the action of the
first films. These also make the bold assertion that 20 years
have elapsed since the previous entry, thereby excusing the
absence of series regulars like Heggie, Arthur, Hamilton, and
Austin. Somehow or other, Arthur and Hamilton have aged
(rather drastically) into Holmes Herbert and Nella Walker, and
they have produced a son, Ronald,played with his usual
overintensity by Bramwell Fletcher, who has a rather pallid
love interest in Frances Dade's Joan Marshall, as well as a
far more exotic one in star Anna May Wong's Princess Ling Moy,
who, to his ill fortune, also happens to be the daughter of
Dr. Fu Manchu. So as to keep things moving Nayland Smith has
become ever-dependable Lawrence Grant as Sir Basil Courtney.
In addition, he has an Oriental detective sidekick in Sessue
Hayakawa's Ah Kee. To round things off the film even offers a
fey William Austin clone in the person of Harold Minjir.
For some obscure reason, Fu has laid low for 20 years

before exacting his revenge on the third generation of the
Petries, during which time he seems also to have decided to
off the fourth generation for the hell of it. Ah Kee brings
this startling news to Sir Basil, who will have none of it,
assuring his unofficial assistant that Fu is dead. No sooner
does he learn otherwise than who should show up at Dr.
Petrie's side than the vengeful doctor himself. "Fu Manchu
coming here from the grave!" intones Petrie upon receiving the
doctor's signature dragon in the post. "I am here, Doctor,"
announces Fu stepping out of the shadows. "May I sit down? My
advanced years, you see," volunteers Fu conversationally,
explaining, "in the 20 years I have fought to live, the
thought of killing you and your son has been my dearest nurse.
I have used .my time to perfect a most ingenious death for you
both." Trying to put an end to this, Petrie attempts to shoot
Fu, but the gun is empty. "My first precaution— naturally,"
smiles Fu, who itturns out has already infected Petrie with
one of his obscure mind control poisons that will cause death
at any sharp sound. "Ah! You feel the atrophy of the throat
muscles? A unique poison has been mixed in your tobacco--a
most mischievous formula," gloats Fu, who then proceeds to
parade Petrie out into the hallway for a showy display in
front of the entire household. Disposing of Sir John, Fu then
attempts to do in Ronald Petrie, but is shot by Ah Kee in the
process of throwing a knife. Being the clever devil that he
is, though, Fumanages an escape to have a quick meeting with
his daughter, theexotic dancer Ling Moy, before he expires
from Ah Kee's bullet.
Just where this daughter came from is anybody's guess,

since no mention was made of her existence in the previous
films. In any case, it is she who takes up the torch when Fu
is gathered to his ancestors. Even as he is dying Fu's
insidious brain still functions, coming up with a remarkably
convoluted scheme to be shot down while apparently in the act
of murdering Ling Moy, thereby removing all suspicion from her
and earning her the sympathy of the Petrie family! Alas,
interest in the film flags considerably after Fu's death. It
isn't that the remainder of Daughter of the Dragon is bad as
such, only that the fun has gone out of the adventure with
Oland out of the game. Moreover, none of what happens— Ronald
Petrie falling for Ling Moy, Ah Kee falling for Ling Moy, Ling
Moy having mixed feelings about her duty, Ling Moy's ultimate
and rather arbitrary death— is all that surprising, making the
last chapter in the saga a little weak in the b_ood and
thunder department. In its favor (in an odd way) is Sessue
Hayakawa's Ah Kee. This has to be one of the most impossibly

mannered, stilted, and unintentionally funny performances
(both physically and in terms of dialogue delivery) in the
history of film.
Creaky and antique as they are, Olandfs Fu Manchu films

are nonetheless the fun works that are undeniably the
precursor to all horror film series in the sound era. Their
own roots are firmly in the silent serial of the pre-cliff-
hanger age, but their influence on film making patterns in the
genre are clearly of greater importance than is casually
assumed in the standard dismissal of the works as stagey early
talkies.
The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. 1929* Paramount. Screenplay:

Frances Ryerson, Lloyd Corrigan, based on the story by Sax
Rohmer. Comedy dialogue: George Marion, Jr. Photography: Harry
Fischbeck. Director: Rowland V. Lee.
Players: Warner Oland, Jean Arthur, Neil Hamilton, O.P.

Heggie, William Austin, Claude King, Charles Stevenson, Noble
Johnson, Evelyn Selbie, Charles Giblyn, Donald MacKenzie,
Lawrence Davidson, Chappell Dossett, Tully Marshall. 80
minutes (Silent version: 7,695 feet).
The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu. 1930. Paramount. Screenplay:

Florence Ryerson, Lloyd Corrigan, based on the story by Sax
Rohmer. Photography: Archie J. Stout. Director: Rowland V.
Lee.
Players: Warner Oland, Jean Arthur, Neil Hamilton, O.P.

Heggie, William Austin, Evelyn Hall, Margaret Fealy, Evelyn
Selbie, Shayle Gardner, David Dunbar, Tetsu Komai, Toyo
Fujita, Ambrose Barker. 71 minutes.
Paramount on Parade. 1930. Paramount. Supervisor: Elsie Janis.

Photography: Harry Fischbeck, Victor Milner. Directors:
Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding, Victor Heerman,
Edwin H. Knopf, Rowland V. Lee, Ernst Lubitsch, Lothar Mendes,
Victor Schertzinger, A. Edward Sutherland, Frank Tuttle.
Players: Iris Adrian, Richard Arlen, Jean Arthur, Mischa Auer,

William Austin, George Bancroft, Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent, Mary
Brian, Clive Brook, Virginia Bruce, Nancy Carroll, Ruth
Chatterton, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Cecil Cunningham,
Leon Errol, Stuart Erwin, Henry Fink, Kay Francis, Skeets
Gallagher, Edmund Goulding, Harry Green, Mitzi Green, Robert

Greig, James Hall, Phillips Holmes, Helen Kane, Dennis King,
Abe Lyman and His Band, Fredric March, Nino Martini, Mitzi
Mayfair, Marion Morgan Dancers, David Newell, Jack Oakie,
Warner Oland, Zelma O'Neal, Eugene Pallette, Joan Peers, Jack
Pennick, William Powell, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Lillian Roth,
Rolfe Sedan, Stanley Smith, Fay Wray. 134 minutes.
Daughter of the Dragon. 1931* Paramount. Screenplay: Lloyd

Corrigan, Monte Katterjohn, Sidney Buchman, based on the
stories by Sax Rohmer. Photography: Victor Milner. Director:
Lloyd Corrigan.
Players: Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Sessue Hayakawa,

Bramwell Fletcher, Frances Dade, Holmes Herbert, Nella Walker,
Nicholas Soussanin, Lawrence Grant, Harold Minjir, E. Alyn
Warren, Harrinhton Reynolds, Tetsu Komai, Ole Chan, Olaf
Hytten. 70 minutes.
THE UNIVERSAL DRACULA FILMS
Dracula (1931)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Son of Dracula (1943)
The pater familias of all Universal horror films, Tod

Browning's Dracula, very nearly didn't make a series at all.
In fact, the studio produced only three films that can
properly be called part of a loosely grouped Dracula series,
and the final installment is really a distant cousin. True,
the undead gent made a few token appearances down the years,
but these were late in the day and incorporated into the
studio's Frankenstein series (which had pretty much become
their Wolfman series, if the truth be told).
From all appearances much of the reason behind this lay

with Dracula himself— Bela Lugosi— who was as disinclined to
generate a Dracula series as James Whale had been with
Frankenstein. Significantly, Lugosi only returned to the role
in 1948 when jobs were few and far between— by then he had to
beg for a part he had held in too high regard to "debase" with
a series. And in the 1930s Lugosi had the power to stymie such
a series simply because, as far as the public were concerned,
he was Count Dracula. When Universal returned to the character
and the story five years later, they so realized this fact
that their sequel left the Count staked, dead, and quickly
cremated. It remained for lesser men to take the liberties
required to resurrect the vampire in the 1940s.
Browning's original film lays claim to being the oldest

motion picture still in general circulation. It is also one of
the most misunderstood of all films because its restrained
horrors were quickly eclipsed by Whale's more stylish and
shocking Frankenstein. As a result the Dracula is often damned
merely because it isn't Frankenstein. Rarely, if at all, is
the film appraised for what it is beyond a strongly held
23
misconception that it is little more than a straight-forward

filming of the Hamilton Deane-John Balderston stage play.
As much as it isn’t Frankenstein (and Browning isn't Whale),
Dracula as a film isn't the play. Indeed, it isn't even a
quirky amalgam of the play and F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922).
It must he remembered that the Deane-Balderston play was

first and foremost designed as a vehicle for Hamilton
Deane— and Deane played not Dracula but Professor Abraham Van
Helsing. The lion's share of the play belongs to Van Helsing.
The good professor (in reality an obsessive egomaniac as
dangerous as the vampire) makes his brusque entrance in Scene
One, takes center stage, starts talking, and rarely shuts up
for the next two hours! Even when Browning's film hits London,
Van Helsing is never allowed this much authority. (Many of the
Professor's cut lines find their way into the more tradition
ally cinematic Dracula's Daughter.) The film has been reworked
in part so that the more intriguing Dracula character takes
center stage. (A change that accounts for the picture's
longevity, too.) This seems less due to a desire to turn
Dracula into a Bela Lugosi vehicle (after all, he wasn't then
a household word and hadn't been first choice for the role)
than it seems a refocusing of the story in Browning terms.
Though retaining the schizophrenic relationship between the
vampire and the professor, Browning is clearly more interested
in the forces at work that control all the characters, but
most particularly Dracula himself.
There is no denying that the film's early scenes in

Transylvania are its most atmospheric, but much of that
atmosphere is used by Browning to establish his approach to
the whole of the film. In a very real sense, Dracula is a
designed film. One might almost call it an architectural film,
for the architecture is the key to its fatalistic concept.
From the first shot of the coach traveling through the
Carpathian mountains, the players are invariably dwarfed into
insignificance by the oppressive size of their surroundings.
(The first line in the film, "Among the rugged peaks that
frown down upon the Borgo Pass are found crumbling castles of
a bygone age," verbalizes this, as does a policeman's later
observation to Dracula, "The fog seems to be closing down a
bit.") Everything in the film literally presses down on the
characters, controlling their actions and thwarting their
freewill. All the buildings in which the film takes place are
gigantic and downright menacing. Dracula is the ultimate
prisoner of this. Lugosi's famous speech, "To die. To be
really dead— that must be glorious. There are far worse things
awaiting man than death," makes this clear, while Browning's
handling of it— cutting to a long shot in which the size of
the opera house takes visual precedence--underscores the full
significance.
What Browning's film is about to one side, the reason for

its continued popularity is undeniably Lugosi. His classic
interpretation of the role of Dracula is virtually beyond
criticism, though much of the otherworldly tone he brings to
the part may well be due to an overfamiliarity with the
material. The legend that he was little more than a trained
parrot reciting lines phonetically is nonsense by the time the
film was made. He had previously appeared in several talkies
(including Browning's truly stagebound The Thirteenth Chair
[1929]) where his presence could scarcely have justified the
trouble of teaching him by rote. His speeches in films like
the earlier Browning work and Victor Fleming's Renegades
(1930) are much more natural and faster than those in Dracula,
so the measured approach to Count Dracula has little or
nothing to do with any language barrier. Whatever the case,
Lugosi's vampire, whether in spite or because of his affected
performance, is a magnificent characterization, unique and
powerful. Certainly no one before or since has had the uncanny
ability to make the simple pronouncement, "I am . .
Dracula," a chilling, memorable, and quotable bit of dialogue.
Ironically, most of Lugosi's most memorable lines in Dracula—
"Listen to them, children of the night! What music they make!"
"The blood is the life," "To die— to be really dead, that must
be glorious. There are far worse things awaiting man than
death"— are unique to the film and owe nothing to the play for
which he was already famous.
The central problem with Dracula as a film has less to do

with any stagebound quality than it has to do with structure—
or lack thereof. The film's opening and the bulk of its
England footage run along in a perfectly acceptable, straight
forward fashion. Unfortunately, once the film finishes with
its exploration of what has become traditional cinematic
vampire convention, the story quite simply and arbitrarily
climaxes. For no reason and without build up or warning, David
Manners' John Harker spots Dwight Frye's Renfield making his
way to the Count's lair, remarking, "That's Renfield. What's
he doing at the Abbey?" With that, the film launches into its
final scene. That scene— particularly Dracula's murder of
Renfield on the stairs (rather stupidly staged and shot so
that Dracula's powerful throttling of the man— actually
lifting him in the air— is almost unnoticeable)— is a good

one, but itmerely happens. Quite clearly the film could have
climaxed at any point prior to this and the only structural
concern for its placement seems one of achieving a feature
length running time.
In addition to the film's own merits and Lugosi, it should

be noted that Dracula also offers a notable gallery of
supporting performances. Dwight Frye as Renfield and Edward
Van Sloan as Van Helsing have drifted into legend almost as
completely as Lugosi's Dracula. Neither offer great
performances, but both are somehow quintessentially their
characters in a manner that transcends conventional aspects of
acting. David Manners, Universal's most wholly likable and
personable hero-in-residence, copes gamely with an almost
impossible role (even more impossible in the play) that calls
on him to be headstrongly anxious to shoot, stab, stake, or
otherwise inflict injury on the vampire while never actually
doing anything. The best thing that can be said about his
performance is that Manners manages to keep it from becoming
purely tiresome— no small accomplishment under the circum
stances. Helen Chandler's turn as Mina Seward is a minor gem
in her overlooked and underrated career. Occasionally she is
defeated by the dialogue, but overall she does right by the
schizophrenically difficult role of a woman caught between
life and death and the attractions of each. That any of these
performances manage to register against Lugosi's towering
Dracula is nothing short of miraculous.
For an early talkie Dracula is surprisingly accomplished

in most areas. While Browning shoots many sequences in rather
long, static takes, this is more of a personal stylistic quirk
than a limitation of the era, since the approach is common to
his silents and later talkies as well. Similarly, the often
decried lack of musical score (save for what would become
Universal's stock use of a bit of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake
under the credits and excerpts from Wagner's Die Meistersinger
and Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony in the opera house) is
also as much Browning as it is the time the film was made.
Moreover, the lack of music beautifully illustrates why the
horror film needed sound to reach its full potential: silence.
With the advent of sound it became possible for a filmmaker to
create a silent sequence that truly was silent and not at the
mercy of a cinema pianist or organist. To appreciate how
important a factor this is, one need only look at the scene
where Lugosi creeps across Lucy's bedroom for the first attack
in eerie total silence and imagine the untold damage that
could be done by an overzealous musical accompanist let loose

with a selection of "mysterioso" themes!
Taking one thing with the other, Dracula is a great film

without ever being a particularly good one. Its merits may
outweigh its flaws, but those merits— Browning's thematic
concerns, Lugosi's performance, historical significance, the
solid production values that marked the "first wave" of horror
at Universal, the unforgettable opening sequences— never quite
come together in a single unit. Rather, it is simply a case of
unconnected brilliance.
Whatever reservations one may have about Dracula, no

reticence is necessary in accepting the thoroughly enjoyable,
professional, and occasionally brilliant sequel, Dracula's
Daughter, once the studio finally got around to taking up the
story. Frequently overlooked due to its lack of a "name"
horror star, this final film from the "golden age" of the
Laemmle regime is one of the most satisfying of the studio's
original dozen horror outings.
Picking up where Dracula left off, Dracula's Daughter

immediately establishes itself as both a worthy successor and
a fine work in its own right. For starters, it is a dark
film— physically, much darker than its parent model—
indicative of the fact that it is going to be a psychological
thriller, a dark drama of the mind, as well as a traditional
horror opus. At the same time, the film sets forth a pleasing
ly rational and believable tone in daring to explore a
perfectly reasonable question most such genre pieces prefer to
side-step— just what are the legal ramifications of driving a
stake through someone's heart? Instead of quietly accepting
the fact and taking Van Helsing's (here called Von Helsing for
no very good reason) actions as heroic, Dracula's Daughter
finds the man quickly under arrest for murder, ("just what
happened to John Harker, Mina, and Dr. Seward from the first
film is never explained.) The vaguely modern (1931) world of
Dracula allowed for no such worries. Here we are firmly in the
specifically modern world of 1936, Von Helsing's almost god
like qualities are all but gone, and even the sympathetic head
of Scotland Yard, Sir Basil Humphrey (Gilbert Emery), can only
conclude, "You have admitted to killing a man in a very
horrible manner— by driving a stake through his heart— and as
head of Scotland Yard, I must warn you that there are only two
courses that can be taken: either to formally charge you with
murder and send you to the gallows, or to have you committed
to an institution for the criminally insane." In many
respects, Dracula*s Daughter comes across as the most modern

of all 30s horror films and might have signalled a second wave
had it not come at the end of an era.
The intelligent modernization of the genre evidenced in

Dracula*s Daughter is responsible for the film presenting us
with unquestionably the most appealing and believable of all
romantic leads in Otto Kruger’s Dr. Jeffrey Garth and
Marguerite Churchill's Janet Blake. Far from being the stock
stalwart hero and absurdly virginal ingenue, these characters
owe a great debt to the then popular screwball comedy. Rather
than having to slog their way through pages of stilted
quasi-Victorian romantic poppycock, the unusually (and
pleasingly so) mature Kruger and Churchill are afforded some
truly amusing scenes of 30s styled bickering, written in such
a way that we sense and accept their mutual devotion without
the first overt reference to that devotion voiced throughout
the film. When first we see Kruger, he's about to set off on a
grouse hunt in Scotland, only to be instantly annoyed by
Churchill's arrival on the scene. "My assistant, Janet Blake,"
he sneers to his friend, explaining, "I left her in London
with strict orders to forget where I'd gone." Even
Churchill's excuse for coming— that Von Helsing has asked him
to represent him in the Dracula murder case (even though
Kruger is a psychiatrist)— does nothing to lighten his put
upon mood. "Just because you're a baronet's daughter, you take
liberties that ordinary secretaries wouldn't think," he
complains. "The ordinary secretary wouldn’t have the
intelligence to think of them," counters Churchill. " "Well,
you're driving. Do you want them to hang the man before we get
there?" asks Kruger as they head back to London. By the time
Churchill finds herself in the girl-in-peril situation near
the end of the film, we fully like and believe in these people
in a way we never could David Manners and Helen Chandler in
Dracula.
In addition to Edward Van Sloan in his last really

significant contribution to the genre, Kruger, and Churchill,
Dracula's Daughter offers a wonderfully blustering turn by
Gilbert Emery, a truly creepy performance by Irving Pichel as
the vampire's familiar, an hysterical send-up of his stock
faithful butler routine from Edgar Norton, and, most
important, a genuinely otherworldly performance by the
strikingly beautiful (and again agreeably mature) Gloria
Holden in the title role. Few horror pictures of the era are
so perfectly cast, despite the lack of a big name among them.
Lambert Hillyer's direction of Garrett Fort’s exceptional

screenplay ("based" very loosely on Bram Stoker's "Dracula's
Guest," a deleted chapter of Dracula) is assured and
atmospheric without being especially fussy or personal. His
handling of the romantic comedy aspects is professional and
brisk enough to pass muster (on the surface at least) as being
on par with such traditional practitioners of the form as
Howard Hawks or Leo McCarey. However, Hillyer is no slouch in
the horror scenes. The sequence where Countess Zaleska
(Dracula's daughter) cremates her father's remains is blessed
with an eerily poetic quality that lingers in the mind as
fully as any of Browning's effects in Dracula. Following on
its heels is a splendid sequence in which Zaleska, thinking
the destruction of Dracula has freed her from the curse of the
family, tries to play a Chopin nocturne, only to have the
effects of vampirism overtake her through the music with the
help of Sandor (Pichel), who insists on undercutting her every
pleasant memory of childhood at twilight. ("From far off the
barking of a dog," recalls Zaleska. "Barking because there are
wolves about," suggests Sandor.) The most famous horror scene
in the film— Zaleska's attack on the down-on-her-luck street
girl Lily (Nan Gray)— is a good one, but its fame probably
stems as much from its marked lesbian overtones as from any
intrinsic merit.
Hillyer's experience in the western genre holds him in

good stead for the film's climax, which manages to be far more
exciting than anything in the Browning film, despite the fact
that here the film falters slightly by dragging in Universal's
stock comic opera gypsies (thereby giving employment to untold
numbers of the Laemmles' poor relations). In a film full of
genuine, intentional laughs the transition to its Transylvan
ian climax is quite apt to produce sniggers of another kind.
Fortunately, the film fully regains its composure in the
encounter between Zaleska and Garth, coming to an extremely
satisfying conclusion. Top flight production values, a
literate script, deft performances, atmospheric direction, and
a very effective musical score, all conspire to produce
probably the best of all horror film sequels apart from Bride
of Frankenstein.
Robert Siodmak's Son of Dracula reintroduced the Count in

1943 in the very unremarkable presence of Lon Chaney, Jr. The
film is very definitely a product of the "New Universal"—
slick, competent, glossy, fast-paced, and somehow lacking.
Even so, Siodmak's film is an often remarkable piece of film—
certainly a singularly odd one.
Cursed with the generally wooden Chaney horribly miscast

as Dracula (the man has difficulty pronouncing simple words
like "virile"), Siodmak created his best effects by minimizing
his main character as often as possible, concentrating instead
on some striking visuals (often positioning Chaney with his
back to the camera) and developing the relationship between
the oddly— but effectively— cast romantic leads, Robert Paige
and Louise Albritton. Routinely, this pair played in cheap
Universal comedies and musicals of the period and their
casting here is something of a surprise, especially with the
studio’s resident damsel in distress, Evelyn Ankers, on hand
in a very subordinate role. Despite strong performances from
J. Edward Bromberg as an ersatz Van Helsing and Frank Craven
as a medical friend of the family, the acting honors in the
film undeniably belong to Paige and Albritton. Neither
portray particularly likable characters, yet one is inescap-
capably drawn to Paige in particular. His devotion to the
strangely morbid Albritton is well realized in a kind of
perverted fairy tale fashion, and his ultimate destruction of
his living dead love carries an obsessive conviction that is
genuinely moving.
Quite the most peculiar thing about Son of Dracula is its

strong link to radio drama. Despite a high quotient of
creative visuals, the film is almost completely comprehensible
from its soundtrack alone. The sense of listening to a radio
play is no doubt enhanced by Hans J. Salter's score with its
heavy reliance on organ music. This is no way detracts from
the film's occasional pleasures, but it does tend to reveal
Siodmak's stunning camera usage— such as the introduction of
Dracula via an elaborate tracking shot— for the window
dressing it basically is.
More curious than actually good, Son of Dracula is an

interesting effort undermined by a weak central performance
that just doesn't make it as a worthy successor to the
classics that precede it.
Dracula. 1931* Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr. Cinematographer:

Karl Freund. Screenplay: Garrett Fort, from the novel by Bram
Stoker and the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston.
Director: Tod Browning.
Players: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight

Frye, Edward Van Sloan, Herbert Bunston, Frances Dade, Charles
Gerrard, Joan Standing, Moon Carroll, Josephine Velez, Michael
Visaroff, Daisy Belmore. 75 minutes.
Dracula* s Daughter. 1936. Producer: E.M. Asher.

Cinematographer: George Robinson. Screenplay: Garrett Fort,
from the story "Dracula’s Guest" by Bram Stoker, suggested by
Oliver Jeffries. Director: Lambert Hillyer.
Players: Otto Kruger, Marguerite Churchill, Gloria Holden,

Edward Van Sloan, Irving Pichel, Gilbert Emery, Nan Gray,
Hedda Hopper, Claude Allister, E.E. Clive, Billy Bevan,
Halliwell Hobbes, Edgar Norton, Douglas Wood, Gordon Hart,
Joseph E. Tozer, Eily Malyon, Fred Walton, Christian Rub,
William von Brincken. 72 minutes.
Son of Dracula. 1943• Producer: Ford Beebe. Cinematographer:

George Robinson. Screenplay: Eric Taylor. Story: Curt Siodmak.
Music: Hans J. Salter. Director: Robert Siodmak.
Players: Lon Chaney, Robert Paige, Louise Albritton, Evelyn

Ankers, Frank Craven, J. Edward Bromberg, Samuel S. Hinds,
Adeline De Walt Reynolds, Patrick Moriarty, Etta McDaniel,
George Irving. 80 minutes.
THE UNIVERSAL FRANKENSTEIN FILMS
Frankenstein (1931)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Son of Frankenstein (1939)
Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf man (1943)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
House of Dracula (1945)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
The most famous, influential, and important of all horror

series, Universal*s Frankenstein films spawned two works of
sheer genius and one of brilliance, as well as one very good
film, three interesting ones, and an often delightful foot
note .
It is tempting— and would not be inapt— to view the first

two films, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, more as
part of the James Whale quartet of horror films than as part
of the Frankenstein series. In fact, they are virtually part
of two series, but, for purposes of organization, we shall
simply put them with the films for which they form the basis
of a continuing saga.
Frankenstein is and always will be a film with a rather

tangled history. Debates still rage as to the exact contribu
tion of director-screenwriter Robert Florey, and the reasons
for Bela Lugosi's departure from the role of the Monster. And
with all the major creative forces involved dead, there seems
no settling the question. However, certain educated guesses
can and should be made.
Historically, we can be sure that the film was in

development by Florey well before James Whale entered the
scene. Whale was Universal's major directorial attraction at
the time, having just helmed their prestigious production of
33
Waterloo Bridge, and was given his choice of available studio

properties. Though not overwhelmed by the prospect of
Frankenstein, he thought it the only thing owned by Universal
that was even slightly interesting. His interest prompted the
studio to award him Florey's project, and since Florey's
contract did not specify which picture he was to make, the
Frenchman found himself out in thecold. Lugosi's departure is
less clear cut. The Whale version is that the director found
him unsuitable. The Lugosi version is that the actor disliked
the mute role (why no one simply cast him as Henry Franken
stein is unclear) and left of his own accord. Most probably
both stories have some truth. Whale (who preferred working
with fellow countrymen where possible) likely did think Lugosi
wrong, while Lugosi took this as a stroke of good luck and
happily moved on to other projects.
Whatever the case, it is hard to imagine Frankenstein as

anything but a James Whale film, and, try as they may,
Florey's admirers cannot make a very convincing argument that
his contribution was anything but minor. Florey's other
works— often flashily brilliant, always eccentric, occasion
ally slightly sick— have none of the range or depth of Whale's
Frankenstein. What Florey provided was a skeletal structure
for the film as it stands— along with one touch (the windmill)
and one plot device (the criminal brain), both of which became
something else again in Whale’s hands.
For Florey the criminal brain had merely been the excuse
for the Monster's murderous tendencies. Whale's film retains
the idea, but makes nothing of it— or so it seems on the
surface. In the film as it stands, none of the mayhem commit
ted by the Monster has any connection to this abnormal brain,
but that brain's very existence in the Monster’s head takes on
a quite different significance, especially in the recently
restored version of the film where Henry's claim to "know what
it means to be_ God" crystallizes much of the point of Whale's
film. Taking this with Whale's central theme of responsibility
and the fact that Henry gave the Monster the "criminal" brain
in the first place, the film's religious allegory is shoved to
the forefront. If Henry is God and that God is responsible for
the Monster being as he is, then mightn't it be a reasonable
extension of that line of thought to presume that the homosex
ual Whale is making a veiled statement on the attitude of
religion toward his sexuality? After all, if the Monster was
made what he is, doesn't the same concept apply to Whale? (in
much the same manner, the Monster as Henry Frankenstein's
alter ego being shut away in the laboratory dungeon once he
becomes inconvenient makes a telling parallel to closeted

homosexuality.) This idea comes to full power inthe scenes in
the windmill (which in Whale's version takes on the sign of
the cross with its blades) where the Monster in a fit of
disgust hurls his creator to the ground. It is possibly the
most chilling rejection of God ever depicted on the screen—
and the most uncomfortable moment in all Whale.
Historically, Frankenstein may be the most important of

all horror films. The ersatz Victorian flavor of Dracula is
nowhere to be found in this work, the first truly modern
horror film. Along with its thematic qualities and bravura
theatrics, Whale's film pioneered much of the horror form in
its unadorned use of shock cutting and shock for shock's sake.
Where Dracula set out to impart a sense of doom and uneas
iness, Frankenstein attempts to lift the audience out of its
collective seat— and it succeeds on every level.
Four years separate Frankenstein from Bride of

Frankenstein, though the film (as The Return of FrankensteinJ
had been under development for some time. Whale had not wanted
to do a follow up film to his original for various reasons,
not the least of which was his apparent— and growing—
antipathy for Karloff, who, so far as he was concerned, was
his own Frankenstein Monster. Realizing that Karloff’s on
screen performance (a performance, it might be added, Whale
fully orchestrated) was going to garner most of the attention,
Whale had taken to "punishing" the actor during the last days
of filming Frankenstein, making the actor repeatedly— and
pointlessly— perform physically difficult scenes. (Karloff’s
own stories of Frankenstein are a little suspect. All the
later philosophizing about his characterization seems very
questionable, and the claim that the drowning of Little Maria
was cut from the release prints at his insistence is utter
nonsense— what recently promoted bit player had that kind of
say-so?) Though he had later worked with Karloff on The Old
Dark House (1932), Whale grew further away from him as
Karloff's own fame and importance had grown. The last thing he
wanted was a repeat of Frankenstein. If he was to do a sequel
film, it would be a sequel on his terms— and that was what
Universal finally gave him with Bride of Frankenstein.
Bride of Frankenstein is one of the true classics of the

genre. More, it is one of those extremely rare horror films
that quite transcends genre boundaries altogether to become
simply a great film. Perhaps this is due to the fact that
Whale never approached a horror film the same way twice. If
Frankenstein was meant to inspire terror and awe, and The Old
Dark House (arguably Whale’s most frightening film) created to
blend horror and humor, and The Invisible Man designed as an
exercise in thrills, comedy, and technique, then Bride of
Frankenstein, Whale's final work in the genre, was the most
amazing amalgam of all. For a horror film, its traditional
horror effects are surprisingly minimal. The film's Whalean
shocks are limited to two scenes— the Monster’s attack on Hans
and his wife at the beginning of the film and his accidental
"attack" on a shepherdess whom he has saved from drowning— and
in both instances Whale undermines and undercuts the horror by
jokingly cutting to (first) a very bored owl and (second) a
sheep crying, "Bah!" It is hard not to assume that these
animals are merely voicing Whale's own feelings about working
in the genre.
In place of horror, Whale fashioned a tale fully as cosmic

in scope as Frankenstein— and many times more polished and
sophisticated. In Bride Whale let his imagination soar, as
well as his penchant for in-jokes and quirky humor. Right
away, he takes the audience in by starting the film in the
midst of a horror film thunderstorm, only to reveal we are not
in a horror film at all, but sharing a cozy evening with Mary
and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron where Mary will tell the rest
of her story (after recounting the events of the first film as
if they came from the novel!). "I feel like telling it
tonight. It's a perfect night for mystery and horror. The air
itself is filled with monsters," enthuses young Mary (Elsa
Lanchester). (Apparently, Whale wanted to go a bit further in
his examination of the Shelley-Byron menage, but the studio
and censors thought otherwise. Perhaps the mere casting of a
woman [Lanchester] married to a homosexual [Charles Laughton]
as Mary was sufficient in itself to those "in the know.")
The anger of Frankenstein here gives way to a more

contemplative outlook. Henry may still be God after a fashion,
but the Monster has very nearly become Jesus Christ and
religion itself is no longer the villain, rather the
perversion of it by mankind is. Once the film moves to its
actual story Whale hits the viewer with a variety of religious
symbolism. The blades on the windmill form a blazing cross,
while a tracking shot across the ruins of the mill passes two
smaller burning "crosses" that collapse as the camera glides
by them. Moreover, the "good" people of the village of
Frankenstein are not just the atmosphere of Frankenstein, they
have become gruesomely guilty parties in the whole affair,
cheering as one of the crosses topples, and generally having a
bloodthirsty grand time. They are given voice and personalized

in the guise of Minnie (Una O ’Connor), who is prone to
spouting such delicious bits of "scientific" esoterica as,
"It's his insides caught at last— insides is always the last
to be consumed," when the flames suddenly blaze up for no
apparent reason. Henry is now less a villain than are those
who wish to torment and destroy his creation because it is
different from themselves.
The shift in the film's outlook on religion is perhaps

most notable in the scenes with O.P. Heggie’s blind hermit
where the Monster finds his first friend. These scenes are
played perfectly straight with Whale limiting the humor to
some charming byplay with the Monster learning such worldly
pleasures as wine and cigars. The full-blown scoring of the
bulk of the film is here given over to simple organ and violin
music, creating a weirdly reverent tone to the proceedings.
Significantly, the blind hermit is the first person to accept
the Monster as human, yet is such an outcast himself that he
views himself as something other than human. "It's very lonely
here," he tells the Monster, adding, "and i t ’s been a long
time since any human being set foot in this hut." The
climactic prayer of the first of the scenes— with Whale fading
the scene but for the glowing crucifix hanging over the pair
at the top of the frame— is an isloated moment of wide-eyed
sincerity from a filmmaker who claimed to have no particular
religious convictions of his own.
Giving the film a total villain in the guise of Ernest

Thesiger's camping and queening Dr. Praetorius was one of
Whale's more typical touches. In Praetorius we can glimpse
bits of a number of offscreen persons, including Whale and
even the Laemmles (what other possible reason could there be
for having Praetorius don a skull cap when he displays his
miniature homonculi than to take a jab at the Jewish Laemmle
clan who, like Praetorius with Henry, were hell-bent on
getting Whale to continue his experiments with the Monster?).
Often viewed (not incorrectly) as the logical extension of
Thesiger's Horace Femm from The Old Dark House, Praetorius is
a complex character in his own right. At once wholly evil, he
is also so humanly charming that he's irresistible. For such a
brilliantly cold scientific man, Praetorius is amazingly vain
and conceited, boasting on different occasions of having an
"only weakness" (gin and cigars), happily taking credit for
teaching the Monster to talk ("Yes, there have been develop
ments since he came to me"), bristling at the slightest
insult, etc. On one level, he is, as he indicates, "the very
devil," which Whale and cinematographer John J, Mescall are at

pains to frequently illustrate, but he is not an unsympathetic
devil. It is, after all, only because the Monster has been
deserted by his God that this devil is able to corrupt him, so
the question of blame becomes a tricky one at best. Perhaps
the worst that can be said about Praetorius is that h e ’s a
terrible opportunist, able to adapt any situation to his own
ends, something that Whale finds amusing and oddly endearing.
As an extension of the homosexuality allegory of Franken

stein, Bride of Frankenstein is the logical culmination of
Whale’s explorations into the self. Despite Henry's climactic
happiness with Elizabeth resurfacing (a last minute change as
is evidenced by shots of Henry perishing in the laboratory
explosion in the final film), Whale here completely jettisons
the homosexual fantasy of all being put right by "the love of
a good woman." Henry lives by the grace of his own creation,
and then only because he has fully accepted his responsibility
in the matter ("But I can't leave them! I can't" protests
Henry when Elizabeth tries to get him to escape with her). The
Monster, on the other hand, learns the same home truth that
Whale has done: there is no ideal woman. True, Whale had
flirted with this in The Invisible M a n , but here he goes
further. The Monster is confronted with a woman quite literal
ly "made for him," and it solves nothing. His decision to
destroy everyone involved, including himself, may be morbid
and unenlightened (after all, this was 1935), but it is also
consistent, logical, dramatically valid, and, most of all,
Whalean, since it smacks of responsibility fulfilled and the
allegorical destruction of the damaging fantasy of the "ideal
woman."
Karloff (the same Karloff, mind, who had four years

earlier supposedly successfully demanded the cutting of the
drowning scene in Frankenstein) had been adamantly opposed to
giving the Monster articulate speech in Bride of Frankenstein.
Fortunately, Whale's power was greater than Karloff's and the
actor's objections were ignored. Four years later when the
series returned with Son of Frankenstein, Karloff’s power was
sufficient to get his wishes, thereby proving what Whale had
known all along--that there really wasn't anywhere to go with
a non-talking Monster. Without question, Karloff's performance
in Son of Frankenstein— save for the one brilliant moment when
he discovers Ygor's (Bela Lugosi) body— is his weakest in the
role, and the film itself is lacking in the personal convic
tion of the Whale works.
This is not to say that Son of Frankenstein is a bad film.

Far, far from it. Under Rowland V. Lee's direction and vision
the film is a visual stunner from start to finish. The sets
for the eternally shifting Castle Frankenstein (a manor house
in the first film, a full-scale castle in the second) have
here been transformed into a Caligariesque jumble of build
ings, walls, stairs, and shadows. In essence, the castle is
the architectural equivalent of Whale's vertiginous camera
angles from Bride. True, Lee's sense of geography is wanting,
since the "abandoned watchtower near the town of Goldstadt"
that had done servive in the earlier films as Henry's
laboratory has— for convenience to the plot— somehow been
transported right next to the castle (that must have been some
explosion at the end of Bride), but this is a minor point
compared to the liberties soon to be taken with the series.
Karloff's performance apart, Son of Frankenstein does

offer a deliciously ripe turn by Basil Rathbone in the title
role, and an absolutely brilliant performance by Bela Lugosi
as the broken-necked blacksmith and part time body snatcher,
Ygor. Ironically, Ygor— the best and most memorable aspect of
the entire film— was originally no more than a small part
designed by the studio to cash in on Lugosi's name, and it is
only because the righteously indignant Lee added to the role
daily that the character as we know it came into being.
The storyline for the film is initself no great shakes.

Basically, there is nothing more tothe filmthan Wolf Von
Frankenstein (Rathbone) coming to claim his inheritance, where
he runs afoul of suspicious (rightly so) townfolk, the
sardonic, one-armed Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill at his most
wonderfully bombastic), Ygor, and, of course, his father's
creation. A Frankenstein to the bone, he cannot resist fooling
around with the damned thing, which miraculously survived
Bride only to fall into a catatonic state when later struck by
lightning. His experiments naturally enough imperil not only
his wife, child, and a good portion of the town, but himself
as well. Here for the first time, the Monster is presented as
truly superhuman. "He cannot die. He cannot be destroyed,"
enthuses Ygor at one point, explaining, "Your father made him
live for always!" This should certainly come as a shock to
Henry and the earlier screenwriters, not to mention Whale who
thought himself rid of the Monster by blowing him up at the
end of Bride. Whatever else the Monster had previously been,
he was never more (nor less) than human. Now, the old boy is
eternal--and a battery of future writers for the series should
have then and there lit candles for screenwriter Willis Cooper
for making their jobs easier.
Lee's sense of humor is nowhere near as downright peculiar

as Whale’s, but it is distinctly of the "sick” variety. Most
of the film's humor derives from Ygor's broken neck (Lee even
freezes the music track dead the better to hear Ygor’s three
raps against the protruding bone on the line, "Nobody can fix
Ygor's neck— it's all right!") and Krogh's missing arm (which
at one point is conveniently used by the Inspector as a kind
of pincushion for the darts in a game he plays with Wolf). Lee
similarly seems to have found something vaguely amusing about
the genre conventions themselves, since it is hard to watch
some of the hidden panel antics of Ygor without the flicker of
a smile, so brazenly are they employed for their sheer "fun"
value. Oddest of all, though, is his retention of one line
that, according to reports from the set, reduced the three
principals and Lee to hysterics take after take. With the
slumbering Monster lying on a crypt, Lugosi has to explain his
relationship with the creature to Rathbone and offers the
classic line, "He's my friend— he does things for me."
Ultimately, everyone seems to have calmed down sufficiently to
labor through this curiously suggestive (and what an image it
conjures, too!) line, but the effect on an audience is apt to
be no less funny than it was to Messrs.Lugosi, Karloff,
Rathbone, and Lee.
The effectiveness of Son of Frankenstein as a classy

entertainment if nothing else has much to do with Frank
Skinner's hastily worked musical score. (Bride owed a good
deal to Franz Waxman’s brilliant score, too, but the film
never rose or fell on its merits, which Son does.) The legend
that the film was scored in a couple weeks prior to its
releaseis borne out bythe film’s trailer, which contains
none of the music from the film, but only a hodge-podge of
themes lifted from Bride. Unfortunately, Skinner's intricate
scoring of Son has been badly blunted over the years owing to
Universal's non-stop re-use of it in S0% of the horror films
from their stable over the next seven years. Taken on its own
in its original housing, it is no small accomplishment.
Son of Frankenstein may have had little new in the way of

plot, but its successor, Ghost of Frankenstein, had little
going for it but an occasionally interesting plot. It was nice
to see Lugosi reprise his Ygor, and the studio's new pretender
to the crownof King of Horror, Lon Chaney, Jr. did offer
something different in his (or director Erie C. Kenton's)
interpretation of the Monster as a wholly mute, and strangely
unsettling, brute with what can only be described as

pedophilic overtones, but the film has something of the
typical 40s Universal programme picture about it. Perhaps it's
the sheer number of stock players, or the recycled score, or
Ralph Bellamy’s somewhat limp hero (after Colin Clive's
unbridled neurosis and Basil Rathbone's flamboyant theatrics,
who wouldn't seem limp?), or the money saving use of doctored
clips from Frankenstein as flashbacks, or some of the
screenplay's more notable curios, but the film justdoesn't
have the staying power of the first three entries. However, it
is still an enjoyable work on a more modest scale— both
intellectually and in terms of production values— than its
predecessors.
For reasons never fully explained (never explained at all,

if it comes to that) the cheery villagers from the ending of
Son have lost all their cheeriness at the onset of Ghost,
having fallen on hard times, which prompts them to blow up the
castle— an ill-advised move, since this merely unleashes the
Monster, who had been blissfully slumbering in the now
(inexplicably) hardened sulphur pit into which Wolf had
knocked him at the end of Son. Just as mysteriously, Ygor
survived the revolver full of bullets pumped into him in the
previous film. "The suphur was good for you! It preserved
you!" decides Ygor upon seeing his dusty and sluggish special
friend emerge from the hardened sulphur. Feeling unwelcome,
the pair trudge off to the village of Visaria (after the
Monster gets a recharging lightning bolt in the neck— never
mind that this was the reason for his comatose state in Son)
to pay a call on Ludwig Frankenstein (Cedric Hardwicke)— "He
has all the secrets of his father who created you. We will
force him to harness the lightning for you!" Not surprisingly,
the odd pair are greeted with no little skepticism by the
locals, despite the fact that the Monster takes a shine to
little Cloestine (Janet Ann Gallow) and retrieves her ball
when some bullies kick it out of her reach. When the villagers
decide they should bludgeon the Monster to death, he reacts in
kind and soon ends up in the local jail awaiting trial.
Summoned to examine this obvious mental case, Ludwig enrages
the Monster no end by claiming to know nothing of him.
Ultimately, Ygor blackmails Ludwig into helping the Monster,
but Ludwig only goes along with this so he can put the
Monster's latest victim's brain into the creature. Alas, Ygor
wants his brain in the Monster's skull ("That would be a
monster indeed!" decides the horrified Ludwig), while the
Monster wants nothing less than Cloestine's brain! Ygor gets
his way with the aid of the unscrupulous and bitter Dr. Bohmer
(Lionel Atwill), only to discover that his blood type and the
Monster’s do not mix, making him a blind, raging beast
(’’Bohmer! You played me a trick! What good is a brain without
eyes to see?”) that blithely trashes everything in sight and
perishes (ha!) in the resulting conflagration.
Convoluted as the film's brain-swapping plotting is,

director Kenton handles it all with a straight face— perhaps
too straight, since he doesn't seem to have any sense of humor
at all, even when Ygor bids the rampaging Monster, "Come away
with me. Nobody will know who did it," following the smashing
of several four inch thick doors and the unceremonious neck
breaking of one of Frankenstein's assistants. No stranger to
the genre (he had made the brilliantly grim Island of Lost
Souls at Paramount back in 1933), Kenton was quite adept at
the form in the main, despite the lack of balancing humor and
the tendency to overuse a favored shot (copped from Rouben
Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1931]) of shadows growing
ever larger on a wall while characters run away from it.
Indeed, Kenton's direction is quite the most distinguishing
thing about the last two entries before the Monster met Abbott
and Costello.
As regressive as Ghost of Frankenstein is, it comes across

like Bride when put alongside Frankenstein Meets the WoIfman,
the most tedious film in the series and just about the longest
72 minutes of film in history. Frankenstein Meets the WoIfman
is only tangentially a Frankenstein film, owing far more to
the freakish success of George Waggner's The Wolf Man (1941 ),
which had catapulted Chaney, Jr. to the status of Universal's
cut-rate Karloff. A good-looking, well-produced picture, The
Wolf Man suffered from a wonderful cast— Claude Rains, Bela
Lugosi, Warren William, Patric Knowles, Ralph Bellamy— given
nothing to do while the bulk of the film was given over to the
delightful Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva the gypsy and, unfortu
nately, Chaney as Larry Talbot. Chaney isn't bad in the role,
but the role itself borders on the impossible. If ever a more
self-pitying, moronic, and morose character graced the screen,
it would be hard to imagine. And in Frankenstein Meets the
WoIfman, the character is even worse.
Playing fast and loose with the studio's already pretty

curious werewolf lore Universal's bizarrely overrated resident
horror screenwriting specialist, Curt Siodmak, resurrected
Chaney's wolfman with nary a blink, despite the fact that he
had been clubbed to death with a silver handled cane at the
end of the first film— a treatment that had proved permanently
fatal to his attacker. No sooner is he hack on the prowl—

treated as a mental case by Patric Knowles’ Dr. Mannering—
than his only thought is geared toward finding a way to die.
Like the Frankenstein Monster before him, Talbot has somehow
(mostly for convenience) become immortal. The role is little
more than a long, ill-tempered wallow in whiny self-pity. What
does one make of a "hero" whose major line of chatter is a a
mantra-like, "I only want to die," and variations on that
monotonous theme, not to mention his curious habit of turning
into an unreasoning monster that somehow always manages to
pause and change into a janitor's suit for his nocturnal
prowlings?
Moreover, the film is a veritable disaster as part of the

Frankenstein saga, owing to post-production tampering. As
conceived and shot, the Monster retained both the ability to
speak and his blindness from the end of Ghost of Frankenstein.
Unfortunately, Siodmak's dialogue for the Monster was
apparently so unwieldy (the few examples cited in Gregory
William Mank's It's Alive! bear this out in spades) that it
was decided to remove it completely. This results in the
spectacle of Bela Lugosi's only stab at playing the once dis
dained role of the Monster being rendered virtually incompre
hensible. What there is of it borders on the fascinating,
since it is clearly thought out along the lines of the Monster
as Ygor. Glimmerings of brilliance— the evil smile when his
strength and sight are restored by Mannering, his hissing
malevolence in the climactic battle with the Wolfman— are to
be found in the portrayal, but the cumulative effect is
impossible to judge as the film stands. No plans have ever
been announced to restore the film to its original form, nor
have there been any hints that the first version's soundtrack
and deleted footage even exist, so all that is left is a tant
alizing prospect unlikely to be fulfilled.
On the plus side, director Roy William Neill does achieve

a nicely brooding look, mostly through his favorite device of
cleverly lighting his scenes through windows in front of which
he tends to stage the film's action. (Particularly fine are
the scenes at Mannering's sanitarium.) The acting is strictly
professional, even if one questions how British Evelen Ankers
from Ghost turned into Ilona Massey here and acquired a
Hungarian accent. Even the frequently irritating Mickey Mouse
scoring of Hans J. Salter is a bonus this round, since it
definitely helps generate the proper mood, especially in the
film's ice caverns sequence, even if Salter's xylophone
scorings often sound like half-baked Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Even in its aborted form Lugosi's Monster had a distinct

personality, which is more than can be said for that of the
actor who next inherited the asphalter's boots and stiff
legged trousers in Erie C. Kenton's House of Frankenstein.
Regardless of the aura of the nostalgia that has adhered
itself to any and everyone associated with the Frankenstein
series over the years, little case can be made for Glenn
Strange’s three turns at the Monster. Not that Strange was
ever given anything much to do in these films with the
creature reduced to a kind of prop lying on an operating table
until the final scene.
Whatever reservations one may have about the reduction of

the Monster and Strange's portrayal of him, there is no doubt
that House of Frankenstein is a vast improvement over its
immediate predecessor. True, the film isn't terribly
cohesive— it plays like three two-reelers strung together— and
the idea of gathering every monster on the Universal lot under
one roof is clumsy (and would have been worse if the original
plan to drag in the Mummy had been followed!), but at least
the film moves and isn't as willfully depressing as Franken
stein Meets the Wolfman had been.
The return of Erie C. Kenton to the director’s chair

undoubtedly helps, as does a strong performance by Boris
Karloff as Dr. Niemann, would-be successor to Frankenstein,
even if there is only the smallest difference between this and
the various mad doctors from his Columbia series. John
Carradine's Dracula— while not on a par with Lugosi's— is a
decided asset, as is an unusually interesting supporting cast
that includes series veteran Atwill along with newcomers Anne
Gwynne, Peter Coe, Sig Ruman, Elena Verdugo, and George Zucco.
Less delightful is J. Carrol Naish as Daniel, a. (not the)
hunchback, who vies with Chaney's Larry Talbot for the morose
self-pity honors. Hans Salter's score starts the film with one
of his best main title pieces, only to plummet into absurdity
in the first scene (horns blaring to match Karloff's every
shake as he throttles a prison guard!) before regaining its
composure and settling into competence at least. Edward T.
Lowe's screenplay mayn't be Nobel Prize material, but it is
better humored than a Siodmak script, even while showing no
reverence for the established conventions of the studio's
folklore. For some esoteric reason, Lowe decided to put a
clause in the silver bullet lore claiming that the bullet has
to be fired by "someone who loves him enough to understand,”
while he (or more probably Siodmak since it was his original
story) took a tip from Lew Landers’ Return of the Vampire
(1945 ) on reviving vampires by unstaking them— a John P.

Fulton special effect that looks like an escapee from an
Invisible Man picture.
This time out the plotline follows Niemann and Daniel as

they escape from prison (thanks to a cleverly scripted
lightning bolt), indulge in a little revenge (getting Dracula
to vampirize Niemann’s old enemy, Sig Ruman), rescue a gypsy
girl (Verdugo), thaw out the Monster (comatose) and the
Wolfman (conscious and not happy about it), return to
Niemann's old stomping grounds to revive the Monster and map
out a campaign of brain switching that makes the cerebrum
swapping in Ghost of Frankenstein seem tame. (Roughly, Niemann
wants to revenge himself by popping the brains of some old
enemies into the Monster and the Wolfman just for kicks, while
putting the Monster's brain in the Wolfman's skull for no
apparent reason, regardless of the fact that Daniel wants to
have his brain in Talbot's head so he can compete romantically
for the gypsy girl! It's enough to make one's own brain spin.
Amusingly, the brain switching music is the same as that used
for the same procedure in Ghost.) None of this ever comes to
pass, though, with Verdugo plugging Chaney and getting killed
herself, Naish trying to kill Karloff, Strange (roused at
last) pitching Naish out the window (with Karloff's scream
from Son of Frankenstein dubbed onto the soundtrack), and
stupidly lumbering off into some convenient quicksand with
Karloff when the Burgomaster thrusts a torch in his face ("It
can't stand fire!"). Whatever may be said in its favor, we are
so far removed from Karloff’s reasoning, suicidal Monster in
Bride that it is hard to believe there is a connection at all.
In many respects House of Dracula, the last serious entry,

is more of the same, but it is also a better made, more
cohesive film that benefits from Chaney's best turn at his
Wolfman character (thanks to a script that reworks the
character along the more intellectualized lines of his Inner
Sanctum films), a strong heroine inMartha O'Driscoll, and a
wonderful performance by Onslow Stevens as the wholly
sympathetic Dr. Franz Edelman, who ill-advisedly takes it on
himself to "cure" both Dracula and the Wolfman. Chaney's
mayhem is virtually non-existent here in part because he's the
outright hero this round (and so, obviously, can't commit
murder), and also because the war had created a shortage of
werewolf fuzz (yak hair) for transformation scenes (indeed,
this Wolfman is a little on the mangy side due to this).
However, Carradine more than takes up the slack as a most
malevolent— and ungrateful— Dracula, who taints the blood of
his would-be benefactor solely because he wants to get into

Miss 0 ’Driscoll's jugular vein. The Monster is as pointless as
before, coming to life only at the very end to burn down
Edelman’s castle (in footage largely pilfered from Ghost) .
Despite the film's narrative shortcomings House of Dracula

has an undeniable atmosphere that is curiously reminiscent of
the better 30s Universal offerings under the Laemmle regime.
Much of this must be given to Onslow Stevens, who plays his
role in a manner not unlike that of Henry Hull in Werewolf of
London (1935)— an intellectual man caught up in forces he can
neither control, nor even admit to the existence of. His is
the dilemma of a rational human being trying to apply his
rationalism to an irrational situation, and Stevens gets every
ounce of juice out of the role, beautifully underplaying the
straight scenes, yet pulling out all the stops in his "mad
doctor" scenes.
In truth, the air of the old Universal's hangs heavy over

the film— for the better. Not only is Stevens' Edelman similar
(albeit simplified) to Hull’s Dr. Wilfrid Glendon, but one of
the film's most memorable and effective scenes— where Dracula
exerts a hypnotic influence over Martha O'Driscoll as she
plays Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata— leans heavily on a
similar sequence in Lambert Hillyer's Dracula's Daughter. The
harkening back to the older films undoubtedly gives House of
Dracula a greater gravity, a stronger sense of conviction than
the films that surround it— a quite necessary commodity for a
film that asks us to accept the fact that Dr. Niemann and the
Monster miraculously floated on an underground river of quick
sand to land smack under Edelman's castle!
That same sense of gravity obviously does not extend to

the series' swan song, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,
though the film thankfully had the good taste not to make
utter buffoons out of its monsters. At best Abbott and
Costello are an acquired taste— and a taste probably best
acquired in the 40s when they were most popular. A handful of
their films— the nearly surreal Lost in ji Harem, the standard
format classics, Hold That Ghost and Buck Privates, the exper
imental The Time of Their Lives— hold up rather well. Most do
not. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein falls somewhere
between their best work and the run of the mill. Its staying
power as one of their most popular films is due entirely to
its status as the coda to the Frankenstein series, especially
because of its inclusion of Bela Lugosi in his second screen
performance as Dracula. He isn't given all that much to do—
and just why he wants to control the Frankenstein Monster is

never clear in the first place--but what he does he does with
all the brilliant panache of old. The script and his playing
nicely coalesce to achieve just the right blend of straight
menace without making him look a fool for not knowing he's in
a comedy. (The idea often put forth that Lugosi didn't know
the film was funny is too absurd for words— no one could fail
to miss the fact that Count Dracula hurling a flower pot at
the Wolfman isn't exactly de rigeur vampiric behavior.)
The Monster has no more to do than usual— though he does

get to speak again ("Yes, master," being about the extent of
it)— spending much of the film lying on a table (naturally)
until the climactic running amuck scene (just as naturally).
The old saw about brain swapping is at the root of things
again only this time it is Dracula who wants to put (of all
things) Costello's brain in the creature's head. "This time
the Monster must have no will of his own!" explains Dracula
without worrying about matters of coordination or following
simple orders. The prospect (never realized) of a Frankenstein
Monster wanting to figure out "Who's on first" while Dracula
tries to seriously reason with him is more horrifying than
anything in the entire series.
Chaney is back on hand as Larry Talbot (by this time, who

cares that he was cured in the last film— no one bothered
about the silver bullet pumped into him by Elena Verdugo
[perhaps she didn't really love him "enough to understand"] in
House of Frankenstein when House of Dracula opened its doors).
Thankfully, most of the character's morbidity has given way
here to his mission to put a stop to Dracula's Monster
schemings. Not so fortunately, he spends the bulk of the film
in some kind of perpetual bad-humor, scowling and humorless.
All in all, it’s really Lugosi's show. Without him, this entry
would be next to worthless. As it is, it's still mostly a not
unlikable footnote to the famous series.
Frankenstein. 1931- Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Cinematographer: Arthur Edeson. Screenplay: Garrett Fort,
Francis Edward Farragoh, Robert Florey. Adaptation: John L.
Balderston. Director: James Whale.
Players: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Boris Karloff,

Edward Van Sloan, Dwight Frye, Frederick Kerr, Lionel Belmore.
71 minutes.
Bride of Frankenstein. 1955» Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Cinematographer: John J. Mescall. Screenplay: William Hurlbut
and John L. Balderston. Music: Franz Waxman. Director: James
Whale.
Players: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest

Thesiger, O.P. Heggie, Elsa Lanchester, Una O ’Connor, Gavin
Gordon, Douglas Walton, Dwight Frye, E.E. Clive, Lucien
Prival, Ted Billings. 75 minutes.
Son of Frankenstein. 1959- Producer: Rowland V. Lee.

Cinematographer: George Robinson. Screenplay: Willis Cooper.
Music: Frank Skinner. Director: Rowland V. Lee.
Players: Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel

Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson, Donnie Dunnagan, Lawrence Grant,
Gustav Von Seyffertitz, Edgar Norton, Lionel Belmore. 99
minutes.
The Ghost of Frankenstein. 1942. Producer: George Waggner.

Cinematographers: Milton Krasner and Woody Bredell.
Screenplay: W. Scott Darling. Story: Eric Taylor. Music: Hans
J. Salter. Director: Erie C. Kenton.
Players: Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi,

Ralph Bellamy, Evelyn Ankers, Janet Ann Gallow, Lon Chaney,
Lawrence Grant, Dwight Frye, Barton Yarborough, Doris Lloyd.
68 minutes.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. 1945* Producer: George

Waggner. Cinematograper: George Robinson. Screenplay: Curt
Siodmak. Music: Hans J. Salter. Director: Roy William Neill.
Players: Ilona Massey, Patric Knowles, Lionel Atwill, Bela

Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya, Dennis Hoey, Don Barclay, Rex
Evans, Lon Chaney. 72 minutes.
House of Frankenstein. (Production Title: The Devil’s Brood.)

1944. Producer: Paul Malvern. Cinematographer: George
Robinson. Screenplay: Edward T. Lowe. Story: Curt Siodmak.
Music: Hans J. Salter.
Players: Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, John Carradine, J. Carroll

Naish, Anne Gwynne, Peter Coe, Elena Verdugo, Lionel Atwill,
George Zucco, Sig Rumann, Glenn Strange. 70 minutes.
House of Dracula. 1945* Producer: Paul Malvern.

Cinematographer: George Robinson. Screenplay: Edward T. Lowe.
Musical Direction: Edgar Fairchild. Director: Erie C. Kenton.
Players: Lon Chaney, John Carradine, Martha O ’Driscoll, Onslow

Stevens, Lionel Atwill, Glenn Strange, Jane Adams, Ludwig
Stossel, Skelton Knaggs. 67 minutes.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. 1948. Producer: Robert

Arthur. Cinematographer: Charles Van Enger. Screenplay: Robert
Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, John Grant. Music: Frank Skinner.
Director: Charles T. Barton.
Players: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney,

Glenn Strange, Lenore Aubert, Jane Randolph, Frank Ferguson,
Charles Bradstreet, Vincent Price. 92 minutes.
THE UNIVERSAL MUMMY FILMS
The Mummy (1932)

The Mummy's Hand (1940)
The Mummy's Tomb (1942)
The Mummy's Ghost (1944)
The Mummy's Curse (1945)
One of the lesser lights in Universal's reigning years of

horror, the Mummy series started out on a highpoint with Karl
Freund's weirdly poetic original film, then lay dormant for
eight years only to reappear in a vastly reduced, hardly
poetic, but rather enjoyable programmer that led to three
subsequent entries of even less interest.
Freund's The Mummy is one of the odder films to come from

Universal under the Laemmle regime. Neither terribly shocking,
nor even very exciting it is much more in the reticent mould
of Browning’s Dracula than the flamboyant Whale style. Indeed,
a comparison of The Mummy with Dracula is not inapt, since in
many ways The Mummy is little more than a polished version of
Dracula. The screenplay by John L. Balderston, though based on
an original story (that bears a marked resemblance— even the
description of the title character— to Arthur Conan Doyle's
short story of reincarnation, "The Ring of Thoth") by Nina
Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer, follows the model of
Dracula almost exactly--an atmospheric prologue, the arrival
on the scene of a mysterious man who both draws and repulses
the heroine, etc. The characters are virtually the same as
well, including an outright Van Helsing clone in Edward Van
Sloan's Dr. Muller, while situation after situation— a
confrontation between Muller and Karloff's Ardath Bey ("If I
could get my hands on you, I'd break your dry flesh to pieces,
but your power is too great") reworks the play and film second
act showdown between Van Helsing and Dracula, the heroine
ultimately giving in to her would-be possessor upon realizing
the hopelessness of fighting it— is casually reprised.
51
Original it may not be, but it most definitely is more

accomplished without ever achieving Dracula's sense of
inherent importance on a thematic level. This shortcoming is
probably as attributable to Karl Freund here as the importance
of Dracula is to Tod Browning.
Karl Freund's brief career as a director (1932-1955) is

one of film'smore intriguing tangents. Formerly and
subsequently a cinematographer, Freund seems to have had
absolutely no interest in— perhaps no understanding of— the
rudiments of dramatic structure, being interested mostly in
creating a series of striking visuals in tableaux-like scenes.
It is instructive to realize that Freund worked on The Mummy
with the famous Hungarian illustrator Willy Pogany, when one
stops to consider that the film, more than anything else,
resembles a series of book illustrations from the time.
Stunning and atmospheric as this undoubtedly is, it is also
dramatically neuter, and what power the film has in that sense
comes from Balderston's unusually intelligent screenplay and
the performances of Karloff, Van Sloan, David Manners, and,
most especially, Zita Johann.
Miss Johann, who was then married to John Houseman, was a

film newcomer, who did not take the medium itself all that
seriously, but who could not help but emanate both unusual
beauty and innate intelligence. Put alongside most of the
heroines of the time, her Helen Grosvernor is a wonderful
change of pace. One slightly believed in Helen Chandler in
Dracula, but not entirely, while heroines on the order of
Sidney Fox (Murders in the Rue Morgue), Jacqueline Wells (The
Black Cat), and, worst of all, Irene Ware (The Raven) were
totally baffling. One simply could not understand what all the
fuss was about on the part of either hero or villain. (The
heroines found in playwright John Colton's two scripts from
this era— the Galsworthian Lisa Glendon (Valerie Hobson) in
Werewolf of London and Diana Rukh (Frances Drake) in The
Invisible Ray— are also exceptions, but for other reasons.)
With Zita Johann it was no problem to comprehend the
attraction on either a libidinous or intellectual level. Put
simply, the woman is magnetic, and it is a tragedy of film
that The Mummy helped sour her on a career in movies.
If Freund had no interest in the normal concerns of drama,

he did have one thematic (if that it can be called) quirk:
outright sadism, and this trait seems to have spilled over
into his private life and his conduct toward Miss Johann as
well. Throughout his career unwholesome rumors about the fate

of his first wife in Germany circulated in Hollywood, and his
outrageous behavior on The Mummy (including having Miss Johann
play a very dangerous scene— that never made the final cut!—
with a hungry and untamed lion— a scene he saved to the very
end of shooting "just in case!”) is well-known. This sadism
also evidences itself onscreen in both The Mummy and Mad Love
(1935)* In The Mummy Freund presents amazingly graphic (for
the time) shots of slaves being executed with spears, not to
mention the horrifying close-up of Karloff's face as he is
mummified alive, the brutal sounds of the offscreen killing of
Johann's dog, the sickening crunch of the mummy's crumbling
skeleton at the film's end, etc. The end result is almost
schizophrenic in a film otherwise so restrained. It is perhaps
not surprising that Freund's next horror film (and final
directorial effort), Mad Love, should include an extended
sequence set in a Grand Guignol theatre ("Theatre des
Horreurs"), the sole existence of which is based on a desire
to see graphic sadism without much concern for story or plot.
Fascinating— and occasionally unnerving as in the silent

film style ancient Egypt flashbacks, the shot of the twisted
and torn barred window at the Cairo Museum (a picturization of
the line from Dracula, "Now he's gone and broken them iron
bars as if they was cheese"), the final moments of the
drama— The Mummy probably went nowhere at first because it was
simply apparent that there wasn't anywhere to go with it. The
reincarnation story was already outdated in 1932 and the whole
affair seemed a little old-fashioned in its aptly florid
dialogue. Wisely, the Laemmle regime left the film as a one-
shot. Neither so sage, nor so particular if it comes to that
were the heads of New Universal who revived the concept in
1940 as part of their "second wave" of horror spawned by Son
of Frankenstein.
Christy Cabanne's The Mummy's Hand is hardly in the same

league with its parent film, but then it doesn't try to be.
Rather than creating an outright sequel to The Mummy, screen
writers Griffin Jay and Maxwell Shane came up with a script
that can mostly be said to have been "inspired" by the
original. Their mummy was to be no world-weary mystical being
with supernatural powers and a penchant for flowery verbosity.
Far from it. Their mummy, Kharis, was a mere shambling
monster, a dusty, mud-caked, bandaged horror. Moreover, Kharis
was wholly inarticulate (the better to cast an unimportant
actor in the role), having had his tongue unceremoniously
ripped out ("So the ears of the gods would not be assailed by
his unholy curses") in a ripped-off, altered, and censored

series of scenes from the ancient Egypt portion of Freund's
film. This did necessitate the casting of a more human
villain, the current high priest of the temple of Karnak. This
delicious perfidy was handed to the wonderful George Zucco, a
bonafide horror actor, while Kharis went to cowboy star Tom
Tyler. (The popular notion that Tyler's stiff-legged gait in
the film was due to arthritis is a dubious one at best, since
a few years later Tyler was playing Captain Marvel in the
Repulic serial, and arthritic super-heroes are not a dime a
dozen.) Not satisfied with these alterations, the writers
dispensed with the Scroll of Thoth ("with which Isis raised
Osiris from the dead") and substituted tana leaves, which
performed the same stunt when "brewed." These added a spot
of not unlikable color since the junkie mummy will do anything
to get ahold of the fluid and an overdose (more than nine
leaves) is guaranteed to turn him into "uncontrollable
monster— a soulless demon with the desire to kill and kill."
Obviously a plant— we hear about this in the first scene and
know all too well that we shall hear about it again— the idea
is still a workable one, adding a dollop of impending menace
to a generally not very prepossessing monster.
To Messrs. Shane and Jay also goes credit for establishing

(for better or worse) the central situation for the rest of
the series. The idea hinges on the fact that Kharis has been
kept vaguely alive for a few thousand years to guard his
beloved Princess Ananka's tomb, the discovery of which causes
his reanimation by Zucco to deal with the "unbelievers." What
Kharis hasn't reckoned with is Zucco's own very healthy sex
drive, which sidetracks the high priest in his mission through
sheer lust for pretty Peggy Moran. The screenwriters can,
however, hardly be blamed for the fact that each subsequent
high priest is prone to the same lustful urge for each
subsequent pretty heroine. Thereby a workable premise became
predictable formula ever after.
Swiftly paced and accomplished with good humor and a

certain panache (not every filmmaker would have the cinematic
chutzpah to employ a dramatic, theatrical, and very obvious
lighting shift such as Cabanne does at the death of Eduardo
Cianelli's High Priest of Karnak), The Mummy's Hand benefits
from a top-notch "B" picture cast that includes not just Zucco
and Moran but Dick Foran, everybody's favorite London-born
Brooklynite Wallace Ford, Cecil Kellaway, and Charles
Trowbridge. No one is given anything particularly unusual or
notable to do, but it's nearly all enjoyable. The use of sets
left over from James Whale's Universal swan song, Green Hell
(1959), afford the film a production value it would otherwise
not have, even if the sight of a plethora of ancient Mayan
gods and symbols in the statuary isn't designed to warm the
cockles of an Egyptologist's heart!
Nearly everything about the film works on its own likable,

modest level. Many of the lines are bright and well construct
ed for maximum snappy patter flow. "Ah, quiet!," snarls Ford
at a howling jackal, grousing, "If it ain't you, it's the
camels, if it ain't the camels, it's the mummy, if it ain't
the mummy, it's you!" Zucco's lines are unusually purple and
he handles them with all the aplomb we expect from him. Late
in thefilm, his libidinous urges at their peak with Peggy
Moran strapped down and about to be made immortal with a
dollop of tana juice ("Like Kharis, you will live forever—
what I can do for you I can also do for myself. Neither time
nor death can touch us— you and I together for eternity here
in the temple of Karnak. You shall be my high priestess!"),
Zucco finds himself being accused (of course) of being quite
unhinged by our heroine (who might show more tact under the
circumstances), vowing that Foran will track him down and
dispose of him. "If by some chance he should escape Kharis and
kill me, your peril would be great indeed! If Kharis should
obtain the rest of the tana fluid he would become a monster
such as the world has never known!" Alas, this engaging idea—
easier to talk about than depict— never comes to pass, but
Zucco makes it sound villainously amusing.
Unfortunately, the fun of The Mummy's Hand doesn't cross

over into Harlod Young's The Mummy's Tomb where Lon Chaney,
Jr. inherits Tom Tyler's bandages. (In point of fact, this new
mummy make-up is so all-consuming that anyone might be under
it, but Chaney so hated the role that it seems unlikely it
isn't him.) Somehow or other, Zucco is supposed to have
survived having Wally Ford empty a revolver into him (the
flashback has him only shot once, so there) and passes on the
mantle to no less than Turhan Bey, who crates the mummy up and
drags him to New England to revenge himself on Foran and Ford
(Peggy Moran and Cecil Kellaway having wisely expired in the
meantime). Presumably, the screenwriters felt that if Dracula
could make the crossing to England, so could Kharis. So he
does and so what? Once he gets there, he goes on the standard
rampage (inasmuch as a 4,000 year old bag of bones with a
withered arm and a gimpy leg can rampage), while Bey gets
overenthused by Elyse Knox and . . . We've all been here
before, but more enjoyably.
The best and classiest thing about The Mummy1s Tomb are
the clips from The Mummy and The Mummy1s Hand that pad out its
running time to feature length. It would be kinder perhaps to
overlook the inclusion of footage of angry villagers pilferred
from Frankenstein for the final chase, but The Mummy*s Tomb is
hardly a film that invites kindness.
Somewhat better is The Mummy*s Ghost, mostly due to the

presence of new high priest John Carradine and exotic heroine
Ramsay Ames as (you guessed it) the reincarnation of Kharis'
Princess Ananka. It was still formula work, despite an
interesting scene where Kharis attempts to make off with
Ananka's mummy only to have the bandages collapse into nothing
since her spirit has been reincarnated, and an unusually
downbeat ending with the heroine turning into a mummy-like
crone as she disappears into a bog with Kharis. Without
question director Reginald LeBorg got more atmosphere out of
the proceedings than did Harold Young on the previous
entry— especially in a memorable sequence where Frank Reicher
accidentally conjures the mummy by fooling around with tana
leaves. But to what point? Very little indeed, if the truth be
told.
By the time of Leslie Goodwin's The Mummy's Curse there

was little left but pointless and plodding formula. Rather
curiously, the New England bog of the previous film has
shifted (continental drift perhaps?) to the Louisiana bayous.
This affords the film the only atmosphere it has with its not
uninteresting "son o' ma gum gonna hab big time on de bayou"
supporting players, though even these seem like a Cajun
version of the French Canadians from the preceding year's
Sherlock Holmes and the Scarlet Claw, while it strains
credulity that anyone might think of a connection between the
mummy and a loup garou (except for Chaney playing the
character). The human villainy was in the hands of Peter Coe
and Martin Kosleck (holed up in a deserted church in the
middle of the bayou!), not that it mattered much. It is
singularly unfortunate that the war had not caused a gause
shortage that might have put an end to this sooner, but it
didn’t.
Since Kharis (barely) managed not to make it into the all

star monster rallies of House of Frankenstein and House of
Dracula, his only other appearance came as Klaris(!) in
Charles Lamont's execrable Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy
(actually, with the name change it's more £ mummy than the
mummy). Having already met Frankenstein and the Invisible Man
and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with varying degrees of success it
probably seemed a logical choice to do this, since the team's
popularity was fast slipping and a monster never hurt the
box-office. It wasn't, alas, such a hot notion and it helped
no one's career. The bandaged one went back into retirement to
await a somewhat different resurrection as part of the Hammer
stable of monsters a few years down the road.
The Mummy. 1932. Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr. Screenplay: John

L. Balderston. Story: Nina Wilcox Putnam, Richard Schayer.
Cinematographer: Charles Stumar. Director: Karl Freund.
Players: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van

Sloan, Arthur Byron, Noble Johnson. 72 minutes.
The Mummy's Hand. 1940. Producer: Ford Beebe. Cinematographer:

Elwood Bredell. Screenplay: Griffin Jay, Maxwell Shane. Story:
Griffin Jay. Music: H.J. Salter, Frank Skinner (uncredited).
Director: Christy Cabanne.
Players: Dick Foran, Peggy Moran, Wallace Ford, George

Zucco, Cecil Kellaway, Charles Trowbridge, Tom Tyler,
Siegfried (Sig) Arno, Eddie Foster, Harry Stubbs, Michael
Mark, Mara Tartar, Leon Belasco. 60 minutes.
The Mummy's Tomb. 1942. Producer: Ben Pivar. Screenplay:

Griffin Jay, Harry Sucher. Music: H.J. Salter. Director:
Harold Young.
Players: Lon Chaney, Turhan Bey, John Hubbard, Virginia

Brissac, Elyse Knox, Mary Gordon, Dick Foran, Wallace Ford,
George Zucco. 61 minutes.
The Mummy's Ghost.1944* Producer: Ben Pivar. Screenplay:

Griffin Jay, Henry Sucher, Brenda Weisberg. Music: H.J.
Salter. Director: Reginald LeBorg.
Players: Lon Chaney, John Carradine, Ramsay Ames, Robert

Lowery, Frank Reicher, Barton MacLane, Claire Whitney, Harry
Shannon, Emmett Vogan, Lester Sharpe. 61 minutes.
The Mummy's Curse.1945* Producer: Ben Pivar. Screenplay:

Bernard Shubert. Story ("The Mummy's Return"): Leon Abrams,
Dwight V. Babcock. Music: Paul Sawtelle. Director: Leslie
Goodwins.
Players: Lon Chaney, Peter Coe, Virginia Christine, Kay

Harding, Dennis Moore, Martin Kosleck, Kurt Katch, Addison

Richards, Holmes Herbert, William Farnum, Ann Codee. 60
minutes.
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. 1955* Producer: Howard

Christie. Screenplay: John Grant. Story: Lee Loeb. Director:
Charles Lamont.
Players: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marie Windsor, Michael

Ansara, Dan Seymour, Kurt Katch, Richard Karlan, Richard
Deacon, Eddie Parker, Mel Welles. 79 minutes.
THE LIONEL ATWILL FILMS
Doctor X (1932)
Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
Secret of the Blue Room (1933)
Murders in the Zoo (1933)
The Vampire Bat (1933)
A real curio in terms of a series in that the films that

attempted to do for Atwill what the Universal product had done
for Karloff and Lugosi are what might best be described as a
freelance series, since only two of the films were made by one
studio, after which Atwill purveyed his menace in star
capacity when and where the opportunity arose. It did not make
Atwill a truly major horror film star, but the series of films
did make him a unique personality in the genre far beyond his
later supporting roles, and his unorthodox series deserves
more attention than it has generally received.
Easily the best of the Atwill films, Doctor X presents a

most unusual case in film history. Like its more famous
successor, Mystery of the Wax Museum, the film was shot in
two-strip Technicolor, yet the studio obviously had little
intention of releasing it in that more expensive form outside
the major cities. As a result the film was for all intents and
purposes made twice. Rather than simply make up black and
white prints from the color negative (never a particularly
wise aesthetic choice due to differences in lighting and
contrast) Warners had director Michael Curtiz shoot the film
in both color and black and white. Since the requisite light
ing for the extremely slow Technicolor film of the time was so
intense, this was not a matter of running two cameras side by
side as is often thought. Rather, Curtiz actually shot two
different versions of the film as has become apparent with the
rediscovery of the long missing color version. The comparison
of the two versions is in itself fascinating, despite the fact
that a strong familiarity with the black and white version
59
tends to make the color Doctor X a slightly jarring exper

ience. The differences in lighting and camera placement
between the two versions are quite remarkable with the color
version being much more carefully made, but this almost fades
into insignificance by virtue of the differences between the
performances— and even dialogue— from one film to the other.
The color Doctor X is the same film and yet it isn't. The
little changes and surprises start at once when the establish
ing dockside shot presents us with the same whistling police
man as the black and white film— only he whistles a different
tune! None of the changes are particularly significant. Lee
Tracy's dialogue outside the Mott Street Morgue with Tom Dugan
is phrased differently. When he uses the telephone in Mae
Busch's cathouse, she quips, "Pardon me, but didn't I meet you
in Havana," where in the black and white she says "Bermuda."
The end result is something like seeing a stage production on
two different nights. Truth to tell, the performances in the
black and white version seem a little livelier, though this
may be due to a greater familiarity with them making the
alternate ones seem "wrong."
In either version, Doctor X is one of the great horror

films from any period— and one of the most casually grotesque.
The catalogue of horrors in the film is almost a compendium of
every grotesquerie in the genre— cannibalism, sadism,
necrophilia, disfigurement, dismemberment (and its attendant
Freudian implication), etc.— all served up with a hard-edged
dose of realism typical of Warner Brothers. In many respects,
Doctor X is the first truly modern horror film (with a passing
nod to Edward Sloman's 1931 Paramount picture, Murder by the
Clock) strikingly different from the Universal films that
predate it. While the use of Lee Tracy as a wisecracking
reporter in the part of the hero of the piece may not be
wholly original, it is certainly the first such character to
be found in a mainstream film from the wave of horror spawned
by Dracula. This 1930s modern hero— born of the success of the
1928 Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur stage play, The Front Page,
which starred Lee Tracy— affords the film (and its sex-change
follow-up, Mystery of the Wax Museum) both weight and a comic
balance that makes the unusually meaty horror content even
more striking.
Like its successor, Doctor X is basically structured along

the lines of a mystery— and its mystery isn't a bad one,
though the solution hardly comes a great surprise by the time
the film gets to its revelation. Certainly, Mystery of the Wax
Museum does a better job in this department— assuming one can
find a viewer who doesn’t know the central mystery either

through reading about the film or from its non-mystery remake,
House of Wax (1953)« Even so, the mystery element is adroitly
handled and, without giving too much away for the viewer not
overexposed to either film, there is a certain interest in the
very fact that the mystery element in Doctor X is shrewdly
turned in on itself to work in exactly the opposite fashion in
Wax Museum. The mystery element in both cases has been blunted
by time and familiarity, and, indeed, tends to make Doctor X
seem a little awkward, while making Mystery of the Wax Museum
seem unnecessarily confusing. Mostly, the oddness of the
mystery format is simply in the fact that it is unlike the
Universal horrors that surround the films.
While much of the delight in Doctor X comes from Tracy's

glib reporter hero and a charming supporting cast of venerable
overactors (and overacting in a Warners film tends to stand
out because of the more naturalistic playing common at the
studio in that era), the film's acting strength on a horror
film level is undeniably Lionel Atwill. Atwill, first seen in
a lovely coat with its fur collar turned up against the cold,
is an outrageous treat throughout. He starts off merely being
an efficient actor until he gets into a discussion with the
police over the condition of the body of the latest victim of
the "Moon Killer." "It's peculiar that its left deltoid
muscle should be missing," he notes. "It's been torn right
out," comments a policeman. "No, gentlemen, that wasn't
torn— this is cannibalism!" he announces with unalloyed
enthusiasm. From there on Atwill's Dr. Xavier is a character
to warm the cockles of James Whale's heart— a magnificent
theatrical mountebank, putting on a show for its own effect
and his own amusement. Had Whale directed the film instead of
Michael Curtiz, there is no telling how far this may have
gone. As it stands it comes across as kind of mock-Whale, but
it's first rate mock-Whale.
Even though Michael Curtiz isnot a filmmaker normally

associated with the horror genre, he did make four superior
horror films between 1931 and 1936— The Mad Genius, Doctor X,
Mystery of the Wax Museum, and The Walking Dead— and these
films are among the more creative works to be found in his
prolific, if uneven and often faceless, career. In many
respects his two color horror films are the most interesting,
not in the least because Curtiz and pioneer color cinematog
rapher Ray Rennahan (the black and white version was shot by
Richard Towers) do not just record the films in color, but

actually use color to enhance the effect, using deliberately
theatrical lighting and weirdly colored shadows and light to
heighten the films* atmosphere. The mix of Curtiz* standard
cynicism, the hard-boiled Warner style, and the gothic is
quite striking on every level, even if moments such as Lee
Tracy's sick humor encounters in a closetful of skeletons are
almost unsettling in their offhandedness.
The storyline concerning a series of grisly murders

"committed under the full of the moon for no apparent motive"
is sufficiently weird in itself, but the further inclusion of
an array of unbelievably bizarre surgical academy professors
pushes Doctor X into the realm of the totally wigged-out.
Atwill's theatrical Dr. Xavier to one side, his academy boasts
a one-armed professor with a human heart "kept alive for three
years by electrolysis" (presumably it doesn't grow hair
either), a crotchety wheel-chair bound clone of the old Baron
Frankenstein, a poetic-minded one-eyed scientist interested
"in the light qualities of the moon" (what he is doing at a
surgical academy is anybody's guess), and one truly nasty
sex-obsessed professor ("Excuse me, Doctor, were the murdered
women attacked?") of no clear specialty. This doesn't even
take into account a Bat Whispers-style comic relief maid and a
deliberately sinister butler, nor Anton Grot's extraordinary
set designs (a morgue, an old dark house, and no less than
three wonderful mad scientist labs!). The sheer quantity of
material makes the film an experience not to be missed.
Somewhat less pleasing is Mystery of the Wax Museum,

though it does offer an even meatier Atwill role in Professor
Ivor Igor and a splendid distaff Lee Tracy in Glenda Farrell
as a wisecracking girl reporter who keeps the film on the move
with good humor and the same edge that distinguishes Doctor X.
Directorially, the film is very much at one with its predeces
sor, though this is hard to pin down since it is also designed
by Grot (some of the sets are in fact revamped from Doctor X)
and photographed by Rennahan (no black and white version was
shot this round), leaving the exact question of Curtiz'
authorship up in the air on a stylistic level,(intriguingly,
this question crops up on all of Curtiz' major works.)
Regardless of authorship, Mystery of the Wax Museum is
visually stunning without quite achieving the creative level
of its predecessor.
Owing to its inferior remake, the plotline of Mystery of

the Wax Museum— never as wild and woolly as Doctor X — is too

well known for the film to work as a mystery with most
audiences, but its set-pieces and performances make up for
this, even if Fay Wray is here in probably the most thankless
role of her career (her character is so subordinate to
Farrell’s reporter that both she and her stupefyingly
uninteresting love interest are little more than plot devices
used to hold the mystery together). Atwill's wonderfully
bombastic Prof. Igor ("If my curiosity is not too great, would
you mind telling me what manner of animal that is you are
creating?" he snaps at an untalented sculptor at his wax
museum) and Farrell's reporter are nicely supplemented by
three unusually strong supporting turns by Arthur Edmund
Carewe, Edwin Maxwell, and, most curious of all, Warner stock
player Frank McHugh, who is kept vaguely separate from the
bulk of the film by appearing only in scenes with Farrell at
the newspaper he edits. Regardless, McHugh's presence—
especially in light of the film's amusing last minute romantic
turnaround— is a double-edged sword. He definitely adds to the
film's comedy and believability, while seeming somehow at odds
with the more stylized theatrics of Messrs. Atwill, Carewe,
and Maxwell. So too is Farrell, but like Tracy in Doctor X her
benefits are undeniable and inherent. McHugh is more tan
gential, though no less enjoyable.
Special mention should be made of Arthur Edmund Carewe's

Prof. D'Arcy in the film, one of the gamiest and most pointed
interpretations of a drug addict on film. Drawn to some extent
from Luis Alberni's addict in Curtiz' The Mad Genius (Curtiz
even shoots a drug-taking scene in an identical manner in both
films), Carewe's character and performance are among the most
memorable things in Mystery of the Wax Museum. Having been a
more subtle, yet still powerful, player as the poetic and
sympathetic Dr. Roetz in Doctor X., Carewe here— with a jolly
three day beard growth (something like pop singer George
Michael) and obvious eye makeup— goes completely over the top,
especially late in the film when the police put him through
withdrawal. By the time Carewe gets to his outburst, "I tell
you the whole place is a morgue, do you hear? A morgue! A
morgue! A morgue," credulity may have gone out the window, but
a timeless, indelible creation takes its place.
Less successful on every level is Atwill’s Universal

outing from this period, Kurt Neumann's Secret of the Blue
Room. In reality, this is nothing more than a neat little
mystery with ghost story overtones that would have long been
forgotten had it been made for any other studio. The film's
salvation from obscurity lies solely in the fact that it was

sold to television— along with such other non-horror curios as
Secret of the Chateau (1934), Rendezvous at Midnight (1935),
Reported Missing (1937), and most of the "Crime Club*’ series—
as part of a Universal horror film package in the 1960s when
little more than a Universal logo was needed to hook fans.
(This wasn't such a bad thing, frankly, since it saved a
number of very enjoyable films from practical extinction and
broadened the horizons of horror film fans in the process.)
Structurally, Secret of the Blue Room resembles Doctor X

in placing Atwill in the center of the proceedings by making
him the heroine's (Gloria Stuart) father. Unfortunately, other
than affording him some amusing red herring menace (more pink
than red really) and handing him the legend of the Blue Room
to relate to guests Onslow Stevens, Paul Lukas, and William
Janney (thereby inadvertently innaugurating a murder plot), it
doesn't give him much to do, handing most of the film over to
Edward Arnold's detective. (Not too surprising this since
Universal were grooming Arnold for a stardom that never quite
materialized despite good tries like A. Edward Sutherland's
Diamond Jim [1955], James Whale's Remember Last Night? [1935],
and James Cruze's Sutter's Gold [1936], while Atwill wasn't
then a studio player.)
What distinguishes Secret of the Blue Room, apart from a

nifty little plot about a room in which overnight guests have
the unnerving habit of vanishing or dying that saw service in
two future Universal programmers, The Missing Guest (1938)—
chiefly notable for the classic cynical newspaperman line,
"How about a shot of you with the corpse?"— and Murder in the
Blue Room (1944), is the strong sense of atmosphere Neumann
brings to the proceedings (this despite the lack of a musical
score save for the studio trotting out that excerpt from Swan
Lake that had already graced Dracula, Murders in the Rue
Morgue, and The Mummy!), along with a solid cast. Atwill and
Arnold to one side, the film boasts the studio's brightest
leading lady, Gloria Stuart, as the romantic interest and
affords her two stalwart, nicely mature, likable suitors in
Onslow Stevens and Paul Lukas (the less said about the third,
William Janney, the better). Stevens is murdered in the Room
fairly early on, but not before creating a complete character,
while Lukas gives the solid professionalism one expects from
the actor throughout. Indeed, the film is distinguished by the
quality of the romantic encounters between Lukas and Miss
Stuart, which are streets ahead of the run of the mill on
every count.
No excuses need be made for A. Edward Sutherland's Murders

in the Zoo, one of Paramount's few attempts at the horror
genre in the 50s. Like their other horror films of the
period— Edward SIoman's Murder by the Clock (1931)» Rouben
Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde C1931), Erie C. Kenton's
Island of Lost Souls (1935), and Victor Halperin's
Supernatural (1933)— Murders in the Zoo attempts to outdo the
Universal product in terms of ghastliness. And it succeeds—
without ever quite capturing the atmosphere of the models it
seeks to best. What is distinctly odd here is that director
Sutherland is most associated with musical comedy, and
especially W.C. Fields (helming the comedian's wildest film,
International House [1933]> and two of his gentlest and most
graceful, Mississippi f1935] and Poppy [1936J). Nothing about
Sutherland's other work suggests this cold-blooded, downright
nasty film was in him. Yet here it is, offering Atwill his
most outrageous villainy ever.
Eric Gorman (that name!) as written by Philip Wylie and

Seton I. Miller and played by Atwill is one of the most
perfidious creatures ever to grace the screen. When first we
see him in French Indo China on an animal trapping expedition,
he is in the process of sewing together the lips of his wife's
latest paramour, instructively announcing, "A Mongolian prince
taught me this, Taylor, an ingenious device for the right
occasion! You’ll never lie to a friend again— or kiss another
man's wife." Having exacted this colorful revenge, he soon
parcels himself and his wife off to New York to begin life
anew. However ships and shipboard romances being what they
are, Mrs. Gorman (Kathleen Burke) soon has a new admirer (John
Lodge) to take up the slack while Atwill attends to the
collection of wild animals he's bringing back with him to the
zoo— and Atwill has another potential victim for his murderous
jealousies.
Rather too much of the film is given over to Charlie

Ruggles' often very funny comedy routines in his star capacity
as a tippling public relations man for the zoo, to say nothing
of an excessively colorless romance between Randolph Scott (at
his most cigar store Indian worst) and Gail Patrick. Happily,
Ruggles is important to the plot and not just comic relief. It
is he who puts Atwill onto his wife's latest indiscretion by
mentioning that he had mistaken the man in their stateroom for
Atwill. More, it is his publicity stunt— a posh charity dinner
among the caged animals— that affords Atwill the chance for
murder with the aid of nothing less than a green mamba.
Throughout the various plot turns, Atwill is magnificently

vile. "The idea has merit— i t ’s glamourous!" he enthuses over
Ruggles' dinner party idea, only to let us know that he has
reasons of his own for liking the concept by wickedly
narrowing his eyes as soon as the others are out of view.
Setting Lodge up for murder at the zoo, he informs that
gentleman, "I can promise you a really unusual evening."
Disposing of Lodge with his portable poison-filled mamba head
(ultimately his own downfall when Scott discovers the fang-
spread on the fall-guy snake to be quite different than that
of Atwill's version), Atwill turns kinkily amorous with his
wife. "I never saw you look more beautiful!" he tells her,
fondling her breast. "Yes, I know. Now you're going to make
love to me!" whimpers Burke, who is apparently quite used to
this routine. "I never wanted you more than I do right now,"
he continues. "Oh, you're not human!" blurts out Burke. "I'm
not going to kiss you— you're going to kiss me!" Atwill
sadistically informs her, showing off enough teeth to pass for
an obscenely lecherous big bad wolf about to dine on Red
Riding Hood. When Burke threatens to expose his murderous
antics, Atwill happily tosses her into the zoo's alligator
pit, only to show up the next day playing at being the
bereaved husband when fragments of her clothing are discovered
amidst the reptiles. Such outrageous nastiness deserves an
equally outre comeuppance and Murders in the Zoo delivers when
a desperate Atwill makes an attempt on Scott's life, unleashes
the animals, and accidentally takes "refuge" in a cage with a
giant constrictor. The final image of Atwill with this huge
serpent coiling around his face is one of the most gruesome
from the period.
Perhaps because it was produced by an independent studio

and has for years been in the public domain (in a variety of
mutilated versions), Frank Strayer’s The Vampire Bat is one of
Atwill's best known starring vehicles. It is also one of his
weakest, owing almost entirely to a final revelation that is
not very satisfying. For an independent production, though,
The Vampire Bat has much going in its favor. The cast is
unusually strong with Atwill being aided and abetted by Fay
Wray, Melvyn Douglas, Dwight Frye, Maude Eburne, Robert
Frazer, and Lionel Belmore (not to mention a wildly miscast
George E. Stone). The solid, atmospheric look of the film is
easily explained by the curiously transparent dodge of
attributing the sets to Daniel Hall, who, of course, is none
other than Universal's own Charles D. "Danny" Hall. As a
result, this on-the-cheap venture has a European village that
comes straight from Frankenstein and an old dark house that _is
the genuine article from Whale's film of that title.

Unfortunately, Strayer's use of that house set is singularly
devoid of interest. In Whale's film the house takes on a
distinct personality of its own, becomes an essential part of
the film. In Strayer's hands, it is little more than a large,
empty space inhabited by the actors. Still, it gives The
Vampire Bat a sense of solidity it would otherwise not have.
Atwill is his perfectly nefarious self as a supposedly

kindly village doctor, whose real specialty is hypnotizing his
assistant into bringing him victims in order to drain their
blood so that he may feed the fluid to his amazingly unpre
possessing artificial life form (it resembles nothing so much
as a large sponge in a fish tank). Thankfully, his dialogue is
also on par with that in his better films, offering him a wide
range of wildly purple outbursts on the nature of being "mad,"
particularly when Miss Wray makes this standard, ill-advised
observation late in the film— alone with the man and at his
mercy! Quintessential 30s heroines, Fay Wray's characters have
never been prized for their excess of grey matter— presumably
so they can be saved by the stalwart hero. "You! You're the
one! What mad thing are you doing?" she blurts out upon
discovering Atwill's villainy. "Mad? Is one who has solved the
secret of life to be dismissed as mad? Life— created in the
laboratory! No mere crystalline growth, but tissue— living,
growing tissue! Life that moves! Pulsates! And demands food
for its continued growth! Ha! You shudder in horror. So did I
the first time, but what are the few lives to be weighed in
the balance of an achievement of biological science? Think of
it--I have lifted the veil! I have created life— wrested the
secret of life from life! Now do you understand? From the
lives of those who have gone before, I have created life!"
reveals the unhinged scientist. The best Miss Wray can offer
is a weak, "I'll tell Karl," as though Atwill were nothing
more dangerous than a highschool bully. Alas, Karl (Douglas)
is next in line for sacrifice to science, having been drugged
by Atwill— or so Atwill thinks until the doubting detective
arrives on the scene in the nick of time with the classic
explanation, "I didn't take your sleeping tablets, Doctor."
Ironically, the best remembered aspect of the film is not

Atwill's sinister scientist so much as it is Dwight Frye's
half-wit, Herman. Not only is the bat loving Herman ("Soft
like kitten!") one of Frye’s most outrageous screen creations,
but the sequence in which the dimwitted villagers pursue him
into the "Devil's Cave" and bring about his death is
singularly gruesome as only a "B" picture would dare. It is
barely possible that the grimmer 30s melodrama might have

allowed his wrongful death as the suspected vampire. However,
it is unthinkable that this would have been taken so far as to
present the idea that his death should then be followed by
their happily staking the corpse and beheading it!
At bottom., The Vampire Bat is a lower class horror film

remembered for a handful of effective moments that don't make
a very effective whole. But it does have Atwill and a fine
supporting cast doing those things that they do best, making
it an entertaining addition to Atwill's brief lived attempt at
creating a series of mad doctor roles years in advance of
Karloff's Columbia series, and it is certainly streets ahead
of Atwill's two non-horrific melodramas for Monogram the
following year before he settled into the realm of a venerable
supporting player.
Doctor X_. 1932. Warner Bros.— First National. Screenplay:

Robert Tasker, Earl Baldwin, based on the play by Howard W.
Comstock, Allen C. Miller. Photography: Ray Rennahan (color
version), Richard Towers (black and white version). Art
Director: Anton Grot. Editor: George Amy. Musical Director:
Leo F. Forbstein. Director: Michael Curtiz.
Players: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy, Preston Foster,

John Wray, Harry Beresford, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Leila
Bennett, Robert Warwick, George Rosener, Willard Robertson,
Thomas Jackson, Harry Holman, Mae Busch, Tom Dugan. 80
minutes.
Mystery of the Wax Museum. 1933- Warner Bros. Screenplay: Don

Mullay, Carl Erickson, from the story by Charles S. Belden.
Photography: Ray Rennahan. Art Director: Anton Grot. Editor:
George Amy. Musical Direction: Leo F. Forbstein. Director:
Michael Curtiz.
Players: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank

McHugh, Allen Vincent, Gavin Gordon, Edwin Maxwell, Holmes
Herbert, Claude King, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Thomas Jackson,
DeWitt Jennings, Matthew Betz, Monica Bannister. 78 minutes.
Secret of the Blue Room. 1933* Universal. Screenplay: William

Hurlbut. Director: Kurt Neumann.
Players: Lionel Atwill, Edward Arnold, Gloria Stuart, Paul

Lukas, Onslow Stevens, William Janney, Elizabeth Patterson,
Robert Barrat, Russell Hopton. 66 minutes.
Murders in the Zoo. 1933* Paramount. Screenplay: Philip Wylie,

Seton I. Miller. Photography: Ernest Haller. Director: A.
Edward Sutherland.
Players: Charlie Ruggles, Lionel Atwill, Harry Beresford, Gail

Patrick, Randolph Scott, Kathleen Burke, John Lodge. 70
minutes.
The Vampire Bat. 1933* Majestic. Producer: Phil Goldstone.

Screenplay: Edward T. Lowe. Photography: Ira Morgan. Art
Direction: Daniel Hall. Editor: Otis Garrett. Director: Frank
Strayer.
Players: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas, Maude

Eburne, George E. Stone, Dwight Frye, Robert Frazer, Rita
Carlisle, Lionel Belmore, William V. Mong, Stella Adams,
Harrison Greene. 61 minutes.
THE INVISIBLE MAN FILMS
The Invisible Man (1933)

The Invisible Man Returns (1939)
The Invisible Woman (1940)
Invisible Agent (1942)
The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944)
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1950)
One of Universal's most fragmented series, the Invisible

Man films started on a brilliant note with James Whale's
original film— a still startling exercise in technical
wizardry and the blackest of black humor, cloaked in an
exciting, involving narrative with Whale's constant theme of
personal responsibility underscoring the entire proceedings.
It was also— along with the comic mystery, Remember Last
Night?— the director's favorite of his films, something Whale
biographer James Curtis attributes to the combination of dark
comedy, working with Claude Rains, and the sheer enjoyment of
the technical challenge. While this is doubtlessly true, there
is also a good chance that Whale responded to the film on a
level of greater personal satisfaction, owing to two
significant variations on Frankenstein found in the film: man
and monster have become one, and the fact that the traditional
salvation of the "love of a good woman" here solves nothing.
On many levels, the film lacks the cosmic scope of
Frankenstein and the perfect hermetic creepiness of The Old
Dark House, but it is nonetheless thematically progressive and
a key Whale work.
The R.C. Sherriff screenplay adheres only in basics to the

H.G. Wells novel, preferring instead to explore rather
different areas of concern within its horror-science fiction
format. As with any Whale-Sherriff collaboration the thrust is
as much satirical as anything else, and it is no wonder that
they should next turn their attention to John Galsworthy’s
final installment in the "Forsyte Chronicles," One More River,
since The Invisible Man is itself shot through with
71
Galsworthian social observation. The Whale-Sherriff target is

the utterly unimaginative and determinedly conformist middle
class, represented in all its dull-witted materialism by the
character of Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan), a creature who would
clearly drive a BMW were he alive today. Incapable of making
any but the most clear-cut and self-serving decision on his
own (the man lives in a wholly dictated suburban universe of
advertising's own making with all the very latest— and oh so
correct— "keeping up with the Joneses" gadgetry at hand), Kemp
is a thoroughly unlikable character, who is aptly summed up by
Rains’ Jack Griffin just prior to affording the man a far more
colorful demise than he deserves— "I always said you were a
dirty little coward, Kemp. You're a dirty, sneaking little rat
as well."
Mad he may be, but Jack Griffin is clearly a man after

Whale's own heart— showy, theatrical, bold, flamboyant, and
imaginative. That these very qualities set him apart from his
fellow man— make him different— also arouses Whale's
sympathies. Griffin isn't so much unlike Kemp by choice, but
because he has no alternative in the matter. He simply _is
different. The forces of his own nature that drive him are no
different from those that drive Henry Frankenstein, the
circumstances that force Myra in Waterloo Bridge into
prostitution, or the genetic history that makes Julie in Show
Boat a mulatto— or by extension Whale a homosexual. Griffin's
tragic flaw, like that of so many Whale heroes, lies in his
unwillingness, or inability, to accept this difference and
deal with it in a responsible fashion. This more than the
insanity induced by the chemicals of his invisibility formula
seals Griffin's doom from the outset.
From the standpoint of pure entertainment as an isolated

work, the film's greatest accomplishment lies in its
remarkable ability to make murder— even mass murder— funny,
while turning the murderer into a kind of anti-hero. Sherriff
and Whale manage this with an amazing ease, especially
considering the blue-sky nature of such an undertaking. In
film at least the idea of an anti-hero was virtually unknown
in 1933* The embittered veterans of William Dieterle's The
Last Flight (1931) and Whale's own The Old Dark House, along
with such free spirit, non-conformist sorts as Fredric March
in D'Abaddie D'Arrast's Laughter (1930) were as close to such
as film had dared wander. The Invisible Man goes much further
afield. Vaguely— and this mostly by allowing the bandaged
Rains a handful of wildly enjoyable moments of purest purple
rantings and ravings— alibiing the hero-horror's antics by
references to insanity induced by "a terrible drug" (shades of

that old "criminal brain"), the film's true alibi arrives in
the form of gradually numbing the viewer to Jack Griffin’s
increasingly murderous activities. The film shrewdly starts
off with comic mayhem (assorted schoolboy pranks on narrow
minded provincials), then moves into gratifying violence (the
threats on Kemp's life, a comic bank robbery), and finally
into murder and mass murder (the killing of Kemp and the
wrecking of a train). By the time the film turns nasty we are
prepared for the turn without a jolt, and in fact are
satisfied by the disposal of the weaselly Kemp. The final
dollop of morality ("I meddled in things that man must leave
alone") works only in connection with Whale’s more personal
theme of the perils of subverting nature (or one's own
nature), but rings rather hollow as a solemn warning within
the film itself, coming across as a sop to traditional notions
of morality.
The special effects necessary to make a film like The

Invisible Man succeed— a close and complex collaboration of
Whale, special effects wizard John P. Fulton, and editor Ted
Kent— were costly and time-consuming, so it is not surprising
that the concept was limited to the one film until the horror
"renaissance" of 1939 put the studio in the mood to try again.
The resulting film, The Invisible Man Returns, was a perfectly
respectable sequel. Less ambitious than its predecessor, the
film lacks the deeper implications of Whale's original, as
well as its moral ambiguity, but it does offer slickness, some
atmosphere from director Joe May, and nice performances from
Vincent Price, Nan Grey, and Cedric Hardwicke. Where The
Invisible Man Returns fails is in its desire to be an alto
gether acceptable and wholesome entertainment. It is a studio
product, not the work of a single strong talent with a
tendency to be off-the-wall.
To meet the requirements of a more middle-of-the-road

approach three screenwriters, the ubiquitous Curt Siodmak,
along with Lester Cole and Cedric Belfrage, concocted a
somewhat tepid murder mystery story (more than slightly
similar to the 1934 Charlie Chan in London) that allowed
wrongly-convicted Geoffrey Radcliffe IFrice) to indulge in the
old Griffin formula (courtesy of Dr. Frank Griffin [john
Sutton], a relative of the mad originator) In order to prove
his innocence. Unfortunately, the need for Radcliffe to remain
innocently heroic precluded the flamboyant insanity of the
first film. In its stead, the best the writers could come up
with was the dyed-in-the-wool perfidy of a more traditional
villain in the guise of Richard Cobb (Hardwicke), the real

murderer. In Hardwicke's capable hands, Cobb was enjoyably
nasty, but considerably more two-dimensional than anything
offered in the original film, even lacking the caricature
qualities of that film's Dr. Kemp.
The film’s climax with Griffin forcing his enemy to con

fess his crimes while trundling along on a coal conveyor is
not bad, but marred by some unusually indifferent special
effects, while the reversal of the hero's invisibility by a
blood transfusion (which also cures the madness!) is much too
simple. (Admittedly, Price's transformation to visibility is a
more elaborate effect than that in Whale's film.) Enjoyable
(especially as far as Price was concerned, owing to the ease
of his largely "radio" performance), but utterly lacking in
the specialness of the first film, The Invisible Man Returns
is hardly a worthy successor.
Universal followed this with a curious offshoot, The

Invisible Woman, which was handed over to comedy specialist A.
Edward Sutherland. Apart from good special effects, this over
glossed production offers little except John Barrymore as the
dotty scientist who makes Virginia Bruce into the title woman,
and the ailing Barrymore looks so aged and ghastly that the
performance is hard to enjoy. Truth to tell, his looks are at
least in part due to a character make-up (upon seeing himself,
Barrymore is rumored to have exclaimed, "My God, I look like
Lionel!"), but not entirely, and the script seems to trade on
the great actor's personal befuddlement. Even so, Barrymore is
often quite funny in the role, managing to hold on to his dig
nity in the most unlikely situations. At one point, he is made
to crawl around the floor in search of the missing invisible
woman, whose*name, Kitty, causes him to attract a cat. "Away!
Avast! Avaunt! Thou troublest me— thy bones are marrowless!"
he tells the offending feline. The film's storyline is nothing
to get excited about, clumsily mixing romance, gangsters,
comedy, and the vague horror element, while the only new twist
lies in the invisible lady's tendency tofade out whenever she
gets tipsy. Worse was yet to come.
Funnier in many ways, but seriously intended, was Invis

ible Agent. Here we are back to the original idea (more or
less) with the concept brought up-to-date. The U.S. enlists
the aid of Griffin descendant Jon Hall in fighting the Axis
powers, personified by Sir Cedric Hardwicke (Nazi) and Peter
Lorre (Japanese), with the assist of his ancestor's nifty
little formula. It was timely— and as silly as it sounds. The
madness inherent in the formula was, of course, played down

and a good bit of the film deals with a romance between Hall
(made visible with cold cream for the occasion— not to mention
the economy of a visible invisible man) and Ilona Massey. At
best, this silly affair was tepid and not particularly boosted
by the addition of some Japanese war atrocity sadism (our
hero is trapped at one point in a net full of fish-hooks).
A more sober screenplay, solid direction by Ford Beebe,

and a good cast helped make The Invisible Man's Revenge the
best entry since the original film. Hall was again cast as the
transparent title character, but, intriguingly, he was cast
against type as a mentally unbalanced man with an arguably
justifiable chip on his shoulder (his former associates did
leave him for dead and did avail themselves of a fortune in
which he had a rightful share and do drug him and send him
packing when he makes his claim on them). This time, the
invisibility is the result of the experiments of John
Carradine (unusually restrained), who ill-advisedly points out
the benefits his experiment have bestowed on his invisible
dog, allowing the once picked-upon beast to have the run of
the neighborhood. Such an idea has an immediate appeal for
Hall and his persecution complex mentality. Allowing himself
to be a human guinea pig, he quickly murders Carradine, burns
down his house, and sets out to revenge himself on his
tormentors. A pleasant sidelight is the film's inclusion of
Leon Errol in a role drawn from the original Wells novel as
the invisible man's visible sidekick. It was all unexceptional
when compared with Whale's film, but it was undeniably nice to
see (or not see) a full-fledged invisible madman on the scene
once again.
It was inevitable that the character would meet Abbott and

Costello, of course, and in 1950's Abbott and Costello Meet
the Invisible Man that came to pass. Surprisingly, the film
was one of the team's better efforts— not on a par with their
Frankenstein-Dracula-Wolfman send-up, but easily the next best
in the run of their Meet series. The plot was borrowed to some
extent from The Invisible Man Returns with Arthur Franz as a
boxer who uses the invisibility formula when he is framed by
gangsters. What raises the film's quality is the unusual sym
pathy for Franz's character, stressed by the equally unusual
display of feeling and concern for that character by the comic
leads. For a change, the boys seem to be an integral part of
the proceedings, rather than simply working in a vaccuum as if
the rest of the film didn't exist. There are certainly worse
fade-outs for a series, especially one as disjointed as this.
The Invisible Man. 1933* Universal. Producer: Carl Laemmle,

Jr. Screenplay: R.C. Sherriff, from the novel by H.G. Wells.
Photography: Arthur Edeson. Special Effects: John P. Fulton.
Editor: Ted Kent. Art Director: Charles D. Hall. Music: W.
Franke Harling. Director: James Whale.
Players: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan, Henry

Travers, Una O'Connor, Forester Harvey, Holmes Herbert, E.E.
Clive, Dudley Digges, Harry Stubbs, Donald Stuart, Merle
Tottenham, Dwight Frye, Walter Brennan. 70 minutes.
The Invisible Man Returns. 1940. Universal. Screenplay: Lester

Cole, Kurt Siodmak. Story: Joe May, Siodmak. Photography:
Milton Krasner. Special Effects: John P. Fulton. Editor: Frank
Gross. Art Directors: Jack Otterson, Martin Obzina. Music:
Frank Skinner, H.J. Salter. Director: Joe May.
Players: Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, Nan Grey, John

Sutton, Cecil Kellaway, Alan Napier, Forrester Harvey. 81
minutes.
The Invisible Woman. 1940. Universal. Screenplay: Robert Lees,

Fred Rinaldo, Gertrude Purcell. Story: Kurt Siodmak, Joe May.
Music: H.J. Salter. Director: A. Edward Sutherland.
Players: Virginia Bruce, John Barrymore, John Howard, Charlie

Ruggles, Oscar Homolka, Charles Lane, Margaret Hamilton,
Thurston Hall, Mary Gordon, Ed Brophy, Shemp Howard, Donald
MacBride, Maria Montez. 73 minutes.
Invisible Agent. 1942. Universal/Frank Lloyd Productions.

Producer: George Waggner. Screenplay: Curtis Siodmak. Music:
H.J. Salter. Director: Edwin L. Marin.
Players: Jon Hall, Ilona Massey, Peter Lorre, Sir Cedric

Hardwicke, J. Edward Bromberg, Albert Basserman, John Litel,
Holmes Herbert, Keye Luke, Philip Van Zandt, Matt Willis. 84
minutes.
The Invisible Man's Revenge. 1944* Universal. Producer: Ford

Beebe. Screenplay: Bertram Milhauser. Music: H.J. Salter.
Director: Ford Beebe.
Players: Jon Hall, Alan Curtis, Evelyn Ankers, Leon Errol,

John Carradine, Gale Sondergaard, Lester Matthews, Halliwell
Hobbes, Doris Lloyd, Billy Bevan, Ian Wolfe, Skelton Knaggs.
77 minutes.
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man. 1950. Universal.

Producer: Howard Christie. Screenplay: Robert Lees, Frank I.
Rinaldo, John Grant. Story: Hugh Wedlock, Jr., Howard Snyder.
Director: Charles Lamont.
Players: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Arthur Franz, Nancy Guild,

Adele Jurgens, Sheldon Leonard, William Frawley, Gavin Muir.
82 minutes.
THE KARLOFF-LUGOSI FILMS
The Black Cat (1934)

The Raven (1935)
The Invisible Ray (1936)
Black Friday (l940)
They number a scant four films— though truth to tell

Universal's "Twin Titans of Terror" appeared in three other
films together, Son of Frankenstein (1939), You'll Find Out
(1940), and The Body Snatcher (1945)— but the films that make
up the "officiaT” Karloff-Lugosi series are among the most
important of all horror films— this despite the fact that only
the first of those films can truly be called a great work with
no reservations. It isn't surprising in the least that a
Karloff-Lugosi series should have sprung up at Universal. What
is surprising is that it took the Laemmles so long to hit upon
this surefire box-office combination. The importance of the
series in many ways lies in what it tells us about the most
famous of all horror stars, the direction of the genre itself,
and the shrewd way in which a studio could market such a
commodity.
When the idea of pairing Lugosi and Karloff came into

being, it had an immediate appeal for the ever-broke and
ever-opportunistic Laemmles. Both players were under contract
to the studio (Karloff somewhat more lucratively since balking
at a salary cut and stalking off to Britain to film The Ghoul
the previous year). Both had followings. The logic seems to
have run that if the studio gave the public both stars for the
price of one, they had to give them very little else indeed.
With this in mind, they chose relative newcomer Edgar G. Ulmer
to helm the first film, gave him virtually no budget, and told
him to go to it. What they had not reckoned on was that Ulmer
was not one to be stymied by budgetary restrictions, having
come up through the European avant garde working in all areas
79
of filmmaking. Not that the studio cared much. What they

wanted was a Karloff-Lugosi vehicle that could be marketed as
such. This they got. They also got one of the most unique
films ever to come from a major studio in any period and a
strikingly controversial one in the bargain. Few films are
still controversial nearly 60 years after the fact. The Black
Cat is and probably always will be.
Ostensibly an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story

(which it most certainly is not), the film is instead an often
exciting mood piece in the strictest Ulmer fashion, detailing
an encounter between two forces— one good, one evil, both
driven, and both somehow spiritually dead— and the effect that
encounter has on an innocent honeymooning couple. On the sur
face this may not seem like the most promising of all horror
film material (though, curiously, most of its plot structure
was duplicated almost slavishly by Don Sharpe's Kiss of the
Vampire [1964]), but Ulmer uses the genre conventions cleverly
to create this theme, and he can hardly be accused of skimping
on the horrors. Within the film's 65 minutes there is a black
mass, an attempted human sacrifice, a man skinned alive,
suggestions of necrophilia and mass murder, etc. The results,
while long on intellectual implications, are certainly not
without horrific incident!
Beyond Ulmer's use of the genre as a springboard for

weightier matters, he also turns the expected horror film
elements in on themselves. After an opening sequence on the
Oriental Express (a much less palatial train than the probably
romanticized version 40 years later in Sidney Lumet's Murder
on the Orient Express) and one on a bus, the bulk of the film
takes place in what by all rights should be Karloff's "old
dark house," but is instead a fantasticated exercise in
Bauhaus-styled architecture with brightly lit expanses of open
space and clean, modern lines. Not only is the house far more
intriguing and exciting than the traditional could ever have
been, its very starkness allowed Ulmer more leeway than a more
elaborate set. Upon close examination, the house as realized
by Ulmer and Universal art director Charles D. Hall is largely
a series of very economical effects, e.g., the huge, lighted
lattice-work wall behind the main staircase is nothing more
than a shrewdly lit painted flat. Moreover, this economy makes
the drama itself stand out in sharp relief, while its very
sterility is a startlingly apt personification of Karloff's
Hjalmar Poelzig's dead soul.
Another economy move that works brilliantly in the film's

favor is its musical score. Without the budget for original

scoring, Ulmer simply had musical director Heinz Roemheld work
up very specific orchestrations of a wide variety of pre
existing— and public domain— compositions by Liszt, Brahms,
Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, and Schumann, some of
which are used as much for the appropriateness of their origin
as their sound and mood. It isn’t all that surprising to find
Ulmer underscoring thefilm's Hungarian milieu with
orchestrated versions of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies, but
the use of Liszt's "Tasso" symphonic poem as the theme for
Lugosi's character is something else again, since the music is
meant to describe the tragic life of the wrongfully imprisoned
poet, Torquato Tasso, who was ultimately freed only to become
a kind of slightly unbalanced and even embarrassing pro
fessional houseguest. If a more appropriate composition for
the character exists, it would be hard to imagine it.
Ulmer's use of music throughout The Black Cat is exemplary

and invariably creative, even daring. Most daring of all,
though, is the lengthy sequence entirely structured— even
choreographed— to the first movement of Schubert's Unfinished
Symphony. Here, the music actually emanates from an explained
source (a modernistic radio set-up), yet all the actions are
carefully planned around it as if the scene were a kind of
musical number— or are the actions a kind of reaction to the
music itself? While no concrete answer is possible, this seems
a likely explanation since so much of Ulmer's basic filmworld
is based on the reactions of his characters to the events
around them— something that interests the filmmaker far more
than the actions themselves.
Visually the film is a stunner from beginning to end, and

gives an idea of just what Ulmer could have done had his
career followed a somewhat more mainstream path of filmmaking
than it did. It is always difficult to pinpoint the exact
contribution of a single artist on a film, so the question
naturally arises as to how much the look of The Black Cat is
owed to cinematographer John J. Mescall. However, other
Mescall collaborations— notably those with James Whale--simply
do not look like The Black Cat, so it seems fair to attribute
the concept of the visual style to Ulmer, regardless of
Mescall's obvious brilliance in carrying it out on film.
While nearly all of the Universal products from this

period are superbly acted, The Black Cat is a standout. It is
certainly the one horror film that truly offers a role
to David Manners that is nearly the equal to those given him

in such non-horror works as Frank Capra’s The Miracle Woman
(1931) and William Dieterle’s The Last Flight (1931)> and
Manners seizes the opportunity giving us one of his most
likable and believable turns at heroics, despite the fact that
he spends most of the climax unconscious only to awaken and
shoot the wrong man! (Stock as this sounds in horror film
terms, it works within the Ulmer framework as bitter irony
born of a reaction to a false impression.) Karloff's Hjalmar
Poelzig is no less impressive with the often lackadaisical
actor offering a fascinating portrait of towering— yet oddly
appealing— evil. Poelzig is undoubtedly the nastiest bit of
goods in the Karloff cannon— a traitor, mass-murderer,
Satanist, necrophiliac, who convinced his best friend's wife
that her husband was dead, married her, murdered her, and then
married her daughter!— but the performance is silky and
so sophisticated that we are left with both a grudging
admiration and pity for a man that we cannot possibly grasp
the nightmare origin of. The real plum, though, is Bela
Lugosi’s Dr. Vitus Werdegast, probably the best film perform
ance of the actor’s career. Unlike Karloff, Lugosi never gave
a half-hearted performance and this was not always in his
favor, since it led to several too rich performances for the
big screen. With a beautifully written— and very moving—
character lined up for him by a filmmaker who seems to have
understood the actor (and a filmmaker one senses the actor
understood), the results are astonishing. Despite the many
fine performances in Lugosi's checkered career, nothing comes
close to the sheer human pathos of this creation. Moreover,
this performance is a large part of the reason that the film
works, since Ulmer's intention is to draw the viewer right
down to the bestial level to which his characters descend and
this is hardly possible if the viewer is not in complete
sympathy with Lugosi’s character. The point is to make us so
empathize with Lugosi that we find ourselves actually rooting
for him to exact the grisly revenge of skinning Karloff alive
before we have a chance to grasp to what level we are
ourselves capable of sinking. Perhaps no other collaboration
of actor and filmmaker (save possibly Sam Peckinpah and Dustin
Hoffman with Straw Dogs [1972]) ever brought this home so
forcefully.
Almost everything that makes The Black Cat a brilliant

film is missing from its instant follow-up, Lew Landers' The
Raven, even though that film is little more than a reshuffling
of The Black Cat with the Karloff-Lugosi roles reversed. The
whole affair has a slipshod air about it— even the credits are
sloppy, incorrectly identifying Spencer Charters (doing a copy

of his standard hypochondriac shtick from the Eddie Cantor
films) and Ian Wolfe in each other's roles! The largest single
flaw is, of course, the absence of Ulmer from a project that
needed him. By the time of The Raven, unfortunately, the
Laemmles had alienated Ulmer by trying to loan him out to Fox
to direct (of all things) a Shirley Temple vehicle (who
thought this was a good idea on any front?), causing him to
break his contract, and set forth on the road of low and
no-budget filmmaking by way of protest. Bringing in virtual
newcomer Landers (formerly a serial director) was undoubtedly
economically sound, but artistically it was something else
again. Landers' visual style rarely went beyond a stand-
'em-up-shoot-'em level, while he obviously had no control over
either of his stars. Karloff's performance as gangster Edmond
Bateman is somewhere in between his worst "don't give a damn"
walk-through and his admittedly enjoyable tendency to poke fun
at a bad— or at the very least silly— role. Lugosi, on the
other hand, gives us a performance of show-stopping intensity
and brilliance, but it is every inch a theatre performance
with little regard for subtlety. Even so, it is hard to fault
him, since so often the theatrical fireworks are the only
recourse of an actor getting no help at all from the director.
On many occasions, Lugosi's flamboyance is all that carries
his character because Landers stages scenes without regard for
characterization or motivation.
Little help at all is forthcoming from David Boem's

revenge motif screenplay, mainly because Boem cannot seem
to decide whether this is seriously intentioned or a wild and
woolly parody of the genre. In this light, Karloff’s approach
is not hard to fathom. Surely, no one could ever have taken
seriously the exchange where Lugosi upbraids Karloff for his
squeamishness by reminding the killer, "In a bank in Arizona,
a man's face was burned, mutilated— the cashier of the bank."
"Well, he tried to get me into trouble. I told him to keep his
mouth shut, but he got the gag out of his mouth and started
yelling for the police," explains Karloff, adding ominously,
"I had the acetyline torch in my hand." "So you put the
burning torch into face! Into his eyes!" gloats Lugosi.
"Well," alibis Karloff lamely, "sometimes you can't help
things like that." Indeed. One might choose to take this and
the script's numerous conveniences (how fortunate that Lugosi
just happens to have an operating room with exactly enough
mirrors for an enraged Karloff to empty his gun into when he
finds himself mutilated by the surgeon!) as tongue in cheek
overkill, but neither the film, nor the players seem so sure.
None of this takes into account The Raven*s central

weakness— the character of Irene Ware's Jean Thatcher. While
it is undeniable that 30s horror film heroines are often no
great shakes on any level, Jean Thatcher is unquestionably the
bottom of the barrel, the nadir, the sewer, the most worth
less excuse for a human being imaginable. The appealing
actress is by no means to blame for this. The part itself is
simply appalling. For the first two plus reels of the film the
woman dotes on Lugosi's character, leading him on shamelessly
out of "gratitude" for saving her life after a car crash. Fair
enough, but then sheis genuinely surprised and even shocked
to realize that the man hasfallen in love with her. Not
content with this, she won't even leave him alone after she
finds out his feelings in the matter. The best that can be
said about her (and I ’ve not even touched on her bargain
basement Isadora Duncan interpretive dancing) is that she is
remarkably stupid. At worst, she is a heartless monster. In
either case, it's hard not to feel that Lugosi's actions are
justified, despite the possible overkill of flattening Miss
Ware and Lester Matthews in a hydraulic "room where the walls
come together."
Parody or horrific misfire, The Raven certainly earned

the ire of the censors and a plethora of religious groups and
assorted bluenoses. Admittedly, the furor surrounding the film
seems silly today when it has been playing uncut on television
for 30 years, but at the time its non-stop parade of torture,
obsession, disfigurement, and general grisliness was enough to
call down a great deal of wrath. More than any other film, The
Raven can be credited with the horror film moratorium that
descended on the industry by 1937, and it certainly isn't
diverting enough to bear that onus, despite a strong Lugosi
performance and a sometimes amusing Karloff one.
Far more interesting and of greater historical signifi

cance is the often overlooked Invisible Ray made by Lambert
Hillyer in 1936. Not without its flaws— especially in John
Colton's overwrought screenplay that attempts to copy the
pattern of the beautifully civilized Galsworthian one he
created for Stuart Walker's Werewolf of London the previous
year— the film is notable for a restrained, almost straight,
Lugosi performance, a wild-eyed Karloff mad scientist that
prefigures his Columbia "Mad Doctor" series, and the fascin
ating image of the science fiction film emerging from the
roots of gothic horror Universal style.
Stylishly directed by horror film newcomer Lambert

Hillyer, The Invisible Ray is also blessed by a stunning Franz

Waxman musical score (though this is occasionally a bit out of
hand), ambitious special effects by John P. Fulton, and
overall excellent production values (even if one can hardly
avoid spotting the third appearance of the control panel with
the "red switch" from The Black Cat [last seen as the control
panel for Lugosi's house in The Raven] as part of Karloff’s
laboratory!).
The film starts off like a straight Universal horror

film— a gloomy castle in the Carpathian Mountains in the
middle of a thunderstorm. Almost at once the surprises begin
when the castle turns out to be a very civilized and pleasant
place. Then, rather than mutterings about supernatural
occurrences, we find Frau Rukh (Violet Kemble Cooper) holding
a dissertation on her son's scientific experiments— "It was on
such a night that Janos first caught his ray from Andromeda.
Your father worked to guide him. I held the detecting lens and
never saw again." It quickly transpires that Diana Rukh
(Frances Drake) is watching for a party of scientists who are
supposed to arrive to witness a demonstration of this
discovery, despite her mother-in-law's reservations. "He's
wrong to demonstrate to these people! Who are they? Pygmies
that laugh at a giant! He's greater than all of them! He sent
for them. If he had waited one day they would have begged—
begged— to come to him!" she declares with the over-the-top
fervour that marks all her speeches. Spotting the car coming
up the grade to the castle, Diana makes her way to Janos'
laboratory, accompanied by far too much musical melodrama, and
here The Invisible Ray crosses into the realm of the truly
mythic. When Diana crosses into the laboratory we are not
greeted with the sight of a Frankensteinian jumble of
electronic gadgetry, but instead a modern laboratory and
observatory (albeit one with a great deal of beautiful, but
obvious, matte work), and with this sight we are ushered out
of the world of the horror film and into the realm that would
become science fiction. Not that the film is ready to abandon
its horror film roots, or its status as a Karloff-Lugosi
vehicle. In fact, The Invisible Ray almost immediately turns
back to its basic box-office raison d 'etre by throwing the two
stars into a headlong confrontation. It is as if Colton knew
that this was exactly what the audience was waiting for and
decided to waste no time on set-up. "Dr. Benet, we meet at
last," opens Karloff upon greeting his most important guest.
"But we already know each other," smiles Lugosi with just a
hint of in-joke. "You've come to see me fail," decides
Karloff. "I've come to see that Sir Francis isn't deceived,"
corrects Lugosi. "Your doubts are very flattering," Karloff

comments. "They are mutual. We have never seen eye to eye,"
reasons Lugosi. "That is because I have always looked 200
years ahead of your theories," sneers Karloff.
The balance between the old and the new is quite nicely
maintained throughout. No sooner have we been given the
Lugosi-Karloff showdown in miniature than we are presented
with the film’s most elaborate and ambitious science fiction
set-piece, Karloff's "tour in time." Today it isn't hard to
feel a bit superior to some of the concepts. The idea that
looking back on the earth from outer space should resemble a
spinning Rand McNally globe without printing on it has long
been laid to rest, for example. Such reservations to one side,
the journey along the beam of light Karloff captures from the
nebula in Andromeda is still astonishing with many of the
effects carrying an almost three-dimensional quality. "A
trick?" asks Sir Francis (Walter Kingsford) at the conclusion.
"No— reality!" assures a taken aback Lugosi, and it is hard
not to believe him.
Unfortunately, little in the bulk of the film quite lives

up to these opening scenes. The film's extended African scenes
benefit from the use of actual exteriors, while Karloff's
discovery of Radium X in a rocky pit comes close to the same
kind of mythic quality found in the opening, (incidentally,
this footage— along with outtakes from the film— later found
its way into the Lugosi serial, The Phantom Creeps.) What
fails to measure up is the plot. The effects for the glow-in-
the-dark Karloff once he becomes poisoned by the element are
excellent, but the occurrence itself is rather mundane, as is
the revenge plot that follows when he becomes convinced that
all concerned have conspired against him to steal his discov
ery and nurture a romance between his wife and a younger, more
personable man (Frank Lawton). Numerous touches delight, such
as Karloff’s symbolic destruction of statues on a church with
each of his revenge murders, and Lugosi's brief turn at
playing a screen detective deducing the identity of the killer
and setting a neat trap for him. Other points are less
satisfying. One has a right to feel safe from the intrusion of
Carl Laemmle's beloved sub-Whale comic Cockneys in a film
taking place in the Carpathian Mountains, Africa, and Paris,
but no sooner does Karloff rent a room than we are presented
with a Mrs. LeGrand— "I'm British to the backbone, but mis
fortunes and a French husband has brought me to Paris
lodgings!" Regardless, The Invisible Ray is an interesting,
creative work from the waning days of the Laemmle regime— one
that truly understands the necessary formula for a Karloff-

Lugosi vehicle in a way their single remaining entry does not.
The best thing that can be said about Arthur Lubin's Black
Friday is that it moves and is slick. It is also the only
outright misfire in the series, something that can be blamed
only on Lubin. As conceived, Lugosi was to have played the
part of Professor Kingsley. Lubin, however, thought the actor
unsuitable for the sympathetic role (obviously, the director
had never seen The Black Cat), replaced him with Stanley
Ridges, and thrust Lugosi into the part of gangster Eric
Marnay. This was all well and good except that the part was
both small and the casting committed the cardinal sin of
giving Lugosi no scenes with Karloff. Ironically, Lugosi's
little eight minute turn is the most memorable aspect of the
film for fans of the actors. Karloff's patented brain-swapping
mad scientist is little more than a non-variation on those he
was portraying in his Columbia series. However, both actors
are put out of the limelight by Ridges' complex character
ization of a man with a brain that is part timid professor of
English literature and part vicious gangster. (Not surpris
ingly, this rather familiar sounding concept came from Kurt
Siodmak and Eric Taylor, and bears a striking similarity to
Siodmak's best-known work, Donovan's Brain.)
Disappointing the film may be, but it is certainly not

unenjoyable. There is a decided charm to its almost perverse
gung-ho Universal!sm. In many ways, Black Friday with its
incessant Hans J. Salter musical score, sharp-edged Elwood
Bredell photography, heavy use of montage effects (calendar
pages turning, clocks moving forward, etc.), and quick pace is
the quintessential 1940s Universal horror picture. The
splendid cast not only includes Karloff, Lugosi, and Ridges
but such echt-Universal luminaries as Anne Nagel (in a meatier
than usual role as a night club singer), Anne Gwynne, Virginia
Brissac, and Edmund MacDonald. In the end, it's a thoroughly
workable, occasionally involving brain-swapping epic that
manages to be fun without ever being remarkable.
Interestingly, both Karloff and Lugosi played gangsters at

various points in their careers. Karloff's gangsters were more
numerous, but generally none too believable unless, like his
shady nightclub owner in Hobart Henley's ultra-slick Night
Vorld (1952), they were clearly unusual. His casting as a
dope-dealing hoodlum in John Francis Dillon's very silly
Behind the Mask (1932) is a masterpiece of poor judgment on
somebody's part as is evident the moment he walks onscreen to
inform a receptionist in pure Karloff tones, "That's all

right, baby, the doc expects me!" Lugosi's infrequent
gangsters (unless we count criminal masterminds like his
Boroff in the Republic serial S.O.S. Coastguard [1937]) tend
to be more menacing and effective. Occasionally, his gangland
creations were used for comic effect as in Jack Hively’s The
Saint's Double Trouble (1940) where his nameless henchman
inquires of a harmonica-playing compatriot, "Can you play
'Home, Sweet Home?’" Eric Marnay, on the other hand, is a
straight portrayal— and a chillingly effective one. It is easy
throughout the film to believe in him as a double-crossing,
cold-blooded killer. Moreover, the characterization is so
complete that his transformation into cowardly hysterics when
Ridges traps him in a closet to suffocate seems the logical
extension of some weakness hinted at from our first glimpse of
him. It is a brilliant supporting turn (hardly the above-the-
title star turn the credits and advertising suggest) in a
tight little film that just isn't the work we should like it
to be as the swan song of the greatest horror duo of all.
The Black Cat. 1934* Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr. Screenplay:

Peter Ruric. Story: Edgar G. Ulmer, Peter Ruric.
Cinematographer: John J. Mescall. Musical Direction: Heinz
Roemheld. Direction: Edgar G. Ulmer.
Players: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Jacqueline

Wells, Lucille Lund, Harry Cording, Egon Brecher, Henry
Armetta, John Carradine. 65 minutes.
The Raven. 1935* Producer: Universal. Screenplay: David Boehm.

Cinematographer: Charles Stumar. Director: Louis Friedlander
(Lew Landers).
Players: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Irene Ware, Lester

Matthews, Samuel S. Hinds, Spencer Charters, Ian Wolfe.
62 minutes.
The Invisible Ray. 1936. Producer: Edmund Grainger.

Screenplay: John Colton. Cinematographer: George Robinson.
Special Effects: John P. Fulton. Music: Franz Waxman.
Director: Lambert Hillyer.
Players: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Frances Drake, Frank

Lawton, Beulah Bondi, Walter Kingsford, Violet Kemble Cooper,
Frank Reicher. 81 minutes.
Black Friday. 1940. Associate Producer: Burt Kelly.

Screenplay: Kurt Siodmak, Eric Taylor. Cinematographer: Elwood

Bredell. Musical Direction: Hans J. Salter. Director: Arthur
Lubin.
Players: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Stanley Ridges, Anne

Nagel, Anne Gwynne, Virginia Brissac, Edmund MacDonald, Paul
Fix, Murray Alper, Jack Mulhall, Joe King, John Kelly. 70
minutes.
THE TOD SLAUGHTER BARNSTORMING FILMS
Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn (1935)

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)
It’s Never Too Late to Mend (1937)
The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1937)
Ticket-of-Leave Man (1938)
Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror (1938)
The Face at the Window (1939)
The Crimes at Dark House (1940)
Great Britain's answer to Karloff and Lugosi (and just

about anybody else), Tod Slaughter, was certainly the nastiest
bit of goods ever to come down the cinematic pike. Far removed
from either the budget or the creative wherewithal of the
Hollywood product, the series of creaky melodramas turned out
with Slaughter by producer-director George King (known in
Britain as "King of the Quickies") for five straight years are
wild and woolly tongue-in-cheek affairs, notable for a zestful
sense of warped playfulness and the thoroughly outrageous
personality of their star.
Possessing neither the polish, nor the charm of

Universal’s "Twin Titans of Terror," Slaughter was content to
merely revel in larger than life villainy for its own sake,
tugging at a succession of patently phony crepe beards (often
slightly crooked and threatening to drop off), stroking a
variety of only marginally less spurious mustaches, while
tipping the audience a huge wink at his lechery, lust,
avarice, cowardice, and even outright cruelty. Much the same
might be said of the films themselves, which couldn't compete
with their American counterparts on the level of production
values. Rather than follow the path of the Hollywood indepen
dents and ignore this fact (invariably resulting in quite
unintentional mirth), the Slaughter films opted not to
compete, but to be something else again— openly rough, proudly
old-fashioned, and meant to be laughed with in a good-humored
91
manner by savvy friends in on the joke. Unfortunately, this

approach was ahead of its time with the few American viewers
who saw the films on their original releases through minor
U.S. distributors. It wasn't until the films found a home on
late night television that they also found a place in the
hearts of a select few horror fans— a group that has blessedly
grown in numbers with the release of the films through various
videocassette outlets.
When the 50 year old Slaughter made his film debut, he had
already been touring the provinces in a selection of barn
stormers for years (amid much fanfare and unsavoury rumors
about recruiting actors from insane asylums!). It was King's
notion to bring these Slaughter stage vehicles to the screen
more or less intact. To this end, he chose to showcase his
star in the fifth film adaptation of a true life crime from
1827, Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn (previous
versions having been made in 1902, 1908, 1913, and 1928), and
to import ("by arrangement with Gaumont British") actor-
director Milton Rosmer to helm the proceedings.
Rosmer's film is neither the most outrageous, nor most

enjoyable of the Slaughter epics, but it is in many ways the
best made— and it clearly established the basic architecture
for the series. With the marginal exception of Sexton Blake
and the Hooded Terror, all of the films follow the basic
pattern of Rosmer's film with little structural deviation.
Occasionally, later films even directly copy the parent work.
The film opens not with the story but with a provincial
theatre putting on "that stirring drama" Maria Marten. The
theatre's manager introduces the characters of the play to us,
ultimately coming to the nefarious Squire Corder— "a villain,
whose blood may be blue, but whose heart is as black as
night." Corder bows and smirks while the manager candidly
informs us, "That’s Tod Slaughter himself!" With such an
introduction it's too bad that very little in the film quite
measures up, perhaps because Squire Corder's crimes are fairly
tame in light of later, more colorful adventures.
Even with some reservations about the flamboyance of the

adventures themselves, there is no denying that Slaughter
himself is in fine form, enjoying his every dastardly deed,
and urging us to sneer along. This is not too hard to do
either, since the heroine is not herself very likable and is
very dim in the bargain. After all, any heroine who can be so
brazenly seduced by Slaughter and then seem genuinely
surprised that she has mysteriously become pregnant cannot lay

claim to a brain of Einsteinian proportions. That she should
then fall for promises of matrimony from the man is beyond all
reason, especially since such an alliance would prevent his
financially rewarding marriage to a "psalm singing spinster."
Yet the poor girl appears quite shocked when Slaughter spirits
her away to the red barn and keeps his promise to make her a
bride--"a bride of death!" The troublesome girl is neatly put
out of the way with a single shot and cavalierly buried in the
barn. All in all, it rather seems to serve her right. Of
course, Slaughter's deed finally catches up with him and he is
made to dig up the corpse himself in an hilarious demonstra
tion of blatantly unethusiastic digging. (For some reason,
Slaughter's characters never try to bluff it out, since his
cry of "Damn you all," upon being forced to dig further is a
fairly outright admission of guilt!)
Nearer the mark in terms of pure Slaughter is Sweeney

Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which was directed by
George King himself, who apparently no longer felt the need of
Rosmer's services. Frankly, he could have here used them for
the film is no great shakes in terms of cinematic creativity,
looking far shabbier than its predecessor. The film's merits,
however, outshine its shortcomings in presenting us with one
of Slaughter's most outrageously evil villains, and, because
of its subject matter, is easily the best known of the series.
Any film which features a murderous barber who specializes in
slitting the throats of returning sea travellers— wealthy
travellers that is— and turning the corpses over to his
accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, so that she can convert them into
meat pies to sell to the patrons of her bake shop is not
likely to go unnoticed. Strangely, for such a well-known
(possibly fact based) British legend the film goes out of its
way to downplay its cannibalistic aspects, settling on merest
suggestion despite the fact that every English schoolboy was
well aware of the story.
None of the film's shortcomings much matter in light of

its preservation of Slaughter at his most notorious, and
regardless of Stephen Sondheim's highly popular— and much
intellectualized— musical play of the story, the Slaughter
version is definitive. Certainly his portrayal of the fiendish
barber is the yardstick by which all pretenders to the striped
pole must be measured. And no one has much hope of getting as
much out of such knowing lines as "You have a lovely throat
for the razor," and "i'll soon polish you off" as Slaughter.
Once again, the story of the film is distanced from the

viewer by the use of a framing device. Here, the tale of
Sweeney Todd is being told by a worshipful barber as he
lathers up a customer for a shave, ultimately terrifying the
hapless victim into soapy flight down a busy 1936 London
Street rather than submit to the razor. The device works well
since it allows the viewer to more readily accept the
conventions of Strong Meat melodrama without questioning them
too closely.
Less well known, but far better is The Crimes of Stephen

Hawke, Slaughter's first 1937 release. Overall, the film is
much the same as its predecessors, but King's direction is
more assured this round and the story is quite as strong as
that of Sweeney Todd. The events of the film are wild and
woolly and utterly improbable, while even the very half
hearted efforts to make Slaughter sympathetic by affording him
a loving foster daughter and one-legged henchman do not get in
the way of the nefarious fun. Indeed, when Slaughter comes to
his sticky end, claiming to have done all his misdeeds for the
sake of his ward, one is justifiably suspicious of the
sincerity of the man who just spent anhour chuckling glee
fully as he snapped victims' spines.
Adding to the charm of the proceedings is a wonderful

framing device that is streets ahead of the ones already used
on Maria Marten and Sweeney Todd. The Crimes of Stephen Hawke
opens with a look at a radio station where a programme called
In Town Tonight is being broadcast. After some preliminary
foolishness with a duo going by the unlikely name of Flotsam
and Jetsam (sounding rather like the Happiness Boys they sing
about then-current news events in a mildly satirical fashion)
and an hysterical and somewhat distasteful interview with a
"cat's meat man" (a gent who provides horse meat for the
family pet), the show shifts to our hero. "Far removed from
horse slaughter is another Slaughter we have with us in the
studio tonight. I refer to that well-known actor of old
melodrama, Mr. Tod Slaughter," the announcer informs us,
adding, "Mr. Slaughter has murdered thousands of people and
been hanged thousands of times— on the stage, of course."
"Yes, and I'm still alive to tell the tale!" gleefully
announces Slaughter taking center stage. "In my career I've
murdered hundreds and hundreds of people and come to a sticky
end more times than I care to remember!" he proudly tells us.
When asked to comment on favorite methods of murder, Slaughter
becomes expansive— "I keep a perfectly open mind on the
matter. I murder by strangulation, shooting, stabbing— or with
a razor. In Maria Marten I murdered poor Maria by shooting

her— in the red barn. In Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of
Fleet Street I polished dozens of them off with my razor!”
Then as now the raison d'etre for a star's appearance on a
talk show revolved around plugging a new offering. "The desire
for Strong Meat is so wide that I am now appearing in a new
old melodrama," he tells the announcer, who asks if such a
thing exists. "Most certainly!" Slaughter assures the man,
explaining, "Take Stephen Hawke for instance— as double-
crossing a villain and racketeer as ever lived. A kindly old
gentleman and yet a fiend— terrorizing the whole countryside
so that no man, woman, or child knew peace or safety!" As
melodramatic music rises on the soundtrack the camera tracks
in to a close-up of the actor and the story proper begins.
Wasting no time in proving Slaughter's assessment of

his latest creation, the film first shows us this kindly old
gentleman casing a likely manor house for an impending
robbery. Interrupted at his work by an obnoxious brat ("My
father doesn't keep a garden for nasty common people like you
to look at"), he promises to show the lad a "paradoxical
taradiddlum" he has brought back from India, whereupon he
promptly breaks the boy's spine (a habit that has earned Hawke
the professional name of "The Spine Breaker"). Slaughter may
lack the wherewithal of his Hollywood counterparts, but they
have nothing on him when it comes to sheer deep-dyed villainy.
Despite the fact that Hawke keeps up a veneer of respect

ability as a "friendly" money-lender, it is difficult to
understand how his perfidy goes unnoticed. In his legitimate
capacity he is anything but compassionate, turning a widow and
her children out into the street when she cannot meet her
small financial obligation (and complaining bitterly when her
worldly goods fetch slightly less than twice her debt!). He
openly blackmails hapless society folk in his debt into
setting up jewel robberies for him, and thinks nothing of
snapping his best friend's spine when the man gets too close
to the truth. All of this is carried out with only the
slightest regard for appearances.
Despite the strong reliance on the previous films for its

structure (the screenplay even repeats the basic set-up of the
ending of Maria Marten with Slaughter and a one-shot pistol
holding his attackers at bay), Frederick Hayward's script
provides Slaughter with some of his richest moments and ripest
dialogue. In one memorable scene Hawke has an encounter with a
"lecherous brute" out to marry his daughter. Since we are in
on the game, this affords Slaughter the opportunity to make

his murderous intentions perfectly clear to us while appearing
to remain cordial— even subservient— to his would-be son-in-
law, suggesting they get together alone some evening to "come
to grips on the matter," and assuring him that "when the
moment comes yo u ’ll find me behind you!"
King's direction of The Crimes of Stephen Hawke is not

markedly different from that of Sweeney Todd. The use of long
takes and relatively few close-ups is still very much in
evidence, signifying the film's budgetary limitations in terms
of shooting schedule. However, in this film the approach works
in his favor. The camerawork is surprisingly fluid and the end
effect is that of a deftly preserved theatrical event— clearly
a theatre piece, but not stagebound— with the florid acting
styles ably abetting that feeling.
From new old melodrama to old old melodrama Slaughter's

other 1937 release, a filming of the Charles Reade
barnstormer, I t 's Never Too Late to Mend (directed by David
MacDonald), is something of a comedown— at least in terms of
mayhem. Here, Slaughter's Squire Meadows is simply an
unpleasant and unscrupulous villain who decides to put his
romantic rival out of the way by having him unjustly
imprisoned. The film's most notable assets are Slaughter's
mustache (his first onscreen), which he strokes with unbridled
glee at the first twinge of an evil thought, and his
unfettered lechery. Without question, Squire Meadows is
Slaughter's most libidinous creation— at least until the
advent of Sir Percival Glyde in Crimes at the Dark House.
Slaughter’s 1938 films, The Ticket of Leave Man and Sexton

Blake and the Hooded Terror, are an interesting study in
contrasts, since the first is more old old melodrama, while
the second, and more intriguing, is a largely successful
transference of the conventions of the Strong Meat melodrama
to modern times. It is also unique in that it pits Slaughter's
Michael Laron (alias the Snake) against a hero who is
(supposedly, at least) his equal. (One cannot butwonder at
this when, confronted by Slaughter in complete hooded secret
society regalia with a large sequin cobra emblazoned across
his robe, the great detective deduces, "You, I presume, are
the Snake.") Sexton Blake— even in the capably stalwart hands
of George Curzon— is a decidedly sub-Sherlock Holmes
detective, but he is still considerably more of a worthy
adversary than the usual run of hot-headed romantic leads that
generally cross his path. Moreover, it is the only Slaughter
vehicle in which he does not meet his traditional sticky

end— presumably in the hopes of a series of films that, alas,
did not materialize.
What did materialize, though, was The Face at the Window

in 1939, Slaughter’s magnum opus and a fine horror film in its
own right. Make no mistake, the film is every inch a Slaughter
vehicle— ripe and outrageous— but it also boasts a more than
usually credible atmosphere, while the image of the ’’Face" is
still a nicely chilling one. The laughs are still there
(indeed, the film is dedicated to everyone who enjoys a
"shudder or a chuckle" at this type of melodramatic jiggery-
pokery) , but The Face at the Window comes across as singularly
proficient at delivering the goods on an horrific level. If
anything, the juxtaposition of Slaughter's wild-eyed skull
duggery with the more unsettling aspects of the film's more
than usually overt horror film conventions makes those conven
tions even more effective.
More than most Slaughter vehicles The Face at the Window

is largely a series of very effective set-pieces, woven into a
shrewdly built overall fabric of increasing excitement and
revelation. We aren't surprised that most of Slaughter's more
unwholesome deeds take place offscreen, but this works—
intentionally or not— in thefilm's favor, since each
murderous event is shown in increasing detail, making the
crimes appear to be more and more horrific. At bottom, of
course, the film is a vehicle for Slaughter’s magnificent
villainy.
Before the film is very old Slaughter's Chevalier Del

Gardo is up to his expected tricks. (As usual, Slaughter's
character is supposedly taken for a pillar of respectability,
despite having a hand in every crooked scheme and vice offered
in Paris— not to mention the fact that the Chevalier's often
cockeyed beard is the most dubious of all Slaughter's facial
adornments, surely good cause for suspicion in itself.) His
offer to deposit a large sum of money in the heroine's
father's bank (which, coincidentally, he put in jeopardy by
robbing in the film's opening scene) comes with the proviso
that the young lady join him in connubial bliss. When she
rejects his attractive offer owing to her feelings for
another, Slaughter requests only a farewell kiss. Much to her
surprise, he passes up the cheek she turns toward him for a
full-blown on-the-lips osculation that finds her in his arms
and virtually dipped to the floor. More, he is hardly the
properly abashed suitor he portrays, preferring instead to go
straight to the police to cast suspicion on her true love for

the robbery he committed. Taking no chances in the matter, he
then pays a call at his favorite watering hole, The Blind Rat,
for a quick absinthe and a spot of framing. When this ploy
fails due to Slaughter’s own carelessness, he decides to do
away with the girl's father (who has learned the truth). This
accomplished, the man then has the astounding nerve to call on
the family to pay his condolences before the body is cold,
asking a last moment alone with his old friend. No tears are
shed, though, for Slaughter's mission is somewhat different—
he takes the opportunity to nudge the corpse with his foot in
order to be assured of the results of his crime!
The most famous aspect of The Face at theWindow in any of

its incarnations— play and earlier films— is its science
fiction oriented revival of a corpse so that the murdered man
can name his killer. This is an unbelievably complicated
situation to begin with, since the victim had already started
writing the name of his assassin— "The name of 'The Wolf' is
Luc. . ." Thanks to skillful writing this happens to equally
implicate hero Lucien Cortier and villain Lucio Del Gardo! The
science fiction element is very played down, since Lucien has
to resort to a trick (substituting his comic relief sidekick
for the corpse) to pull off the scheme exposing Slaughter.
While this sort of "rational explanation" is often irritating
to modern viewers, it works here on its owngood humor with
Slaughter boasting, "No living man can stand against me for it
has taken a corpse to disclose my identity!" "That's where
y o u ’re wrong!" reveals the suddenly animated corpse, causing
Slaughter to take a wild shot at the man. "You've unmasked
'The Wolf,' cries Slaughter, "but the secret of 'The Face at
the Window' remains!" With this superb theatricalism, he then
leaps through the window for a hasty retreat in the river.
Even better is the final scene where the police track

Slaughter to his home and interrupt his attempts at removing
"The Face," an endeavour accompanied by some of Slaughter's
most florid— and shamelessly expository— dialogue. "So, my
lovely foster brother, I must send you on a long journey, eh,"
he tells the caged horror of the title, explaining, "You see,
I promised the mother that succored both of us that I ’d keep
you hidden from mortal eyes, and for forty years I've kept
that promise— for those who gazed on your hideousness are
straightaway closed in death, the cold iron of me dagger
straight between their shoulder blades! Now, my pretty foster
brother, the secret is in danger. If I hadn't given me
promise, I ’d gladly have shown you to the whole of Paris! So I
must give you to the cold arms of the river!" All of this
afford the police ample time to break in on him before he can
slide his charge through a secret passage into the Seine, "Get
out! You shan’t see him! I promised her! I promised her! Go
away!" he cries, blocking the cage from their sight and
thereby positioning himself for a throttling by the betrayed
"Face," an event that sends the pair of them to a watery grave
for the fade-out.
Still very much a cheaply made film, The Face at the

Vindow made the most of what it had at hand. The effective
canned music score on the film had been used— less success
fully— in some of the earlier films. In fact, the romantic
theme used for the heroine here is the same music that had
seen service over the main titles of Sweeney Todd. However,
the budget was obviously a little higher than usual and both
the extra money and care were evident on the screen. This paid
off handsomely for King so the next outing was deliberately
even more ambitious, though not so successful.
Crimes at the Dark House ("based on theworld-famous

novel, The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins") was clearly
designed to be the end-all be-all Slaughter vehicle with
solid production values throughout (even if the main credits
were backed by the music from The Face at the Window)— and it
nearly succeeds. The film's very opening presents Slaughter
(unbelievably attired in a plaid lumberjack shirt and yet
another of those beards in an attempt to make him appear rough
and ready) in the raining fields of Australia, where he creeps
into the tent of the sleeping Sir Percival Glyde, drives a peg
through the man's skull, steals his jewels, and then assumes
his identity when he learns his victim has just become a
baronet, inheriting a great estate. This is heady stuff and no
mistake, but the subsequent events feel just a little too much
like a compendium of Slaughter's dirtiest deeds to attain the
level of effectiveness of the previous film. Crimes even goes
so far as to present a miniature version of Maria Marten with
the bogus Sir Percival having his way with a serving girl,
promising matrimony, and doing away with her by making her
another "bride of death." Reservations apart, there are some
splendid moments in this well-crafted film.
The entire notion of Slaughter (minus the beard, but with

a nicely strokable mustache) passing himself off as Sir
Percival is played for its amusement value. Ho sooner has he
set foot on the grounds of his ancestral estate than he
determines that his housekeeper came after his departure for
Australia. "Then you don’t remember me as a boy. Are there any

servants here who do?" he bluntly inquires. Finding that there
aren't, he happily mutters, "Pity— great pity," before
settling in to lust over the best looking of the house's
maids. The family lawyer, on the other hand, did know Sir
Percival as a boy. Lesser mortals might waffle at this, but
Slaughter simply brazens it out. "I'd never have known you
again," remarks the solicitor. "No, and I should never have
known you, but then time does alter one, doesn't it?" chortles
Slaughter in a burst of almost obscene good fellowship. When
the man has the poor taste to want to be assured of the heir's
identity by seeing the mole that ought to be on Slaughter's
hip, he is rewarded— and silenced— by an outraged cry, "Damn
it, sir, are you asking me to remove my trousers?" Unfortu
nately, what Slaughter himself does not know is that he has
not inherited anything other than a heavily mortgaged estate
and a mountain of debts. But there is light at the end of the
tunnel when he learns that he is engaged to a young woman of
means. "The lady is young and comely, I hope," asks the greedy
Slaughter. The solicitor admits that she is young, but that he
has never met her and cannot vouch for her attractiveness.
"But that point is of no importance," the man assures
Slaughter. "It may not be to you, but it is of importance to
me if she is to share my bed," Slaughter counters, lascivious
ly stroking his mustache in anticipation of such an alliance,
the prospect of which becomes even sweeter when apprised of
the extent of her fortune. "How could I disobey my dear
father?" enthuses Slaughter over the standing wish that he
marry this worthy woman. As is to be expected, the lady in
question has ideas of her own, having fallen in love with her
drawing master, but this is a small matter compared to other
difficulties awaiting Slaughter.
Another aspect of the inheritance he has usurped is the

fact that his unwilling benefactor was not himself a model of
taste and decorum as becomes evident when Slaughter is visited
by the shifty Dr. Fosco and a lady claiming to have borne a
daughter to Sir Percival. "It's a foul, beastly lie! I have
never set eyes on this woman before!" exclaims Slaughter in a
rare moment of truth. The lady readily admits this is so since
she knows he is not Sir Percival Glyde. "This is either insan
ity or blackmail! I leave others to determine which!" he
blusters, ejecting them from the premises, but subsequently
entering into an "arrangement" with the oily Fosco, who tells
Slaughter of the case of the locked-away daughter with "a
pathological hatred of her father." "She _is safely guarded, I
hope!" wonders Slaughter not unreasonably. Having come to an
agreement with the doctor Slaughter cautions him, "Be loyal to

your trust and it will pay you handsomely. Betray it and I'll
feed your entrails to the pigs!" One cannot doubt the
sincerity of at least the second part of this caveat.
Subjecting his fiancee to the same treatment he offered

his lady love in The Face at the Window (this time as a kiss
"to seal the engagement"), Slaughter forces her into this
unseemly alliance with undue haste. His joy at the impending
nuptials is short-lived when he learns that his supposed
daughter has escaped from Fosco's sanitarium and is seeking to
revenge her mother by disposing of her father. Worse, his pet
chambermaid has become pregnant and must also be dealt with.
Rather obviously, this impersonation business is not without
its pitfalls. Realizing what must be done, he promises
marriage, telling her, "Go and pack yourself a few things,
you're going on a journey. Yes! A very long journey!"
Gleefully sending her on this journey, he goes ahead with his
matrimonial plans, even though he has to force himself on the
very unwilling lady.
When it transpires that she will not sign over control of

her fortune to him, he decides that inheriting this money will
do just as nicely. Putting the "mother of his child" out of
the way draws the escaped "woman in white" out of hiding
whereupon he does away with her (by positioning the gravely
ill girl's bed in front of an open window with a hurricane
force winter gale blowing on her!) as soon as he sees that she
is a dead ringer for Lady Glyde, so that he may substitute his
wife for the mad girl and have her put away with the world
assuming her dead of pneumonia! This over-elaborate plan might
have worked were it not for the fact that Slaughter decides to
cheat Fosco out of his rightful blackmail money, causing the
shady medico to tell the truth about Sir Percival's secret
marriage to the mother of the woman in white, while Lady
Glyde's true love discovers her in the asylum. Cheerfully
throttling Fosco, Slaughter wastes a good deal of time trying
to rape his sister-in-law ("You little she-devil!" he cries in
delight when she tries to split his skull with a vase!), while
the recovering Fosco heads for the church records that will
prove his accusations. His advances interrupted by the arrival
of Lady Glyde and her lover, Slaughter then attempts (for no
very rational reason by this time) to thwart Fosco, which he
does by hanging him with the church bell rope ("You always
said you were a tea-totaler! You're going to have a nice drop
now!"). Rather stupidly, he then sets fire to the incrim
inating records only to find himself trapped in the burning
building and succumbing to the flames for a spectacularly

sticky end.
For its flaws— over-familiarity and simply not being The

Face at the Window— Crimes at the Dark House is a rousing
finale to the Slaughter-King collaboration. Even when
Slaughter started making films, his brand of melodrama was
old-fashioned; by 1940 it was positively archaic. Moreover,
the war was on and the British censor took advantage of this
to ban all horror films outright, sounding the death knell for
a very colorful series of films. Slaughter returned to his
first love— barnstorming the provinces as Sweeney Todd, Squire
Corder, etc.— only to attempt a return to the screen after the
war. Times had changed, though, and King who, whatever his
faults as a filmmaker, had understood and appreciated
Slaughter’s talents, had moved on to other things. The
resulting film, The Curse of the Wraydons, was a reworking of
the stage melodrama (of c o u r s e ^ Spring-Heeled Jack, the
Terror of London. Though wild enough in terms of plot—
Slaughter played Jack the Ripper in a revenge motif story that
had him eluding the police with the aid of a time machine-like
gadget— the film did not do especially well at the box-office
and now appears to be lost. A final big screen effort, The
Greed of William Hart, which cast Slaughter (with a ghastly
Stage Irish accent) as one half of a thinly veiled Burke and
Hare graverobbing team, did not return him to his pre-War
status, nor did a brief stint at TV work (thesefilms later
surfaced as very low budget features), and Britain’s unique—
and uniquely wonderful— "Horror Man" ended his days as he had
begun them— as a colorful character endlessly tramping the
boards in his stock variety of villainous guises. But he left
behind him a remarkable series of films from his days with
George King, including one of the very few true classic
British horror films of the 1950s, The Face at the Window.
Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn. 1955* Ambassador

Film Productions. Produced by George King. Screenplay by
Randall Faye. Cinematographer: George Stretton. Directed by
Milton Rosmer.
Players: Tod Slaughter, Sophie Stewart, Eric Portman, Ann

Trevor, D.J. Williams, Clare Greet, Quentin McPhearson,
Antonia Brough, Gerrard Tyrrell, Dennis Hoey, Stella Rho.
67 minutes.
Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. 1936.

Ambassador Film Productions. Produced and Directed by George
King. Screenplay: Frederick Hayward, H.F. Maltby, from the

play by George Didbin-Pitt.
Players: Tod Slaughter, Bruce Seton, Eve Lister, Stella Rho,

Ben Soutten, D.J. Williams, Jerry Verno, John Singer. 68
minutes.
The Crimes of Stephen Hawke. 1937* Ambassador Film

Productions. Produced and Directed by George King. Screenplay
by Frederick Hayward.
Players: Tod Slaughter, Marjorie Taylor, Eric Portman, Gerald

Barry, Ben Soutten, D.J. Williams, Charles Penrose, Norman
Pierce, Flotsam and Jetsam. 69 minutes.
It1s Never Too Late to Mend. 1937- Ambassador Film

Productions. Produced by George King. Screenplay by H.F.
Maltby, from the play by Charles Reade. Directed by David
MacDonald.
Players: Tod Slaughter, Marjorie Taylor, Jack Livesey, Ina

Colin, Lawrence Hanray, D.J. Williams, Roy Russell, Johnny
Singer. 67 minutes.
The Ticket of Leave Man. 1938. Ambassador Film Productions.

Produced and Directed by George King. Screenplay by H.F.
Maltby and A.R. Rawlinson, from the play by Tom Taylor.
Players: Tod Slaughter, Marjorie Taylor, John Warwick, Robert

Adair, Frank Cochran, Peter Gawthorne, Jenny Lynn, Arthur
Payne. 71 minutes.
Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror. 1938. Ambassador Film

Productions. Produced and Directed by George King. Original
Story: Pierre Quiroule. Screenplay by A.R. Rawlinson.
Cinematography: H.M. Glendining. Musical Direction: Jack
Beaver.
Players: George Curzon, Tod Slaughter, Greta Gynt, David

Farrar, Tony Sympson, Claries Oliver, Marie Wright, Norman
Pierce, H.B. Hallam, Billy Watts, Pedro the dog. 70 minutes.
The Face at the Window. 1939* Penant-British Lion Film

Corporation. Produced and Directed by George King. Screenplay
by A.R. Rawlinson. Treatment by Ronald Fayre. From the play by
Brooke Warren. Cinematography: Hone Glendining. Music: Jack
Beaver.
Players: Tod Slaughter, John Warwick, Marjorie Taylor, Aubrey

Mallalieu, Robert Adair, Wallace Evenett, Leonard Henry, Kay
Lewis, Billy Shine, Margaret Yarde, Harry Terry. 65 minutes.
Crimes at the Dark House. 1940. Penant-British Lion Film

Corporation. Produced by Odette King. Screenplay by Frederick
Hayward, Edward Dryhurst, H.F. Maltby, from the novel, The
Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Cinematography: Hone
Glendining. Music: Jack Beaver. Directed by George King.
Players: Tod Slaughter, Sylvia Marriott, Hilary Eaves,

Geoffrey Wardwell, Hay Petrie, Margaret Yarde, Rita Grant,
David Horne, Elsie Wagstaff, David Kerr. 69 minutes.
THE COLUMBIA-KARLOFF "MAD DOCTOR” FILMS
The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)

Before I_ Hang (1940)
The Man with Nine Lives (1940)
The Devil Commands (1941)
The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942)
Even though Boris Karloff dabbled extensively in the role

of the mad doctor elsewhere, his set of five Columbia
programmers is perhaps his most concentrated and remembered
excursion into that realm. Oddly, the resulting films, while
fondly recalled, are not terribly exciting and his doctors are
generally more overzealous or at worst unhinged than outright
mad. Certainly they are nowhere near the lip-smacking
megalomania of Bela Lugosi in any number of not dissimilar
roles, nor even Karloff's own wild-eyed Janos Rukh in The
Invisible Ray. If such a thing exists, these mad doctors might
be called dignified but deranged. This is what makes the
series unique. It is also what makes it rather tepid in many
respects.
The initial entry, The Man They Could Not Hang, undeniably
has its moments. Like the next two the film was directed by
the generally faceless Nick Grinde, whose most striking work
is likely the 1930 Philo Vance mystery, The Bishop Murder
Case, where Grinde achieved a dark-edged atmosphere that
creeps right into the viewer's bones. Little of that
atmosphere carries over into his Karloff pictures, but he
handles the assignments with admirable seriousness and an
effectively leisurely pace that matches Karloff's laid-back
performances. However, it is almost a drawback in this first
film, which boasts a wild and woolly revenge plot cribbed to
some extent from Lew Landers' The Raven.
Karloff is Dr. Henryk Savaard, a scientist who has

developed an artificial heart. At least that's the film's
105
claim. The device itself is a neat little series of tubes and

glass containers that seems to do little more than stimulate a
stopped heart into restarting and isn't all that awe-inspiring
anymore. Nonetheless, Karloff’s zeal in proving that this
gizmo works leads him to have his assistant play guinea pig.
Alas, the young man's girlfriend (Ann Doran) takes under
standable exception to the idea and brings on the police.
Motivationally, this is a little weak since the woman waits
until her betrothed is quite dead prior to summoning the law,
thereby preventing Karloff from even attempting to revive him.
It is functional, though, since it sets the plot in motion,
and that’s about all it needs to do. Despite the claim of the
film's title, the experiment results in Karloff's execution by
hanging, and his subsequent return to life at the hands of his
assistant, Lang (Byron Foulger). Unfortunately, as so often
seems the case in such dramas, death has brought about a
change of heart in Karloff, who now views himself as a freak
("Lazarus the second— fifty cents to look, a dollar to
touch!"), and is out to revenge himself on the judge, jury,
and district attorney, along with the young lady who caused
all the trouble.
The final stretch of the film is devoted to Karloff

gathering his supposed enemies in his house which has been
decked out with an unlikely array of equipment designed to
imprison them while he exacts his revenge. Ridiculous as all
this is (the switch from kindly Dr. Savaard to murderous Dr.
Savaard simply isn't believable) it is also very enjoyable.
The mere fact that Karloff turns from one of his most
dignified and cultured characters into one of his most
lispingly menacing (only the change from gangster to mutilated
manservant in The Raven is more pronounced) is fun, since, in
essence, what the actor "turns into" is every overstated Boris
Karloff impression ever attempted! The Raven-like boiler-plate
covered windows, the electrified ornamental gate, Karloff
lurching through the dark brandishing a rifle with a lighted
sight, and the final plot device in which his daughter (Lorna
Gray) electrocutes herself to bring him back to his senses are
all splendidly melodramatic. The fact that none of this quite
fits the earlier part of the film is relatively unimportant
when one considers how downright boring The Man They Could Not
Hang would be without its last act dramatics.
More sober all around— and less entertaining— is The Man

with Nine Lives, which presents Karloff as Dr. Leon Kravaal
(where did they get those monickers?), a scientist who
disappeared in between his arrest and trial for murder. This
The Columbia-Karloff "Mad Doctor” Films 107
time out Karloff had been monkeying about with suspended

animation by freezing people, a specialty taken up— and
legitimized— by Roger Pryor after the doctor's disappearance.
Thinking that Kravaal's notebooks might hold secrets undreamed
of, Pryor and his girlfriend dutifully head off to the missing
scientist's Old Dark House (secluded on a private island no
less) to have a look around. Instead of merely uncovering some
records, they discover Karloff and a variety of his pursuers
and detractors on ice in the caves beneath the house. Drastic
though this may be, it has proven Karloff’s suspended anima
tion theories. Who, even among his most hardened detractors,
is likely to dispute their validity upon finding himself
defrosted ten years after the fact? Regardless of this defin
itive taste of proof pudding, a good deal of animosity remains
in his frozen companions and from this the film draws its
rather limited dramatic power. The underground ice chambers
and admittedly intriguing looking chunks of ice give the film
a certain visual quality that outlasts its overall
claustrophobic setting and ho-hum plot mechanics, but it just
isn't enough. The best screenwriter Karl Brown can come up
with for a climax is to repeat the process of the first film
by having Karloff actually demonstrate his theories by way of
medical emergency. The only variation lies in the marginal
departure that he does not take his great secret to the grave
with him as he had done in The Man They Could Not Hang.
Slightly better, but just as ill-advisedly restrained, is

Before I Hang, Grinde's last entry in the series. For a change
Karloff plays the less improbably named Dr. John Garth, who,
for variation, is hard at work on a rejuvenation formula, and,
for no real change at all, finds himself on the wrong side of
the law when he engages in a spot of euthanasia. This is
hardly world-beater material in light of its marked similarity
to the works that precede it. (it should come as no shock that
Karl Brown had a hand in the story, if not the script.) A
better than average cast, including venerable Edward Van Sloan
in a late in the day performance as a sympathetic prison
doctor, helps buoy the material, while Karloff's characteriza
tion is better— and better motivated— than in the three
previous films.
The bulk of the film's plot concerns the successful

rejuvenation of his aging self with the aid of a serum that
ill-advisedly contains the blood of a condemned murderer. The
change itself is something like seeing Karloff’s befuddled
inventor from Night Key (1937) turn into his dapper Judge
Mainwaring from You'll Find Out, while the plot device— the
tainted blood— is the sort of thing that can only operate in

the vacuum world of films that work on the premise that no one
involved in the onscreen proceedings has ever seen a horror
film. Enthused by the apparent success ofthe formula, Van
Sloan wants a jolt himself, but Karloff’s murderous streak
surfaces (always shown by his knotting a handkerchief into a
kind of garrote) and he quickly dispatches the greedy medico
along with a fellow prisoner, who is himself blamed for Van
Sloan's death. In a move that should have perhaps alerted
Norman Mailer to such possibilities, the governor pardons
Karloff on the grounds of his scientific genius, and a
somewhat lackluster series of murders take place before
Karloff is sent to his reward.
New— untainted— blood was about to be injected into the by

now all too predictable series by way of the addition of
director Edward Dmytryk and the departure of screenwriter Karl
Brown. The resulting film, The Devil Commands, was quite the
best thing to come from the Columbia series and today remains
a small classic of the genre. Adapted— and admittedly
simplified— from William Sloane's wonderfully titled novel,
The Edge of Running Water, by Robert D. Andrews and Milton
Gunzberg, this is finely crafted, full-blown horror that
departs in many significant ways from its pussy-footing
predecessors. For a change, Karloff's character is not already
more than a little dotty at the outset, but becomes so
(believably) in the course of the film's plot. Better still,
the film quite dispenses with the quasi-science fiction
trappings of the first three films to concentrate on a purer
strain of horror. This is particularly helpful since both The
Man They Could Not Hang and The Man with Nine Lives date badly
in that their science fiction is hardly so fictional anymore.
Communication with the dead— even while scientifically
attempted (more or less)— is another matter. Moreover, the
earlier films' insistence on restraint denied themselves any
spectacular set-pieces. The Devil Commands has several and
they are all beauties.
Here Karloff is down-to-earth scientist Dr. Julian Blair,

whose experiments in recording brain waves turn out to have
another possible use when his wife (Shirley Warde) is killed
in a car crash, yet the machine continues to reproduce her
exact pattern when it is later turned. In no time, Karloff
becomes obsessed with this as a means of communicating with
the dead, specifically the late Mrs. Karloff. Attending a
seance with his likably credulous servant, Karl (Ralph
Penney), whom he hopes to disabuse of such beliefs by exposing
the medium, Mrs. Walters (Ann Revere), he deftly explains away

all the hocus-pocus save for a curious electric shock that he
felt during the proceedings. When asked how she accomplished
this, the woman denies any such deceptive device on the
grounds that it wouldn't be safe. Though the woman herself is
a thoroughly disagreeable charlatan, it turns out that she
does possess some degree of the powers she claims, despite the
fact that she is herself unaware of them. Since this strange
woman can withstand doses of electricity that would prove
fatal to lesser mortals, she fits in nicely with his scheme to
pierce the veil. Locking himself and his helpers away in a
remote house, he pursues these experiments which veer further
and further away from anything like science as he gleefully
"borrows" a variety of corpses from the local graveyard (the
theory being that they act something like batteries), earning
a good deal of animosity and suspicion from his way-down-east
neighbors. In the course of the experiments, Karl is turned
into a deaf mute half-wit, while a snooping maid (Dorothy
Adams) is accidentally killed when she inadvertently starts up
Karloff's infernal machine. Ultimately, Mrs. Walters is also
killed and Karloff straps his own daughter into the machine
for a last ditch effort. Since she is her mother's daughter,
her brain waves prove to be the key, but just as Karloff makes
his breakthrough (hearing the ghostly voice of his wife call
out his name), the forces unleashed by the process prove too
much for the rickety old house and the whole place falls in on
him, preventing his comeuppance at the hands of the irate
locals who have had enough of the entire spooky business.
If there is a key word to the effectiveness of The Devil

Commands that word must be "eeriness." This is a distinctly
unsettling film that manages not to cheat on its shocks, while
still maintaining a sense of balance, believability, and, best
of all, an obvious belief in the intelligence of its audience.
At bottom it is rather like one of the Val Lewton films with
out the forced subtleties and literary pretensions. This is
particularly interesting since it predates the first of the
Lewton offerings. Yet what else would one call the underplayed
shock of the moment where Karloff sees his daughter enter his
laboratory in perfect mirror image of his late wife's earlier
entrance but Lewtonesque? It's a perfect Lewton moment, only
Dmytryk got there first. (Actually, it's a bit subtler than
much of Lewton, since it isn't beaten to death with a blast of
shock-effect music or sound effects as the Lewton version
almost certainly would have been.)
All is not subtlety, though. The experiments themselves

with their weirdly outfitted corpses forming the traditional

seance grouping around a table are definitely strong stuff,
while the creation of a whirlpool vortex in the middle of the
table during these scientific seances is one of the more
indelible— oddly literal yet suggestive— images in 1940s
horror. Where the more subtle Lewton set-pieces are generally
punctured by an intrusion of the mundane, Dmytryk's set-pieces
are pure horror film thrill, even though a skimpy budget
prevents anything more elaborate than the vortex. That may be
a blessing in disguise, but the film's only real shortcoming
lies in the obvious lack of funds with which it was made.
It is a debatable point whether or not Lew Landers' The

Boogie Man Will Get You is really a part of the Karloff-
Columbia Mad Doctor series, but it did immediately follow the
accepted quartet, it was made by Columbia, and Karloff does
play a mad doctor in it. Actually, the film owes more to
Karloff's stage success in Joseph Kesseling's Arsenic and Old
Lace than it does to his Mad Doctor series, only here he isn't
the murderous nephew of the play. Rather, he has been
transformed into one of the agreeably homicidal aunts with the
other aunt turned into Peter Lorre. Instead of knocking off
lonely old men, they concentrate on waylaying travelling
salesmen in an effort to scientifically alter them into
"supermen" who can defeat the Axis powers (the picture is
nothing if not timely). Derivative and lightweight, The Boogie
Man Will Get You is also a good deal of fun, and a not
unpleasant farewell to Karloff's heyday as a mad scientist.
Overall, The Boogie Man Will Get You is agreeably nutty

and the screenplay is not without its bright moments. Karloff
and Lorre are a delightful pair, while Jeff Donnell as a
scatter-brained young woman who wants to turn Karloff’s old
house into a Colonial inn, and a pre-Al Jolson Larry Parks as
her short-fused ex-husband ("How do you expect people to find
this place with no railroads, with tire and gas rationing?")
are nicely in support. Maude Eburne as Karloff's truly crazy
housekeeper is a treat throughout, whether sweeping dirt under
the carpets (a habit that prompts Donnell to mistakenly
enthuse, "Warped floors!") or explaining her devotion to
Karloff ("Even when he was a baby he never cried— not even
when we dropped him"). Maxie Rosenbloom as a salesman who
cannot undergo the Karloff treatment, owing to its requirement
of wearing a helmet since this particular subject is ticklish
on the top of his head, does get a little tiresome, but this
is a small price to pay for the teaming of Karloff and Lorre.
The ultra-chic civilized villainy of their alliance (with Bela
Lugosi) in David Butler's similarly underrated You'll Find Out

(1940) is nowhere to be found in this ditsy pairing, and it is
very apparent that the duo are enjoying every minute of it.
If anything, Lorre is the better served of the pair

playing Dr. Lorentz, who is not only the town's leading
(probably only) physician, but also its sheriff, its notary,
and just about everything else. He also happens to sport a
line of dubious patent medicines, such as a cure for baldness.
"Where is the hair follicle that can resist 20,000 units of
vitamin B?" he asks at one point. "Right there!" insists
Karloff, showing him his rapidly thinning dome. "Oh, hardening
of the skull," decides Lorre. Moreover, he also holds
Karloff’s mortgage ("The leech you placed about my neck") at a
usurious rate ("Twenty-nine and a half percent compounded
semi-annually"), and intends on using this to rid the
community of its resident mad doctor. However, his own
scientific curiosity gets the best of him when he learns of
Karloff's interest in creating a superman, despite the fact
that thus far all he has to show for his efforts is a cellar
ful of perfectly preserved, but apparently quite dead, door-
to-door salesmen. "Let me congratulate you," enthuses Lorre,
explaining, "As coroner I must say you've already outmoded
formaldehyde." This pair of crackpot would-be Nietzsches never
do create a superman, but neither have they killed anyone,
since all Karloff has induced is a state of suspended
animation for which they are both slated to be hauled off to
the local sanitarium. "Not to worry, Professor, I'm the
chairman of the board of the directors up there," Lorre
assures him for the fadeout.
The Boogie Man Will Get You may just miss being the
end-all be-all satire of the Mad Doctor film that it could
have been, but it certainly takes a lot of the overly sober
attitude of the first three films of the Karloff series down a
well-deserved peg or two. For once, at least, not only is the
Mad Doctor in question off on a dead-end quest (this round it
doesn't even work, forget the usual cosmic consequences), but
the all-too-often overlooked fact that the whole idea is
itself is as mad— and of as doubtful use— as the doctor
himself. Viewed as a direct spoof of the series that spawned
it, The Boogie Man Will Get You is a rather pleasing coda.
The Man They Could Not Hang. 1939* Columbia. Screenplay: Karl
Brown. Photography: Benjamin Kline. Director: Nick Grinde.
Players: Boris Karloff, Lorna Gray, Roger Wilcox, Roger Pryor,

Don Beddoe, Ann Doran, Joseph DeStephani, Charles Trowbridge,

Byron Foulger, Dick Curtis, James Craig, John Tyrell. 65
minutes.
Before I Hang. 1940. Columbia. Screenplay: Robert D. Andrews,

from a story by Karl Brown and Robert D. Andrews. Photography:
Benjamin Kline. Editor: Charles Nelson. Director: Nick Grinde.
Players: Boris Karloff, Evelyn Keyes, Bruce Bennett, Edward

Van Sloan, Ben Taggart, Pedro De Cordoba, Wright Kramer,
Bertram Marburgh, Don Beddoe, Robert Fiske, Kenneth McDonald,
Frank Richards. 65 minutes.
The Man with Nine Lives. 1940. Columbia. Screenplay: Karl

Brown, from a story by Harold Shumate. Photography: Benjamin
Kline. Editor: A1 Clark. Director: Nick Grinde.
Players: Boris Karloff, Roger Pryor, Jo Ann Sayers, Stanley

Brown, John Dilson, Hal Talliafero, Byron Foulger, Charles
Trowbridge, Ernie Adams. 75 minutes.
The Devil Commands. 1941- Columbia. Screenplay: Robert D.

Andrews, Milton Gunzberg, from the novel, The Edge of Running
Water, by William Sloane. Photography: Alan G. Siegler.
Editor: A1 Clark. Director: Edward Dmytryk.
Players: Boris Karloff, Richard Fiske, Amanda Duff, Ann

Revere, Ralph Tenney, Dorothy Adams, Walter Baldwin, Kenneth
McDonald, Shirley Warde. 65 minutes.
The Boogie Man Will Get Y o u . 1942. Columbia. Screenplay: Edwin

Blum, from the story by Hal Finberg, Robert B. Hunt.
Photography: Henry Freulich. Editor: Richard Fantell.
Director: Lew Landers.
Players: Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Maxie Rosenbloom, Jeff

Donnell, Larry Parks, Maude Eburne, Don Beddoe, George McKay,
Frank Puglia, Eddie Lawton, Frank Sully, George Morton. 66
minutes.
THE BOB HOPE COMIC-HORROR FILMS
The Cat and the Canary (1939)

The Ghost Breakers (1940)
It may seem ironic that two of the all-time best old dark
house thrillers should be the result of a short-lived series
of Bob Hope comedies (short-lived only because the films
helped push the comedian into more mainstream projects), but
the fact remains that these early Hope vehicles are second
only to James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932) in utilizing
this set-up. Of the two, The Cat and the Canary (only recently
back in circulation owing to copyright problems) is probably
the more effective on the thriller level, though both films
score high on any level.
After a promising start in a supporting role (that awarded

him the song, "Thanks for the Memory") in The Big Broadcast of
1938 (1938), Hope's screen career faltered. Paramount didn't
quite seem to know what to do with him and the idea of dusting
off John Willard's twice filmed stageplay, The Cat and the
Canary, was probably as much an act of desperation as any kind
of creative brainstorm. However, Hope's nervous comedy was
perfectly suited to a genre that was not known for taking it
self too seriously, and casting a genuine comedian in a role
that combined the comic and romantic aspects of the film was
vastly superior to the usual approach of having a wooden hero
with comic relief in support. This was an immediate bonus for
the film. The bonus for Hope came in the screenplay, which
cast him (as does The Ghost Breakers) as a radio actor. Since
this was the Bob Hope with whom the public were familiar, the
approach worked like a charm. It would be quite a few years
before Paramount had to worry about what to do with the comic
again.
In terms of plot, Elliott Nugent's version of The Cat and
113
the Canary differs very little from Paul Leni's stylish silent
version (1927)» though the Nugent-Hope Cat differed a good hit
in approach. The heavy Germanic Expressionism of the silent
was replaced with a more realistic style. It may not he quite
so obviously artistic, hut it is, if anything, even more
effective because it is far easier to accept the reality of
the characters and the setting. Not that Nugent is above an
uneasy chill through stylization. There are several such mo
ments in the film, such as the truly unsettling seeming
"transformation" of Gale Sondergaard into a black cat during a
momentary black-out, or the even more striking shadow of the
Cat on the wall immediately after John Wray describes the
escaped murderer's unsavoury habits. If there is a single flaw
with the film on an atmospheric level it lies in the tendency
of Nugent and cinematographer Charles Lang to somewhat over
light the setting, make it more of an old dim house than a
dark one. However, the general mood set by the opening ("Not
far from New Orleans there still exists in strange solitude
the bayous of Louisiana" a title tells us) with Lawyer Crosby
(George Zucco) arriving at the house for the reading of Cyrus
Norman's will through the misty, alligator infested swamp that
surrounds it.
The screenplay certainly doesn't scrimp on the laughs.

Hope isn't onscreen two minutes before an alligator devours
the cigar he tosses from his boat. Trying to liven things up,
he tells his Indian guide (George Regas) a particularly pain
ful joke, only to be put in his place by the Indian's terse,
"Heard it last year— Jack Benny program." Hope's function in
the proceedings is to generally react to the melodrama that
surrounds him. "Don't big empty houses scare you?" asks his
cousin Cicily at one point. "Not me. I used to be in vaude
ville," explains Hope. When the mediumistic Miss Lu (Gale
Sondergaard) enthuses over his apparent link with the "other
world," telling him, "You have the power! There are spirits
all around you," Hope responds with, "Well, could you put some
in a glass with a little ice?" He also spoofs one of the major
genre conventions by volunteering, "They do that when you
don't pay your bill," when the lights go out. The script even
allows him to debunk the central premise of an escaped homi
cidal maniac that prowls about on all fours ("What some guys
won't do for a laugh!") and rips his victims apart with his
claw-like hands— "Have you ever seen a man who looked and
acted like a cat? A woman, yes, but a man?" In addition to
this, he serves rather nicely in the leading man category, but
perhaps his greatest contribution to the film lies in the
script utilising his status as a radio actor. As if sensing
that the storyline is more than a bit out of date, screen

writers Walter DeLeon and Lynn Starling use Hope to poke fun
at the whole set-up before the viewer has the chance to do so.
He enters the house remarking, "I hear old Uncle Cyrus’s ghost
is holding bank night," and almost at once inquires, "Where’s
the leading lady?" He then explains about his participation in
radio dramas of this type— "In every one of those plays there
was a leading lady— a young, beautiful, charming, modern. . ."
Before he can finish, Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard) arrives
as if on cue. Prior to the reading of the will, he offers,
"I'll bet you two to one that Joyce is the heir," which of
course she is. This does not undermine the material as might
be feared. Instead, Hope’s presence speeds up the events and
enhances the film's more grim moments by comparison.
The film very carefully preserves the more famous moments

from the play along with the central premise of an incipiently
unhinged family member out to drive the first heir insane so
that he may step into the inheritance as the second named heir
(a provision made in case the heir should go mad or die within
a month of inheriting). Not to disappoint the play's admirers,
the murder of Lawyer Crosby is played out straight with the
victim trying to warn the heroine ("You're in danger— great
danger— but, thank heavens, I can tell you who. . .") just as
a claw appears from a secret passage to strangle him. The
equally well-known first act climax with the Cat appearing
over the edge of a sofa in view of the audience, but not the
heroine, is also faithfully— and very effectively— reproduced.
As a horror thriller, The Cat and the Canary succeeds best

in its last few moments, which are played with full-blooded
melodrama. The Cat pursuing the heroine through the house's
secret passages, finally cornering her in an outbuilding are
quite as thrilling as any to be found in more traditional
exercises in the horror genre. Somewhat surprisingly, the
comedy-minded Nugent turns out to be a quite capable director
in this capacity, using a variety of unsettling camera angles
and never allowing us a very good look at the Cat's face,
while the whole affair is splendidly matched by Ernst Toch's
marvelous musical score.
Having been successful with one stage thriller, Paramount

opted to tailor another similar effort to Hope's talents. This
time they chose the slightly less famous Paul Dickey-Charles
W. Goddard play The Ghost Breaker and handed it over to Cat
veteran Walter DeLeon to adapt and pluralize (whether for Hope
and Paulette Goddard or Hope and Willie Best is unclear) in
The Ghost Breakers. Goddard co-starred again, Arthur Hornhlow,

Jr. produced a second time, Ernst Toch once more provided the
music, and Charles Lang repeated his photographic chores. The
new production added Willie Best as Hope's sidekick, Alex,
and replaced Elliott Nugent with George Marshall in the
director's chair. The results were in many ways even better
than the first film. DeLeon's screenplay was smoother,
funnier, and more precisely designed for Hope (he enters this
film whistling "Thanks for the Memory"), while Marshall's
direction is a little sharper in the comic scenes and a good
deal more horrific in the horror ones than Nugent's had been.
The only drawback (and it is a marginal one) to The Ghost
Breakers is that it doesn't sustain its mood for the entire
running time as The Cat and the Canary had done. It starts out
marvelously with a thunderstorm and a power failure in New
York, but once the situation is set-up the film becomes rather
ordinary (if amusing) for its middle section. However, its
final act makes up for this by being a far lengthier stretch
of full-blooded melodrama than anything in the first film,
slightly losing its punch at the very end with a conclusion
that isn’t as chilling as the encounter with the Cat had been.
Once more Hope plays a radio personality, Lawrence L. (for

Lawrence) Lawrence ("My parents had no imagination"), only
this time he's a Winchell-like newsmonger with a taste for
underworld gossip. This penchant causes him to get in dutch
with a gangster— a situation that worsens when he mistakenly
believes that he kills one of the crime lord's henchmen. In
reality, he has simply stumbled into the middle of an uncon
nected murder that is part of a plot to defraud Mary Carter
(Goddard) out of her inheritance of the Castle Maldito on
Black Island just off Cuba. Understanding none of this and
thinking himself guilty of murder, Hope ends up hiding in
Goddard's steamer trunk and being shipped to Havana. Even when
Best arrives to prove his innocence to him (the murder was
committed with a different calibre gun than the one Hope was
carrying), Hope lets his attraction to the undeniably charm
ing Goddard get the better of him and appoints himself her
protector when it becomes obvious that dirty work is afoot.
As with the previous film, Hope is used to constantly poke

at the film's own conventions. When apprised of the presence
of the ghost of one Don Santiago in the castle, he asks, "Does
he appear nightly, or only Sundays and holidays?" All the
shady lawyer Parada (Paul Lukas) has to do is become overly
melodramatic in his story of the death of Goddard's uncle ("He
was lying at the foot of the staircase. His eyes were open—
staring— his face a mask of terror!") to prompt Hope to quip,

"A good laugh'd be worth a lot of money at this point." The
transparent villainy of Parada's character even comes under
attack--"You know, I'd swear Parada did it except that he
looks guilty, and in these situations you never suspect the
guy that looks guilty." The zombie myth gets a good going
over, too. "When a person dies and is buried, it seems there
are certain voodoo priests that have the power to bring them
back to life," explains second-lead Richard Carlson, who
continues, "A zombie has no will of his own. You see them
sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following
orders, not knowing what they do, not caring." "You mean like
Democrats?" inquires Hope rather fairly since he'd taken a
shot at Republicans in The Cat and the Canary.
Once the film arrives at Black Island it really hits its

stride. The setting is even more impressive than that for the
previous film (a process shot of clouds passing over the
darkened castle is still breathtaking today), and Marshall has
prompted Lang to light the whole thing much more darkly than
he had done for Nugent. Hope's one-liners and exchanges with
the even more terrified Best only serve to increase the sense
of uneasiness, since even at their funniest they convey a
feeling of nervousness. "You told me you rowed number four at
Harlem Tech," complains Hope about Best's decidedly uninspired
rowing toward the island, despite the fact that neither of
them seems all that keen on being there. Meeting the mother
(Virgina Brissac) of the island's resident zombie (Noble
Johnson), Hope brightly inquires, "Could we interest you in a
subscription to Weird Stories magazine?" But perhaps the best
moment in the entire film is also one that sums up so much of
the old dark house format. "Believe me, w e ’re not going to get
hurt unless we find the real secret of this place," Hope tells
Best at one point. "Well, why do we keep looking for it?" asks
Best reasonably. "It is sort of ridiculous, isn't it?" Hope
realizes as no one else ever has.
The horrific high-point of The Ghost Breakers is undoubt

edly Noble Johnson's zombie. Although used comically on
occasion, this is probably the most genuinely frightening
respresentative of the walking dead ever put on film. One
might rightly question just why the zombie would decide to don
a suit of armour as he does in the course of the proceedings
("It ain't Baby Snooks!" cries Hope when the helmet comes
off), but his menace is always very real. His pursuit of
Goddard is truly chilling, and the violence with which he is
ready to attack Hope and Best is so real that his presence is
not minimized, even when our heroes unceremoniously lock him

in a closet. Neither the Halperin Brothers' White Zombie
(1932), nor Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
have anything on The Ghost Breakers in the zombie department.
The Cat and the Canary. 1939- Paramount. Producer: Arthur

Hornblow, Jr. Screenplay: Walter DeLeon, Lynn Starling, from
the play by John Willard. Photography: Charles Lang. Editor:
Archie Marshek. Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Usher.
Music: Ernst Toch. Director: Elliott Nugent.
Players: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, John Beal, Douglass

Montgomery, Gale Sondergaard, Elizabeth Patterson, George
Zucco, Nydia Westman, John Wray, George Regas, Charles Lane.
72 minutes.
The Ghost Breakers. 1940. Paramount. Producer: Arthur

Hornblow, Jr. Screenplay: Walter DeLeon, from the play The
Ghost Breaker by Paul Dickey, Charles W. Goddard. Photography:
Charles Lang. Editor: Ellsworth Hoagland. Art Direction: Hans
Dreier, Robert Usher. Music: Ernst Toch. Director: George
Marshall.
Players: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Richard Carlson, Paul

Lukas, Willie Best, Anthony Quinn, Pedro De Cordoba, Virginia
Brissac, Noble Johnson, Tom Dugan, Paul Fix, Lloyd Corrigan.
80 minutes.
THE BELA LUGOSI MONOGRAM FILMS
Invisible Ghost (1941)

Spooks Run Vild (1941)
Black Dragons (1942)
The Corpse Vanishes (1942)
Bowery at Midnight (1942)
The Ape M a n ~H~943)
Ghosts on the Loose (1943)
Voodoo Man (1944)
Return of the Ape Man (1944)
The nine films made by Bela Lugosi for Sam Katzman's

Banner Pictures unit at Monogram between 1941 and 1944 have
long been on just about every film fan's list of uniquely
awful movies— the so-bad-it1s-good syndrome, which has gained
such widespread popularity in recent years (generally promoted
by people who seemingly wouldn't know a "good bad" film if all
six reels of it fell on them), being the yardstick by which
they are commonly judged. But do the films really deserve
quite the reputation they've earned? Looked at with a fresh
eye, with our camp sensibilities to one side, and, most
importantly, viewed within the time frame in which they were
made, a different, more respectable— and more respectful—
picture of the series emerges.
By 1941 it was obvious that the "Horror Renaissance" of

1939 which had promised a return to the prominence Bela Lugosi
had enjoyed in the early and mid-1930s was really no
renaissance at all. Lugosi had fallen prey to the virtual
horror film moratorium that had resulted from the supposed
sadistic excesses of such films as Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black
Cat (Univ., 1934) and Lew Landers' The Raven (1935)• The
notoriously antsy British censor tried banning such films
outright in 1937, a move that might not have short-circuited
the genre had it not coincided with the loss of the major
studio purveyor of horror, Universal Pictures, by founder Carl
Laemmle to an outfit called Standard Capital. In a wholly
119
typical risk, Laemmle (as usual short of cash) had put up his
studio stock against a loan from Standard, giving them the
option of buying that stock if they could themselves raise
sufficient funds during a specified period of time. In
essence, Laemmle had gambled with the studio— and he lost.
Standard Capital was able to exercise their option and control
of Universal passed to them, whereupon they proceeded to
re-organize it along their guidelines, which proved to be a
nightmare for such artists as Lugosi and director James Whale,
both of whose careers were nearly destroyed by the owners of
"New Universal," as they were pleased to call the studio. The
new head of production, Charles R. Rogers, didn’t care in the
least that the studio was best known for its horror films. He
personally found them distasteful and so was quite happy to
scrap them altogether at the behest of outraged parental
groups and the British censor, who were little more than
convenient excuses. ("New Universal" was quite prone to caving
in from outside pressure in any case, blithely cutting,
reshaping, and reshooting James Whale's anti-war drama, The
Road Back [1937], to appease the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda,
only to turn around and blame Whale when their emasculated,
sanitized version was a flop.)
Economic expediency eventually overcame both the censor’s

and Rogers' delicate sensibilities, and by 1939 horror (having
proved exceptionally lucrative via the 1938 re-issues of
Dracula [1931] and Frankenstein [1931]) was back at "New
Universal" in the form of Rowland V. Lee's Son of Franken
stein. It was Lee who interceded on behalf of Lugosi with the
Universal executives, who were scheming to take advantage of
the actor’s declining fortunes (for which they were largely
responsible!), offering him a scant $500 per week— and a one
week part in the new film. Lee, despite the resistance of the
studio, kept Lugosi on the payroll throughout shooting in the
role of Ygor, which grew in size along with Lugosi's financial
well-being and self-respect. Lugosi walked off with the film
(which had also been Lee's intention), but the rave reviews
and the solid money quickly disappeared.
In no time Lugosi was at the mercy of Universal’s

"special" contract for him. To the studio he was a big horror
name to emblazon on the film at hand, while offering him no
role to speak of in the process. Universal's "big" Karloff-
Lugosi release for 1940 was Arthur Lubin's Black Friday, a 70
minute film in which Lugosi was offscreen for nearly 62 of
those minutes, and which committed the cardinal sin of
offering no scene between the two stars, (in truth, Black
Friday is a Stanley Ridges picture with Karloff in strong

support and Lugosi as a featured player, but audiences were
unlikely to beat a path to the latest Stanley Ridges opus and
it was promoted as a Karloff-Lugosi vehicle.)
Despite a small but effective role in George Waggner's The

Wolf Man (1941) and a solid chance to reprise his beloved Ygor
in Erie C. Kenton's underrated Ghost of Frankenstein (1942),
Lugosi's options at Universal in the 1940s were limited and
degrading. His name was being exploited, not his talents. For
a thorough professional like Lugosi this situation was as
painful as— perhaps more painful than— the financial diffi
culties of his "special" contract with the studio allowed.
With this in mind, the offer to do a series of films for
Monogram and Katzman seems more like personal salvation than
exploitation. If, as is often said, the films offered a lot of
Lugosi and very little else, they at least offered that—
substantial roles that afforded the proud actor an opportunity
to act, not just sell his name to boost business.
Lugosi had appeared for Monogram— actually a previous

incarnation of the studio, rather like the difference between
Universal and New Universal— once before in William Nigh's
Mysterious Mr. Wong (1935), and it might be said that the
experience was so catastrophic that it took him six years and
the Katzman offer to recover from it. Not at all part of the
Lugosi-Monogram series, Mysterious Mr. Wong is everything the
later films are supposed to be and then some. It is almost
irredeemably bad, ludicrously cheap, and irresistably funny.
Large chunks of the film are little more than extended
dialogues at Lugosi's herb shop counter between the actor and
racist newspaperman Wallace Ford, while screenwriter Nina
Howatt, apparently unable to think of an ending, has Lugosi's
Oriental mastermind very cleverly imprison Ford and girl
friend Arlene Judge in a torture chamber thoughtfully equipped
with a telephone on which they can summon aid!
The Katzman films, launched in 1941 with Joseph H. Lewis'

Invisible Ghost, are something else again. The production
values are generally solid (albeit unexceptional), the
supporting casts are usually reliable, and the end products,
while frequently suffering from scripting insanity, have a
professional air about them, quite unlike the films Lugosi
made in his final years. The Monogram films may lack the
slickness of the Universal product of the 40s— and they are
certainly inferior to the films Lugosi made at Universal under
the Laemmle regime— but they are a far more accomplished set
of films than is generally allowed, especially if viewed as

Lugosi films. What Lugosi fan wouldn't trade both Night
Monster (1942) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943) for
one Monogram opus? Black Friday may be a better film than any
of the Monogram series (a debatable point), but any one of the
Monograms (save Ghosts on the Loose [1943]) is a better Bela
Lugosi film.
As is often the case with a series, the first of the films

is probably the best. This isn't to say that Invisible Ghost
doesn’t have its problems. It does, but it's unusually well
made in a number of departments, including an interesting (if
dubiously conceived) screenplay (by Helen and A1 Martin), some
visually striking direction by Joseph H. Lewis, as well as
offering a surprisingly non-stereotypical role for Lugosi's
friend, the dignified black actor Clarence Muse, and a warm
and likable performance from Lugosi. The film does creak a
little and some of its moments are unintentionally funny. A
few of the effects Lewis attempts are spoiled by the inade
quacy of the Monogram technicians (the same can be said,
though, of the more highly regarded White Zombie [1932]), and
a few of the ideas date badly. Nonetheless, Invisible Ghost is
an original, often satisfying work that more than repays the
small charity needed to overlook its faults.
The film opens on an appropriately screwy note with Lugosi

enjoying a romantic anniversary dinner with his wife— who just
happens not to be in residence. "Good evening, my dear. You're
looking more beautiful than ever," he happily tells her empty
chair at the table. Subsequent information reveals that said
absent wife ran off with Lugosi's best friend several years
earlier, but the man insists on inhabiting this strange
fantasy world each year on their anniversary. ("It must look
pretty weird to someone who's never seen it," comments
daughter Polly Ann Young with characteristic Monogram-style
imbecilic understatement to boy friend John McGuire when he
happens onto the ritual by accident.)
What neither Lugosi nor most of the cast know is that the
faithless wife (Betty Compson) did not go very far in her
flight. A car crash killed her paramour and left her a moronic
shell of herself. In this state she has been kept for years in
a hidden room under an outbuilding by Lugosi's gardener, the
somewhat less than dimwitted Jules (Ernie Adams), one of those
fantastic creatures whose motivations are known only to God
and Monogram screenwriters. Stretching the long arm of cred
ibility (already pretty tautly elongated) and complicating
matters no end, it turns out that Lugosi's daughter's boy

friend was once romantically involved with Lugosi's new maid
(Terry Walker) and that she is now attempting to blackmail the
unfortunate young man into returning to her— an attempt over
heard by Evans the butler (Clarence Muse). All this seems very
beside the point until Lugosi's wife emerges from hiding to
stand under her husband's window and exert some unexplained
evil influence on him.
The effects of the wife's influence provide Lewis with a

prime directorial opportunity and he does not let it pass
unnoticed. It is a simple, yet very effective, use of shot
breakdown combined with focus shifts and dramatic lighting
changes. The ultimate shot in the sequence— Lugosi goes out of
focus to return to focus with vastly altered lighting and a
demonic expression on his face— is bravura filmmaking indeed.
Unfortunately, it is followed by Lugosi's impression of a man
in a trance, which is perhaps the worst piece of film acting
he ever did. Presumably the idea was to mark the difference
between the pleasant, affable (if slightly unhinged) family
man and the deranged killer. Whatever the concept, it goes too
far as Lugosi staggers and lurches out of his bedroom (in a
tracking shot with a nice use of shaved set to follow the
action in a continuous take) and through the house until he
chances upon the maid in her bedroom. With unconsciously lewd
humor, Lugosi closes the door behind him and removes his robe
("Why Mr. Kessler!"). A nicely chilling shot of Lugosi
creeping ever closer (the effect vastly diminished for those
who know the film only from television) recovers the film's
balance for a moment— until Lewis decides to have Lugosi cover
the camera with his bathrobe, blacking out the screen, only to
lower it, narrow his eyes, and pop it back over the lens! (One
wishes he'd cry out, "Peep-bo!" after the fashion of Leo
McKern popping up from behind the bar in Richard Lester's
Help! [1965J•) For a sequence that starts so promisingly it is
particularly sad to see this sink into unintentional hilarity.
There is nothing even remotely funny about the scenes that

follow. Given the background on the maid and the film's
apparent romantic lead there are no prizes for guessing who
comes under suspicion and a quick trial for murder.
The brilliantly achieved montage of the trial and the

subsequent attempts to clear the young man after h e ’s found
guilty (on some pretty thin and patently inadmissible
evidence) is a model of the "B" picture maker's conjuring art.
With almost breakneck speed we are given a perfectly lucid

account of the events and the impression of having been in a
courtroom. In fact, what we have seen, if we examine the
sequence, is a series of close-shots assembled in such a way
that they evoke the sense of a courtroom event, even though
the production didn't warrant the expense of the requisite
set. Not only is this effective use of the materials at hand,
but it adds a sense of immediacy to the proceedings with its
series of grim, looming faces. Instead of turning the film
into ersatz Perry Mason, the flow of stark images lends a
nightmare quality that is hard to dismiss. This sense of
wholly unadorned drama is carried over into the unrelentingly
harsh death house scene with its spare, almost expression-
istic, final walk to death for McGuire's character presented
in a series of tracking shots through the bars and shadows of
bars. The pervasive atmosphere of doom is not entirely
dissipated by the return of John McGuire to the film in the
guise of his look-alike brother.
No sooner has this second romanticinterest for Lugosi’s

daughter (what would a strict Freudian make of this set-up?)
arrived on the scene than Lugosi’s wife starts prowling and
the expected murders follow. Both Lewis and Lugosi have calmed
down for these later killing binges. Indeed, a good deal of
suspense is generated in an abortive attempt by Lugosi to
strangle Evans, and there is a strikingly vicious quality in
his more successful attack on Jules.
Some rather arbitrary nonsense at themorgue with Jules

coming back to life only to see Lugosi and immediately expire
again (!) is followed by one of the most wholly charming
scenes in any Lugosi film. With his new cook about to quit
because she feels her work hasn't been up to par, Lugosi
hastens to the kitchen to set her straight. "Where are you
going, Marie? You can’t leave us after cooking such an elegant
dinner!" he coos, offering further blandishments by raptur
ously declaring, "I never tasted anything to equal that roast
beef!" This earns him the promise of apple pie, the prospect
of which prompts Lugosi to enthuse, "Apple pie! My that will
be a treat!" It is very nearly more than the mind can take to
see Lugosi as regular, sweet guy, to say nothing of the mere
sound of such homey lines delivered in his Hungarian accent.
Yet the moment works— as does a later one where he muses over
a lost chess game with, "Now let's see— what did I do
wrong?"— and the potentially unconscious humor is overridden
by charm and believable characterization.
The film proceeds along its relatively predictable lines

with remarkable assurance and no little flair, though it does
slightly falter at the end when Lugosi is confronted with his
wife. "I'm dead, Charles. Do you hear me? I'm dead. I'm afraid
to come home. You'd kill me. You'd kill anybody," she claims
upon seeing him. The possession naturally takes over and
Lugosi wanders down the hall only to violently swing around
and attack the police inspector following him. It is a
surprisingly effective shock (conveyed mostly through Lugosi's
playing), but one that is somewhat undercut by the sudden,
inexplicable death of his wife, which releases him from her
spell. "What happened here?" he asks in a daze. "We've got the
murderer," McGuire tells him with no hint of satisfaction.
"Evans," nods Lugosi sadly, thinking his beloved servant
responsible. "No, Mr. Kessler— you," the detective
sympathetically informs him. Here Lewis gives the moment
completely to the actor, holding his camera on Lugosi as
disbelief and horror flood his face, ultimately giving way to
total anguish as he mouths the silent question, "Me?" and
covers his face with his hands.
Invisible Ghost is far from perfect, but it does provide

an unusually human role for Lugosi, and, in fact, manages to
sketch in some fairly believable and human characters overall.
While director Lewis scores nearly as many misses as hits
(particularly evident in an outrageous overuse of shots framed
through fireplaces, one of which blazes away so merrily that
it neatly obscures the scene, and another which burns so
little that the camera position is pointless), his constant
attempts to develop the film visually are noteworthy. It
mayn't be a great film, but it is frequently a very good one
that is more than slightly worth knowing.
Phil Rosen’s Spooks Run Wild is a much less important

film, but judged on its merits as what it is it generally
achieves its aims as a horror comedy. The East Side Kids are
something of acquired taste, not in the least because they
mark the transitional phase between the more seriously
intended Dead End Kids and the entirely comic Bowery Boys. The
East Side Kids fall in the middle— their antics veering toward
the comedy of the later series, but with rougher edges and a
strong dose of melodrama. On the whole Leo Gorcey's Muggs and
Huntz Hall's Glimpy are far less sympathetic than their
subsequent Slip and Satch characters, (it is much easier to
see the potential for Hall's later sarcastically caustic and
callous straight role as Jesse Lasky in Ken Russell's
Valentino [1977] in Glimpy than in Satch.) On the plus side,
the East Side Kids’ hrashness and borderline juvenile

delinquency offer a more realistic picture, if a less likable
one. In Spooks Run Wild (one of the earlier East Side Kids
forays) the boys are only one step removed from reform school,
and this gives the film an extra grittiness that works in its
favor if not the team's.
It should be remembered that Spooks Hun Wild is a Bela

Lugosi vehicle and is structured as such. The screenplay by
Carl Foreman (later a respected writer-producer who suffered
political trouble in the dark days of Senator McCarthy) is
loosely built around a series of events designed to present
Lugosi in a number of "typical" horror film scenes, while
contrasting those scenes with the boisterous activities of
Messrs. Gorcey, Hall, Jordan, Morrison, et al. The plot is
next to non-existent. The boys are poor kids from the Bowery
who've been shipped off to summer camp where they run afoul of
Lugosi in a creepy old house. A thinly veiled mystery villain
(the "Monster Killer" for whom Lugosi is continually mistaken)
complicates the situation, but it remains just that— a
situation, not a plot.
Hollywood legend has it that neither Lugosi nor the East

Side Kids were exactly thrilled at the prospect of working
together, each having taken the screen image of the other to
heart. Lugosi probably had the most cause for pause since
genuine horror stories about working with Gorcey and Hall are
not hard to find. The onscreen evidence, however, suggests
that Lugosi was having a field day as Nardo, the mysterious
magician. Teamed with dwarf Angelo Rossitto (dressed as Lugosi
in miniature!), Lugosi was afforded the opportunity to parade
about in his dinner suit and Dracula cape through a variety of
acceptably atmospheric sets, guying his stereotyped screen
image, indicating a better sense of humor about that image
(and the limitations it foisted on him) than is commonly
assumed. Much of what he does in the course of the film makes
little sense. A nocturnal visit to a graveyard, for example,
is utterly gratuitous, but the aplomb with which Lugosi
comments, "The city of the dead. Do they, too, hear the
howling of the frightened dogs?" makes it worthwhile.
Far sloppier than Invisible Ghost— laughably bad

day-for-night shooting spoils some scenes, minor players who
blow lines during economically long takes are simply over
looked— and lacking Lewis’ directorial creativity, Spooks Hun
Wild is mostly an entertaining footnote to Lugosi’s career.
Its greatest interest lies in the clever fashion the film
utilizes the Lugosi screen image only to ultimately debunk it.
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about William

Nigh's Black Dragons is that it is remarkably silly— which is
also the worst thing that can be said about it. This aston
ishing film— the first Lugosi Monogram of 1942— looks
suspiciously as if it went into production on the morning of
Monday, December 8, 1941• Whether one views it as well-
intentioned Allied propaganda or an attempt to cash in on the
war is largely a question of the extent of one’s charitable
nature.
The plot has Lugosi as the mysterious Monsieur (!) Colomb

happily knocking off American industrialists (in reality,
Japanese spies who are prone to saying things on the order of
"Well, I wish we could blow up more ammunition dumps before we
have to leave") and depositing their bodies on the steps of
the Japanese Embassy (boldly labelled "CLOSED"). Structured as
a mystery, the reason for his actions is not made clear until
a lengthy flashback at the end of the film reveals him as the
Nazi plastic surgeon responsible for the spies' existence in
the first place, the murders being his revenge for being
double crossed ("You will pay for this, you apes! You swine!
The Fuhrer will wipe you off the face of the earth!"). As
absurd as this sounds on the face of it, it is made more so by
such stupefying plot devices as Lugosi apparently performing
plastic surgery on himself (fortunately, the man he imperson
ates looks suspiciously like Lugosi Nazi doctor sans crepe
beard to begin with) to escape the Japanese prison, and being
in possession of an "insidious serum" that induces that old
"B" picture favorite acromegaly in one of his victims.
Furthering Black Dragons’ troubles is the fact that it is

even more slapdash than Spooks Run Wild. Secondary players
(including Clayton Moore) are perpetually stumbling over their
lines in the most blatant display of one-take shooting
imaginable. Someone hit on the bright notion that Lugosi's
attack on one of the spies in a taxi could be made to convey
the sense of being in a moving vehicle by parking a car behind
the cab and turning its lights on and off! The film's musical
track— a thicker than usual potpourri of wonderfully tacky
canned music— is so over-zealously applied at one point that
it nearly obliterates a key line. But perhaps the ultimate
foolishness is the use of newsreel footage of the Rudolph
Valentino funeral riots as one of the examples of the Japanese
spies' sabotage activities!
Much of Black Dragons' dialogue is pricelessly absurd,

offering a wealth of quotable Lugosiana. "Could the medical
history of a sick person possibly interest an industrialist
from Detroit?" he asks one of the spies (who is looking for a
doctor's report on Lugosi), thereby frightening the fellow
into a state of near hysteria. This, however, is simply the
overture to the symphony of sillinessto come when Joan
Barclay overhears him strangling the same victim only to find
Lugosi placidly reading a book when she investigates. "I heard
a noise like a body falling," she tells him, indicating a
singularly curious familiarity with the sound. "Oh, I was
stumbling. I was awkward," Lugosi alibis. "Yes, but there were
gurgling sounds," objects Barclay. "Oh! I was humming. Is my
voice as bad as that?" Lugosi offers by way of preposterous
explanation.
For all its outrageous balderdash Black Dragons is

frequently very atmospheric on a purely visual level (it is
difficult to equate William Nigh's direction here with that on
Mysterious Mr. Wong) and Lugosi’s performance goes a long way
toward holding things together. It is surprising that such a
wild and woolly mish-mash of melodrama and deliriously goofy
dialogue has not become a cult favorite among admirers of Bad
Cinema (an oversight that attests to the basic cinematic
ignorance of most such johnny-come-lately dabblers who seem to
have become stuck in time at a midnight movie in their
sophomore year of college). True film buffs, on the other
hand, should definitely give Black Dragons a try as one of the
most deliciously screwy of all 40s "B" horror pictures.
Lugosi's other 1942 Monogram releases, The Corpse Vanishes

and Bowery at Midnight, do much to counter the slapped
together atmosphere of Spooks Run Wild and Black Dragons. The
screenplays (The Corpse Vanishes is by the same Harvey Gates
who was guilty of Black Dragons, and Bowery at Midnight is by
Gerald Schnitzer [!], who had served his apprenticeship as
second assistant director on Black Dragons and had been co
author of The Corpse Vanishes' original story) are better
structured without caving into such downright un-Monogram
concerns as logic or literacy. The major advantage of the
films is director Wallace Fox. Like Nigh, Fox was no stranger
to low budgets and the bulk of his work is unremarkable, yet
his two efforts in the horror genre, overstated as they are,
constitute highpoints in a largely indifferent career.
Something about the form seems to have struck a nerve of
unusual cruelty in Fox, since these two films are notable
primarily for their surprisingly cold-blooded atmosphere and
matter-of-fact grimness.
The Corpse Vanishes is the lesser of the two films, shot

largely on Monogram’s standard "Old Dark Soundstage" sets (and
looking suspiciously like the Billings Estate from Spooks Run
Wild after a thorough cleaning), and boasting a plot of
dubious distinction with more than a few howlers buried
therein. The story concerns Lugosi's efforts to keep his
80-odd year old wife (played with quirky nastiness by
Elizabeth Russell) alive and rejuvenated by injections of
gland extracts taken from about-to-be brides in whom he has
induced catatonia with the aid of his hybrid orchids— a nice
little arrangement until the oddly scented flowers attract the
attention of (need it be said?) intrepid girl reporter Luana
Walters. The plot, of course, is borrowed in part from
Lugosi’s classic White Zombie (where he suggested putting
"only a pinprick" of his zombie powder "in a glass of wine— or
perhaps a flower"), not to mention certain affinities shared
with Aldous Huxley's satirical novel, After Many a Summer. The
script is vague on several points— including whether or not
Lugosi’s wife is in need of these glandular fountain of youth
rechargings from actual age or a degenerating condition. Yet
Fox attacks the material with such seriousness that it works
better than it has a right to.
Lugosi's subterranean laboratory and morgue (complete with

catacombs and secret passages) is no better than Monogram's
average, but Fox gives the sets genuine menace by carefully
lighting them (or more correctly not lighting them) so that we
are left with a gloomy impression of a murky, cavernous envir
onment rather than the painted flats and cardboard stones of
actual fact. This same sense of darkness pervades the film’s
limited exterior views of Lugosi's mansion and grounds. It is
this darkness that adds immeasurably to the film, especially
in the scenes detailing the rejuvenation process, which are
played out in pools of shadow, accompanied by his wife's
screams and moans on the soundtrack.
For a 1940s product, The Corpse Vanishes is a remarkably

"sick" movie, especially in its stress on necrophilic motifs.
One of housekeeper Minerva Urecal's sons (Frank Moran) is
prone to pulling the comatose brides out of the morgue and
fondling them, while Mr. and Mrs. Lugosi bed down for the
night in twin coffins. (One can't help but wonder if the
production code people, who were so concerned about it being
readily apparent that both twin beds had been occupied by
husband and wife during the night had similar restrictions on
coffins. Indeed, one wonders what they made of the situation

at all.) The unalloyed cruelty of Lugosi*s character is also
something of a shock, particularly in light of the fact that
his entire motivation is geared toward his incredibly foul
tempered (even to him) wife. His marginally justified murder
of Frank Moran's Angel character is played with alarmingly
evil glee. "Don't be afraid, Angel— I would not hurt you," he
purrs to the half-wit just prior to strangling him, his face a
study in the enjoyment of killing for its own sake. His later
disposal of Urecal's other son, Angelo Rossitto (what genes
the woman must have had to produce the giant Moran and the
dwarf Rossito!), is even more callous as he delightedly kicks
the wounded dwarf from the running board of his getaway car
for absolutely no reason. The murders exist mostly to pave the
way for the film's climax in which Urecal turns on Lugosi.
This, however, scarcely explains the casual cruelty of the
presentation.
The urban horrors of Bowery at Midnight may in themselves

be a far cry from the gothic trappings of The Corpse Vanishes,
but the overall feel of the film's off-hand violence clearly
pegs it as springing from the same source. Like The Corpse
Vanishes, Bowery at Midnight owes something of its plot to an
earlier— superior— Lugosi film, Dark Eyes of London (1939)>
simply substituting Lugosi's bowery "mission" for the earlier
work's home for the blind, and dropping the mystery element
surrounding Lugosi's alter ego. Bowery at Midnight fails to
achieve the power of Dark Eyes of London— mostly due to the
script's insistence on incorporating a cellarful of zombies
(courtesy of Lew Kelly's junkie doctor)— but it is a game try.
As with The Corpse Vanishes, Fox moves the film along at a

rapid pace for the opening, setting things up with the utmost
professionalism in very little screen time. Looking at one
film with the other in mind, it is obvious that the two work
in almost identical structural fashion— a fast-paced set-up
followed by a more leisurely development of characters. What
is most remarkable about the approach Fox takes in Bowery at
Midnight is the decision not to play on Lugosi's established
screen image at the onset. Lugosi is presented more as a
character than as his screen self. He isn't even introduced
with any fanfare. Rather, we first see him in depersonalized
long shot working in his mission, doling out soup to his
derelict patrons. Even upon his entry into the situation,
Lugosi is presented in an unexceptional and unmenacing
fashion. That he is not what he seems— that his mission is a
front for an elaborate burglary ring, its transients and
occasional down-at-the-heels felons providing a ready source

of cohorts--only emerges when he spots a likely candidate for
inclusion in his gang. At that point his demeanor alters only
slightly as he seems to take a paternalistic stance toward his
minions (much as he had referred to his bizarre collection of
humanity in The Corpse Vanishes as "my little family"),
alternately expressing revulsion at their colorful gangster
argot ("Mr. Stratton! Don't be so crude!") and amused
detachment ("The language is rather picturesque, but the
meaning is perfect"). Only when he pointlessly orders his
second-in-command to shoot down their new recruit once the man
has served his purpose are we allowed a glimpse of his
completely inhuman, cold-blooded nature.
Technically, Lugosi plays two characters in the text of

Bowery atMidnight— mission owner Karl Wagner and college
professor Dr. Joseph Brenner— but in reality he plays four
since there are marked differences between the public and
private incarnation of Brenner and Wagner, especially Brenner.
In the classroom, Brenner is closely related to Wagner at his
most vicious, only in a more arrogant, superior, and intel-
lectualized fashion. At home he is a devoted husband, plagued
by nightmares from which he wakes in cold sweats. It isn't
until very near the end of the film (with the surprising
murder of his own wife) that the separate identities merge
into one image of insane evil. (Again, the similarity to The
Corpse Vanishes with the murders of his extended family is
very pronounced.) Without question, Bowery at Midnight
afforded Lugosi the most complex characterization of his
Monogram career.
Bowery at Midnight probably offers less unintentional

laughs than any of the other Monograms, despite its lack of
logic. It does boast one hysterical lapse when Lugosi
discovers Lew Kelly's pet cat prowling around his basement
cemetery (shades of Arsenic and Old Lace) and upbraids him
with a terse, "Doc, how often have I told you to keep that cat
from desecrating my graves!" Kelly himself as the drug-
addicted medico (a surprising explicit presentation) overplays
outrageously, especially when he turns Lugosi over to his
collection of "living dead" at the climax. Similarly, the film
contains a painful visual pun in adorning Lugosi's private
office with a map of Australia above the secret passage to his
world "down under." More pleasantly, a poster for The Corpse
Vanishes festoons a bowery movie house in one scene. Fox's
taut, no-nonsense direction keeps these elements to a minimum,
though, creating by far the best of the nine films after
Invisible Ghost, which is superior mostly due to Joseph H.

Lewis' visual sense.
Lugosi's first 1943 Monogram release, The Ape Ma n , is the

most famous film in the series and has long been prized as a
classic of Bad Cinema, an accolade it both does and doesn't
deserve. Without exception, Barney Sarecky's screenplay (drawn
from Karl Brown's [best known for scripting Columbia's Karloff
"Mad Doctor" series] original story, "They Creep in the Dark")
is the height of distinguished foolishness, presenting Lugosi
as Dr. James Brewster (a name suggesting Brown had intended
another Karloff vehicle), a scientist whose experiments with
"ape fluid injections" have turned him into a hunched, hairy
horror of his former self, a predicament deftly summed up by
Lugosi who casually informs sister Minerva Urecal, "What a
mess I made of things." Adding to the delirium he has taken to
sleeping in a cage with man-in-a-gorilla-suit Emil Van Horn
and has reasoned that shots of human spinal fluid are "the
only way to counteract the ape fluid injections"— a drastic
treatment which, naturally, means instant death for the
luckless donor. While there is no getting away from the fact
that this entertaining simian swill is Monogram at its most
preciously insane, there are indications hijinks are perhaps
intentionally absurd this round.
Despite such ludicrous projects as Billy the Kid Versus

Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (both
1964), director William Beaudine was far from a cinematic
imbecile. His earlier films had included such titles as
Sparrows (1926) with Mary Pickford, The Old-Fashioned Way
(1934) with W.C. Fields, and Windbag the Sailor (1936) with
Will Hay— not unimpressive credentials. While his handling of
The Ape Man is hardly in the same league, it is by no means
without, interest or intelligence, especially if the film is
viewed as a self-mocking send-up that doesn’t quite come off.
The addition of an extraneous character who hovers in the
background— occasionally advancing the story (it is he who
puts reporter Wallace Ford on to the story), "commenting" on
the action (at one point, watching through the cellar window
[some secret laboratory!], he mimicks Lugosi's efforts to
straighten up), interrupting the action ("I wouldn't go down
that way if I were you," he advises one girl, saving her
spinal fluid from Lugosi's needle), and, when cornered,
revealing himself as "the author of this story— screwy idea,
wasn't it?"— stresses the idea that The Ape Man is, if not
intentionally funny from the outset, the work of a group of
people making the amusing best of an otherwise hopeless mess
of a situation. The antics of Lugosi's ape buddy (in one of

the more outrageous moments, the creature steps back into the
shadows and flattens itself against a wall to lay in wait for
a passing victim) only further this impression.
Whatever the case, The Ape M a n 's cheese-paring nonsense is

remarkably agreeable, played to the hilt by Lugosi and a Mono
gram "dream cast" that includes the studio's perkiest, pretti
est, and most talented leading lady, Louise Currie, perennial
"B" picture reporter hero Wallace Ford (a little overage and
thick through the middle by 1943> but still fast-talking and
enjoyably obnoxious), venerable exponent of crusty wisdom
Henry Hall, and delightfully snooty Minerva Urecal (who as
Lugosi's sister seems remarkably free of Hungarian accent).
All that's missing is Angelo Rossitto! Typically, Lugosi
manages a few moments of convincing menace, but the overall
tone is more of fun than conviction. That the story runs out
of inspiration (Lugosi, having learned nothing in Robert
Florey's Murders in the Morgue 11 years earlier, is killed by
his own ape) is unfortunate, but in light of the astonishing
monkey shines that precede it, pardonable.
Minerva Urecal was on hand again, along with a young Ava

Gardner, for Ghosts on the Loose. Unfortunately, so were the
East Side Kids— far more domesticated than they had been in
Spooks Run Wild, making their greater footage here all the
more tiresome. Unlike Spooks Run Wild, Ghosts on the Loose was
designed as an East Side Kids picture with Bela Lugosi (he is
billed beneath Gorcey, Hall, and Bobby Jordan), much to the
detriment of the film. Beaudine is helming the proceedings
once more, but even his professionalism can't hide the fact
that there's almost nothing to the film.
The blissfully unconnected atmospheric sequences with

Lugosi that had graced Spooks Run Wild are here nowhere to be
found. We wait and wait for Lugosi to appear and when he
finally does (in the unprepossessing guise of Emil, a Nazi
Fifth Columnist), he isn't given anything to do. The unin
tentional scares he threw into the boys in Spooks Run Wild
were much more creative and funnier than any of his efforts
here. By far the best line in the film is given to Huntz Hall,
who remarks, "I think they said it was one of the Katzman
mob," when he and Gorcey are pitching a phony story about
gangsters to the police in an effort to obtain a police escort
for Ava Gardner's (Hall's sister!) wedding. The best thing
that can be said about the film is that it is better made than
Black Dragons and better structured than Spooks Run Wild—
without, alas, their compensations.
John Carradine often publicly stated that the first Lugosi

Monogram of 1944, Voodoo M a n , was the worst film of his
career. That not only sounds like an overstatement, but it
is— especially when one considers this claim came from the
lips of the man who appeared in Hillbillies in the Haunted
House and Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. What he undoubtedly
objected to about Voodoo Man is his personally embarrassing
role as Toby, Lugosi's quarter-witted henchman. (And, it is_ an
embarrassing part— a retread of Frank Moran's Angel from The
Corpse Vanishes, but with the addition of painfully retarded
dialogue. Moran may have liked to stroke comatose young
ladies, but Carradine has to utter lines like, "Gee, you're a
pretty one, ain't you?") In point of fact, Voodoo Man is
nonsense of a high order, intelligently crafted by William
Beaudine.
Voodoo Man is very nearly as absurd as Black Dragons or

The Ape Man, though better made. The "original** screenplay by
Robert Charles isn’t. Mostly i t ’s an indefensible farrago of
ideas lifted from other films— notably Roland West's The
Monster (1925), Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie
(l943), and F o x ’s The Corpse Vanishes— but the film's
marvelously creaky plot and insanely devised characters and
dialogue make it one of the most lovable of all Lugosi
Monograms. What is most amazing about the film is the apparent
extra care taken with this opus, which co-stars not just John
Carradine but George Zucco, and boasts a "fresh" musical
score. That Zucco's and Carradine's roles are too screwy for
words and the musical score is beyond belief only adds to the
cockeyed charm.
According to the script, Lugosi is Dr. Richard Marlowe

(where did they get these Hungarian monikers?), a vaguely
defined scientist, who has hidden himself away in Monogram's
stock Old Dark Bungalow in the never-never land of mid-America
the studio liked to believe represented the world outside
Hollywood, owing to the zombie-like state his wife (Ellen
Hall) fell into (for reasons never stated) some 22 years
previously. Seemingly, he has frittered away those 22 years
searching for a girl "with the perfect affinity," so high
voodoo priest (and gas station attendant) Zucco (decked out in
a hat resembling a chicken that lost a fight with a lawnmower
and rattling off a line of voodoo gibberish sounding like a
tobacco auctioneer with indigestion) can transfer said girl's
soul to Lugosi's wife and restore her to normalcy. Zucco's
day-job at the gas station works as a blind for spotting

likely candidates for the ceremony. Lugosi then— with the aid
of some fake shrubbery, a detour sign, a gizmo that causes
cars to stop dead, and zealous efforts of John Carradine and
Pat McKee— kidnaps the hapless victims for "another pretty
ceremony," as Carradine describes it. Pretty heady stuff made
more so by its presentation.
Despite its obvious problems in the scripting department,

Voodoo Man's presentation of Zucco's jiggery-pokery is not
without a certain— probably unintentional— undercurrent of
satire. Take away Zucco's flashy robes, his funny hat, his war
paint facial decorations, and his gibberish and one is
confronted with the perfect picture of any hot-gospelling
evangelist, complete with a standard set of cliches that
"Drambuna is all powerful" and "Drambuna never fails." Only
thing is Drambuna also never works— a fact for which Zucco has
a ready made excuse. Like some wigged-out faith healer, Zucco
is always quick to blame his unbroken string of 22 years’
worth of failures on faults with the girls used in the
procedure, never once suggesting Drambuna might be lacking. Of
course, when one considers that his life without Lugosi and
the ceremonies would be reduced to pump-jockeying (complete
with Monogramic hayseed sidekick) and giving directions to
Twin Falls, his enthusiasm isn't hard to understand.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of Voodoo Man is the

notion that the events are happening to no less a personage
than a Banner Productions screenwriter (played with stupefying
ill-humor by Michael Ames, who is prone to throwing his hat
down to indicate irritation and tends to utter an obnoxious
little "heh-heh" laugh anytime he makes a joke). The film even
goes so far as to set a scene in the offices of Banner
Pictures where an unbilled actor (supposedly the great Katzman
himself, one assumes, since Ames invariably calls him "S.K."!)
assigns him a story from the newspaper ("This newspaper item
about missing girls oughta work out— an interesting story,
kind of a horror picture"), only to have Ames end up involved
in the real life story. It is hard to swallow, of course, but
it's nothing compared to the ending in which Ames delivers the
script for Voodoo Man to S.K. and suggests he get "that actor,
Bela Lugosi" for the part of the Voodoo Man. Such esoterica
has caused the film to be viewed as nearly existential in some
quarters.
Beaudine's major contribution to Voodoo Man lies in the

impressively intelligent fashion in which he shoots the film.
The interiors of Lugosi's house convey a good sense of the

mysterious with the sparse sets made intricately eerie by the
use of looming shadows. (The screenplay attempts to explain
this more-dramatic-than-realistic lighting by references to
Mrs. Lugosi's alarming potential for disintegration if exposed
to sudden bright light— an idea that scarcely explains why all
the lights in the house seem to have been placed at floor
level and angled up!) Moreover, any examination of the shot
breakdown in the voodoo ceremonies— overlooking the sillier
aspects of the proceedings and the abominable dubbing of
Zucco's chants— clearly illustrates that the film was not made
by an idiot. The basic three-way pattern of cutting between a
close-shot of the victim, a close-shot of Lugosi's wife, and a
medium shot of both women and Lugosi (peppered with inserts of
Zucco chanting and Carradine and McKee beating voodoo drums)
is accomplished in a thoroughly logically, dramatically valid
manner.
Hardly a high-water mark in Lugosi’s career, Voodoo Man

emerges as a major accomplishment when put up against his
final Monogrammer, Phil Rosen's Return of the Ape M a n . This
opus is related to The Ape Man only by virtue of its title and
its repetition of a plot device (Carradine's refual to go
along with one of Lugosi's more criminally minded ideas—
namely swiping a brain— and his ultimate position as victim
reworks the situation with Henry Hall in The Ape Man) . The
film doesn't even have an ape man, only a defrosted caveman.
Ostensibly, the film reunites Lugosi, Zucco, and Carradine,
but Zucco lent his name only. The titles claim that both Zucco
and Frank Moran play the prehistoric man (prompting a number
of historians to jump to the conclusion that Moran plays the
character up to the point where Lugosi plops part of
Carradine's brain into its skull, whereupon Zucco takes
over— a charming notion [one cave man + one half of John
Carradine's brain = George Zuccol] that, alas, isn't true).
Only Moran donned the crepe hair and bogus animal skins (not
to mention the clearly visible long underwear) for the role.
More slipshod than usual, in part due to over-reaching in

terms of ambition in trying to present Lugosi and Carradine in
the Arctic (a depiction of the Frozen North slightly less
realistic than that in W.C. Fields' The Fatal Glass of Beer) ,
Return of the Ape Man is not without its amusements. The whole
thing is made nearly worthwhile by the single image of Lugosi
puffing a huge cigar at a social gathering and musing, "I was
just thinking, some people's brains would never be missed,"
prior to relieving Carradine of his. The film's most unpardon-
able error lies in killing off both Lugosi and Carradine prior
to the ending. While Lugosi’s death scene where he
matter-of-factly tells the police, ”It is a prehistoric man
with part of Gilmore's brain," is enjoyable, his expiration
makes the final pursuit and killing of the "ape man" less
engaging than it might have been. It is an amiable
hodge-podge, but one could have wished for a more worthy
climax to this intriguing series.
The appeal of the Lugosi Monograms is undeniable. Just as

undeniable is the fact that this in part comes from the
general appeal of Bad Cinema, but that is hardly all. There
are innumerable examples of far worse Bad Cinema than the
worst of the Lugosi Monogram (take William Nigh's 1940 Karloff
"thriller" The Ape— a silly picture that commits the ultimate
"B" picture sin of being boring in the bargain). Part of the
answer lies with Lugosi himself, and our unquenchable
fascination with this brilliant and tragic man, who, unlike
his nemesis, Karloff, always thought of himself as an ACTOR,
not a character actor, and always gave even the most wretched
role his all. Beyond this, the Lugosi Monograms have a
deep-rooted appeal to our sense of childhood mystery— that
small area of the mind that truly wants to believe in a world
of subterranean passages, secret panels, hidden staircases,
and all the familiar trappings of a Monogram thriller, with no
ridiculous adult reservations about logic. That some of these
films are a good deal better than is usually credited, and
that all but one gave Lugosi solid (if preposterous and
low-budget) vehicles for his talents is not too far short of
magic.
Invisible Ghost. 194-1 • Monogram. Producer: Sam Katzman.

Screenplay: Helen and A1 Martin. Cinematographers: Marcel
LePicard, Harvey Gould. Musical Directors: Lange and Porter.
Director: Joseph H. Lewis.
Players: Bela Lugosi, Polly Ann Young, John McGuire, Clarence

Muse, Terry Walker, Betty Compson, Ernie Adams, George
Pembroke, Ollola Nesmith, Fred Kelsey, Jack Mulhall. 61
minutes.
Spooks Run Wild. 1941* Monogram. Producer: Sam Katzman.

Screenplay: Carl Foreman, Charles R. Marion. Cinematographer:
Marcel LePicard. Musical Directors: Lange and Porter.
Director: Phil Rosen.
Players: Bela Lugosi, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan,

"Sunshine” Sammy Morrison, David O ’Brien, Dorothy Short, David

Gorcey, Donald Haines, Dennis Moore, P.J. Kelley, Angelo
Rossitto, Guy Wilkerson. 60 minutes.
Black Dragons. 1942. Monogram. Producers: Sam Katzman, Jack

Dietz. Screenplay: Harvey Gates. Photography: Art Reed. Music:
Lange and Porter. Director: William Nigh.
Players: Bela Lugosi, Joan Barclay, George Pembroke, Clayton

Moore, Robert Frazer, Edward Piel, Sr., Robert Fiske, Irving
Mitchell, Kenneth Harlan, Max Hoffman, Jr., Frank Melton,
Joseph Eggenton, Stanford Jolley. 64 minutes.
The Corpse Vanishes. 1942. Monogram. Producers: Sam Katzman,

Jack Dietz. Screenplay: Harvey Gates. Story: Sam Robins,
Gerald Schnitzer. Photography: Art Reed. Music: Lange and
Porter. Director: Wallace Fox.
Players: Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters, Tris Coffin, Elizabeth

Russell, Minerva Urecal, Angelo Rossitto, Joan Barclay, Frank
Moran, Gwen Kenyon, Vince Barnett, George Eldridge, Kenneth
Harlan. 62 minutes.
Bowery at Midnight. 1942. Monogram. Producers: Sam Katzman,

Jack Dietz. Screenplay: Gerald Schnitzer. Photography: Mack
Stengler. Musical Director: Edward Kay. Director: Wallace Fox.
Players: Bela Lugosi, John Archer, Wanda McKay, Tom Neal,

Vince Barnett, Anna Hope, John Berkes, J. Farrell McDonald,
Dave O'Brien, Lucille Vance, Lew Kelly, Wheeler Oakman, Ray
Miller. 62 minutes.
The Ape Man. 1943* Monogram. Producers: Sam Katzman, Jack

Dietz. Screenplay: Barney Sarecky. Story: Karl Brown.
Photography: Mack Stengler. Musical Director: Edward Kay.
Director: William Beaudine.
Players: Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Louise Currie, Minerva

Urecal, Henry Hall, Emil Van Horn, J. Farrell McDonald,
Wheeler Oakman, Ralph Littlefield, Jack Mulhall, Charles
Jordan. 64 minutes.
Ghosts on the Loose. 1943* Monogram. Producers: Sam Katzman,

Jack Dietz. Screenplay: Kenneth Higgins. Director: William
Beaudine.
Players: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Bela Lugosi,

Ava Gardner, Rick Vallin, "Sunshine" Sammy Morrison, Billy

Benedict, Bobby Stone, Stanley Clements, Minerva Urecal, Frank
Moran, Wheeler Oakman. 63 minutes.
Voodoo Man. 1944* Monogram. Producers: Sam Katzman, Jack

Dietz. Screenplay: Robert Charles. Photography: Marcel Le
Picard. Music: Edward Kay. Director: William Beaudine.
Players: Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, John Carradine, Wanda

McKay, Louise Currie, Michael Ames, Ellen Hall, Terry Walker,
Mary Currier, Claire James, Henry Hall, Dan White, Pat McKee.
62 minutes.
Return of the Ape Man. 1944• Monogram. Producers: Sam Katzman,

Jack Dietz. Screenplay: Robert Charles. Photography: William
Sickner. Director: Phil Rosen.
Players: Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Frank Moran, Judith

Gibson, Michael Ames, Mary Currier, Ed Chandler, Mike Donovan,
George Eldredge, Horace B. Carpenter, Ernie Adams, Frank
Leigh. (Although third billed on the credits— and appearing in
some publicity stills— George Zucco did not appear in the film
due to ill health.) 60 minutes.
THE VAL LEWTON FILMS
Cat People (1942)

_I Walked with a. Zombie (1943)
The Leopard Man (1943)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
The Ghost Ship (1943)
Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Isle of the Dead (1943)
The Body Snatcher (1945)
Bedlam (1946)
While Universal was busy trying to inject new life into

their traditional horrors with decent, if unspectacular,
little thrillers such as Erie C. Kenton's Ghost of
Frankenstein, Ford Beebe's Night Monster,and JosephH. Lewis’1"
The Mad Doctor of Market Street, along with such execrable
non-efforts as Harold Young's The Mummy's Tomb, RKO Radio took
quite another tack through B unit producer Val Lewton, who
created a new type of almost wholly suggestive horror film. On
the one hand, Lewton's efforts paid off, returning something
of the dignity to the genre that had been evidenced in the
1930s, but in retrospect Lewton’s films are both uneven and
just as much a dead end street as Universal's increasingly
silly desperation. It isn't that the films are unsuccessful in
themselves. It's simply that they threw out the baby with the
bathwater by rejecting everything of the Universal product.
Moreover, the films are a bit too tres snob and condescending
for genre fans to feel quite comfortable about them. Director
Mark Robson's oft-quoted comment, "At Universal the prevailing
notion of horror was a werewolf chasing a girl up a tree in
her nightgown," permeates most of the films with a kind of
self-importance that is neither endearing, nor completely apt.
Regardless of the series' shortcomings, the Lewton films

are invariably thoughtful, well-made, and, best of all,
intriguing. Certainly this is the case with the first of the
141
lot, Jacques T o u r neurs Cat People. Though the series would

produce at least two unquestionably superior films, Cat People
is a solid piece of creative filmmaking. Legend has it that
Lewton, amused by Universal's wolfman successes, simply
opted for the silliest sounding variation on the were-animal
idea imaginable and the werecat was born. That's as may be.
The results, while often decried today as being just too
subtle, are anything but silly. In essence, the film tells the
story of a rather ordinary young man, Ollie Reed (Kent Smith),
who becomes involved with and marries a strange Serbian girl,
Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), who lives with the belief that
she is somehow cursed through her ancestry and that a man's
embrace and kiss will transform her into a supernatural black
leopard that will then rip her lover to bits. Conviction, a
literate screenplay, Roy Webb's moody musical score, and
Tourneur's dark, brooding direction, along with numerous eerie
"touches," conspire to create a wholly believable story
despite questions of logic.
In many respects it is less the film's famous set-pieces

that hold up today than it is the curious lingering in the
mind of Tourneur's smaller touches. Beyond doubt such moments
as the legendary sequence in which something menaces the
hero's other love interest (Jane Randolph) in a darkened
gymnasium swimming pool, or that same something pursuing her
along a deserted night street (only to manifest itself as the
scream of a bus's brakes) are effective and remarkable in
context of the time. However, the camera lingering in the zoo
over Irena's discarded drawing of the leopard impaled with a
sword, her humming the weird little mock lullaby to Ollie in
an apartment that has grown dark around them, her conversation
with the Bible quoting zoo keeper ("The beast I saw was like
unto a leopard, but not a leopard") about the black leopard,
the image of the naked Irena sobbing in the dark in a bathtub,
her seduction by Tom Conway's cynical psychiatrist and
subsequent suggested transformation, her attack on Smith and
Randolph in their darkened office lit only by the light coming
upwards through the glass-topped drawing tables, are less
showy, but much harder to shake after the fact.
Today Cat People is more honored in legend than fact. It

was the first horror film— in the accepted Universal
fashion— not to show its monster. It is_ a dark, sombre,
unsettling work. It is not, alas, a film that is much revived,
though this may well stem from the fact that its status as an
unquestioned horror classic caused the film to be shoved down
a lot of ultimately disappointed adolescent throats in the
1960s by television programmers hungry for anything that might

fill the bill on a Shock Theatre. Any 12 year old seeing the
full-blown antics of the Frankenstein Monster a week ago was
bound not only to disappointment, but even outright resentment
by a film in which the major scare was a shadow on the wall or
the screech of air brakes. That that resentment should carry
over into adulthood is unfortunate but as inescapable as the
psychological quirks of Tourneur's own characters.
More successful is Tourneur's follow-up, the beautiful _I

Walked with a Zombie. Just as reserved as Cat People (though
somehow more accessible), this film, described by Tourneur as
"Jane Eyre in the Tropics," pulls itself together in a unified
manner by simply eschewing the nominal "straight"— and not
interesting— characters like Smith and Randolph. In every way,
the characters who people _I Walked with a_ Zombie are believ
able because of their complexity. Only Frances Dee's Jane
Eyre-like heroine can remotely lay claim to traditional
notions of normalcy, and this is something of a close call in
itself, not in the least because both the actress and her
character are too intelligent to fit our notions of the
beleaguered Evelyn Ankers type of the time. The bulk of the
characters are more than a little off-center, especially the
Holland family with its bitter elder son (Tom Conway) saddled
with a catatonic (or zombie) wife, the borderline alcoholic
younger son (James Ellison), and the likable social worker
mother (Edith Barrett) who mixed medicine with voodoo for
practical purposes until temptation got the better of her.
As with its predecessor, _I Walked with a. Zombie is a film

of isolated touches that produce a strangely effective,
lingering whole. More so than Cat People, though, it success
fully creates a separate world in which these touches can take
genuinely believable form. From its opening in a northern
office with snow falling outside (an effect duplicated to much
the same end 20 years later by John Ford in Donovan's Reef)
the film moves quickly to its tropical setting, the romance of
which is undercut at every turn by her employer (Conway)
pointing out the veritable cornucopia of death and dying
surrounding this apparent paradise. "Every-thing good dies
here," he concludes watching a shooting star.
Playing against type the film delivers us to a very

pleasant plantation house as opposed to the White Zombie
styled Gothic castle we anticipate, but the pleasantness soon
evaporates in a nightmarish encounter with her patient, the
supposedly brain-dead wife of her employer. For one fleeting,
very effective moment, Tourneur allows the film to turn into a

standard horror film with all the trappings of the Universal
product. However, this is really an aberrant moment in a film
where mood is best conveyed in such moments of twilight
uneasiness as the scene where Dee is "serenaded” with the
story of the Holland and Rand families by singing storyteller
Sir Lancelot. (This was later parodied by Sir Lancelot himself
in the sporadically amusing Bela Lugosi-Wally Brown-Allan
Carney comedy thriller, Zombies on Broadway, where it was one
of the picture's high points.) The atmosphere of the film is
overall one of growing uneasiness more than outright horror,
fleshed out in a believable love story between Dee and Conway
that owes as much— perhaps more— to Daphne Du Maurier's
Rebecca as it does to its ostensible Jane Eyre source.
At the center of the film is the set-piece wherein Dee has

her "walk" with the zombie in question. This oddly effective
piece of filmmaking works primarily on the information it does
not give the viewer. The voodoo symbols and ceremonies are
quite authentic in an obviously sanitized fashion, but the
film uses them solely for their atmospheric charge, never
descending tothe level of instructional drama after the
fashion of the play version of Dracula where page after page
of dialogue serves no purpose other than explaining what a
vampire is. Certainly this works better than such plot points
as the business about Dee wearing a white triangle allowing
her safe passage to the homefourt, which she loses part way
there without suffering any consequences. There is an unde
niable sense of horrific letdown upon the discovery that the
voodoo ceremonies and all the mystical aspects of the religion
are merely the workings of Conway's social worker mother, who
has discovered that she can overcome much ignorance by doling
out her common sense health practices through the mouths of
the voodoo gods. What salvages this rational material is the
fact that it quickly transpires that there is more to it than
she guesses herself, even though she of all people should know
better. Her explanation of the whole scheme to Dee is shrewdly
intercut with scenes of the worshippers carrying out tests on
the zombie whereby they learn that she is indeed one of the
walking dead.
The bulk of the film's plot concerns Barrett's confession

that she is responsible for Conway's faithless wife's state
and the efforts of the voodoo cult to reclaim this zombie.
While Barrett's confession of practicing actual voodoo is met
with cold skepticism on the part of most of the cast, it hits
home with Ellison whose affair with the woman had been the
cause of the whole business. His fatalistic pursuit of her and

his combined "murder" and suicide may pave the way to a
traditional happy ending, but the route to that ending is as
unsettling as the rest of the film in its uncompromising
morbidity.
It is easy to understand how the Tourneur-Lewton follow-up

film, The Leopard M a n , got lost in the shuffle, but the
tendency to continue to downplay the work is harder to fathom.
More down to earth than its predecessor, The Leopard Man still
generates a good deal of interest and suspense, while its
desert setting is sufficiently unusual to capture the same
sense of a world apart that works so well for _I Walked with a.
Zombie. The only drawback to the film is the lack of a genuine
sense of the supernatural at any point in the proceedings.
Oddly, the story seems to have its roots in the golden age of
Universal, following a tangential plot point from Stuart
Walker's Werewolf of London concerning an escaped wolf from
the London zoo (a case can be made that this inspired Simone
Simon's release of the leopard in Cat People, too) and the
fact that the animal is being blamed for the werewolf murders.
That the whole affair is given a human element— the escape is
directly attributable to Dennis O'Keefe's reckless publicity
mongering— adds a layer of complexity in the script's exam
ination of personal responsibility.
As with all of the Lewton films, The Leopard Man lends

itself to being analysed in key sequences. The most commonly
cited of these is the killing of a young girl by the leopard
on the other side of a door that has been bolted by her
mother, who thinks her daughter is crying wolf until it is too
late. The other famous sequenceis the supposed leopard murder
in a walled cemetery where a girl waits to meet her illicit
lover. Both sequences are deserving of their fame, yet the
film's marvelously eerie climax— so often overlooked— is quite
on equal footing with them. Staged in the darkness of a museum
with a weird religious procession of candle-bearing robed
figures passing by outside, the eeriness of the climax is
similar to that in the darkened office of Cat People when
Simone menaces Smith and Randolph. Here, the terror is more
tangible, but no less unnerving. Unfortunately, the vaguely
psychotic killer's confession and thereasons behind his
killings are lame, while his escape attempt into the religious
procession is a good idea undermined by Tourneur's very
uncharacteristic offhanded direction and the general
half-hearted air of the attempt. Still, as with the films that
came before it, The Leopard Man has an uneasy air that lasts
long after its shortcomings are forgotten.
Nearly as underrated is Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim,

a neat predecessor of the urban Satanism of Roman Polanski* s
Rosemary's Baby, and the only non-Tourneur film in the Lewton
series to work from start to finish. While the concept of
things Satanic on the screen is hardly unusual, there are not
more than a handful of films that actually deal with devil
worship. Likely, this is due to the fact that even the
supposed freedom of an "X" rating would not allow for a
literal depiction of the extreme raunchiness of the practice.
In pre-ratings days, the films that dealt with devil worship—
primarily, Rex Ingram's The Magician (1926), Edgar G. Ulmer's
The Black Cat (1934), and this film— either stylized the
practice beyond recognition or skirted the actual depiction.
Skirting the action is the course taken by The Seventh Victim,
which is hardly surprising since that practice was already
central to the Lewton formula (and, whatever its
merits, Lewton's approach is formulaic). In Robson's film we
are denied the delights of Ingram's bizarrely balletic hell,
and Ulmer's magnificently choreographic black mass, but the
modern setting non-depiction is perhaps more unsettling. We
need not suspend disbelief in the fantasticated and sanitized
proceedings since we are at perfect liberty to imagine all
sorts of unsavoury doings by these jaded sophisticates.
Indeed, we are encouraged to do so by the very fact that a
predominating factor in the film is the shame experienced by
several of the Satanists.
It is something of a shock to find Tom Conway's Dr. Judd

from Cat People back on hand after last having seen him ripped
apart by Simone Simon's leopard woman, but the storyline is
rather vague about the time period, so perhaps this is an
earlier foray into his psychiatric adventures. In any case,
Conway is such an authoritative actor that we are quite
willing to forgive this lapse in the historical accuracy of a
fictional character. The man is quite amazing in all three of
his Lewton outings, bringing a surprising gravity to the
proceedings and making even the most outlandish premise seem
perfectly lucid. His Dr. Judd is here a more sympathetic
character, but no less enigmatic, and this is one of the
strengths of the film. There are enough aspects of the
characters that are not fully explained— such as Conway's
revelation of a long standing lie to a sensitive artist friend
of his late in the film— that we fully believe in their
reality as people with lives that continue when the camera
stops.
The plot of The Seventh Victim is fairly simplistic.

Screen newcomer Kim Hunter, leaving the grimmest of grim
boarding schools, goes to Manhattan to meet her sister, but
once there all she finds is an empty apartment with a chair
and noose set up for a suicide. Her efforts to find her
missing sister plunge her not just into the missing girl's
circle of oddish friends— including husband Hugh Beaumont who
soon falls in love with Hunter— but into a New York that is
positively a living nightmare. The script's half-hearted
attempts at injecting some normalcy into the proceedings via a
comic relief Italian couple only make the gloom of the rest of
the film more pronounced. The entire tone of the piece is set
by the typical Lewtonesque quote from one of John Donne's
"Holy Sonnets" that opens the film— "I runne to death and
death meets me as fast/And all my pleasures are as
yesterday"— and nothing ever dispels this mood. When Hunter
does ultimately find her sister (jean Brooks in a bizarre
black wig) it transpires that the older girl had become
involved with a group of Satanists and that her confession of
these activities to Conway has constituted betrayal and placed
her under sentence of death. However, this particular sect
has a strict non-violence rule and are instead engaged in a
war of nerves with the girl in an effort to force her to take
her own life. Finally, the group catch up to her and try to
force her to drink poison— an effort that fails when her only
supporter (Isabel Jewel in a vaguely lesbian role) smashes the
glass and the mood. It quickly becomes obvious that the
non-violence rule is more honored in the breech than in the
observance when a knife-wielding thug is sent in pursuit of
her. Returning to her room she meets a fellow boarder, a
pathetic tuberculosis case (the striking Elizabeth Russell)
who has been hiding in her own room, afraid to make a sound in
the strange belief that death may not be able to find her.
"Yet it keeps coming all the time— closer and closer," she
tells Brooks, before revealing her decision to stop hiding and
go out for a final good time, mindless of the death this will
call into being. It is this chance encounter that prompts
Brooks to return to her room and meet her own fate, so that we
hear the sound of the suicide chair being kicked over as
Russell heads out for her night on the town.
Splendid as all this is as a mood piece one might rightly

question the astonishing effect that Conway’s lame non
argument about the reasons for choosing good over evil has on
this group of hard-bitten cynics. We can believe that Isabel
Jewel's character could so easily be swayed into all-consuming
guilt, but it's a bit much to buy the idea these people are
going to be even slightly touched by Conway reminding them of

"The Lord's Prayer." In this one instance, the film almost
loses its touch, but Conway's playing helps prevent the
laughter this facile comeuppance nearly causes.
Robson's follow-up film, The Ghost Ship, has long been out
of circulation due to a plagiarism suit brought against the
film, and so was not readily available for reappraisal here.
In essence, it is obviously rather minor Lewton in any case,
being little more than a knockdown version of The Sea Volf
with Richard Dix as a "B" picture Edward G. Robinson. Vere it
not for the names of Lewton and Robson on the project, it is
doubtful if this psychological thriller would even be
considered a horror film.
More to the point is the Robert Wise-Gunther V. Fritsch

film, Curse of the Cat People, a singularly odd fantasy that
is one of the most alarmingly non-commercial proposals
imaginable. Rather than being a "normal" follow-up to the
Lewton-Tourneur box-office success, Curse of the Cat People is
a film that explores the miseries of a lonely childhood. The
film's connection to its predecessor lies only in the fact
that the story is built around the daughter of Kent Smith and
Jane Randolph, who ended up together following Simone Simon's
death in the first film. Their somewhat neglected and socially
inept child (wonderfully played by Ann Carter) either conjures
up an imaginary playmate in Simon's ghost, or perhaps conjures
up the real article (the film is pleasantly vague on this
point). The only literal menace in the film is provided by a
dotty old actress (Julia Dean) who lives in a Leni-esque old
dark house and delights in providing Carter with tea parties
and ghost stories. Unfortunately, the old lady's daughter
(Elizabeth Russell) feels that the little girl has stolen her
mother's affection and goes 'round the bend, providing the
film with the necessary murderous climax in which the child is
apparently saved by Simon's ghost.
What makes the film work— apart from its remarkably

effective portrait of the loneliness of childhood— is the
multiple layers of possible meanings inherent in the entire
affair. Was it loneliness, isolation, and too much intro
spection that prompted Simon's original problem in the first
place? And, if so, isn't Carter well on her way to a not
dissimilar state of mental imbalance? Similarly, the neglect
ed— and undeniably "different"— woman-child of Elizabeth
Russell might well be a projection of where Carter is headed
should her situation go unchecked. Fortunately, the film
doesn’t try to unravel any of its self-posed questions,

leaving the viewer to ponder their implications.
The success of these generally unassuming films prompted

RKO to award Lewton bigger budgets. Not surprisingly, these
increased budgets— allowing for name horror film players and
period settings— did nothing for the films, resulting in the
three interesting, but hardly successful, offerings that
climax the Lewton series with less creativity than evidenced
in the more economical entries.
Robert Wise's The Body Snatcher is a remarkably well-made

and just as remarkably pretentious film. Often viewed as a
Karloff-Lugosi opus, The Body Snatcher instead is a Henry
Daniell picture with Karloff in strong support and Lugosi in
an effective cameo. Adapted from the Robert Louis Stevenson
short story, The Body Snatcher is one of those films that
relies entirely too much on impressing the viewer with a
combination of the "importance" of its literary origins and
its surface historical accuracy ("Oh, just look— real
cobblestones!” it seems to cry). This attitude conspires to
make the entire film so restrained that it threatens to simply
evaporate. To some extent, this is the result of the casting
of Karloff and Lugosi. Where we are prepared to accept this
approach with Tom Conway or Dennis O'Keefe, we simply expect
bigger things from Universal's "Twin Titans of Terror," and
the film largely refuses to allow that to happen except in
fits and starts. Moreover, the very mechanics of Lewton's
reticent approach are here wearing thin so that by the time we
see--or, more correctly, don't see— Karloff's murder of the
blind ballad singer it is so wholly unsurprising that all we
see are the gears working.
What then can we salvage from this glossy misfire? One

easy answer is Henry Daniell's performance as Dr. MacFar-
lane, a disciple of the infamous Dr. Knox, whose sponsorship
of the graverobbing Burke and Hare (themselves not too
concerned about how dead the corpse they needed might be)
earned him a bizarre footnote in medical history. Daniell
carries the bulk of the film with his authoritative portrayal
of a basically decent man turned cold, evil, and even
ineffectual through corruption. Beyond this, The Body Snatcher
at least did remember that which had been forgotten in the
final Universal Karloff-Lugosi thriller, Black Friday— to give
the stars a confrontation scene. And this the film does in a
grand manner, though too late in the proceedings to make up
for the dubious use of the pair elsewhere. Realizing that
Karloff is making a nice profit selling bodies to Daniell,

Lugosi decides to try a spot of blackmail on the
resurrectionist cab driver. "Give me money or I tell the
police," threatens Lugosi. "Of course, Joseph, you want money
and you shall have money. Why should you not?" oozes Karloff,
coming up with a better idea— "You and I should work
together." (if only the film had taken this line to heart!)
Outlining his plan that rather than rob graves ("The kirkyards
are too well guarded") they should "Burke" their victims,
Karloff cagily explains the history of the graverobbers,
baffling Lugosi by lapsing into a song on their murderous
activities. "I don't understand the song! Tell me plain how we
do it," he insists, whereupon Karloff demonstrates the
technique, neatly disposing of the blackmailing Lugosi in the
bargain.
Also worthwhile is the decidedly gruesome shock effect of

Lugosi's corpse peering up out of a tank of water, while the
climactic sequence is as good as anything in the Lewton
filmography. Having murdered Karloff (who has cautioned
Daniell, "You'll never get rid of me"), Daniell undertakes a
graverobbing expedition of his own, but as he makes his
getaway with the corpse he comes to believe the truth of
Karloff's words. "It's changed," he declares of the cadaver as
the rhythm of the horse hooves and the sounds of a thunder
storm conspire to delude him into hearing Karloff's "never get
rid of me" over and over. Convinced that the body has indeed
turned into Karloff's, Daniell panics the horses and crashes
to his death. Alas, Lewton cannot resist this moment to throw
one of his beloved literary quotations at the viewer.
Although spawned from a singularly off-center idea—

basing a film on Arnold Boecklin's magnificently eerie
painting, Isle of the Dead (surely it did not escape culture
vulture LewtonHs attention that Rachmaninoff had created a
tone poem under the spell of this painting)— Mark Robson’s
Isle of the Dead is an improvement over The Body Snatcher— at
least, once one gets used to Karloff's permanent waved curly
mop. Like _I Walked with a. Zombie, The Leopard M a n , and The
Ghost Ship, Isle of the Dead has the advantage of a vaguely
modern setting that is, however, so far removed geograph
ically from the norm that it might be almost any time period
in its otherworldliness.
As with the bulk of the Lewton series, the storyline is

simple— a no-nonsense Greek general (Karloff) holds a group of
people on a small island when plague breaks out among them, in
order that his troops might be spared the infection. That's

really all the plot there is. Beyond that, very little
actually happens in the course of the film. Most of the
"action" consists of weird dialogues about local superstitions
(primarily the "vorvoloka," a kind of demon vampire), Greek
mythology (one character ends up offering ritual prayers to
Hermes), and the hope of a shift in the wind that will carry
the plague away from them. Central to the film is the feeling
of entrapment and doom that pervades the proceedings, and this
Robson conveys with the same intensity that permeates his
debut work, The Seventh Victim. All the characters can do is
sit and wait— wait either to contract the plague or for the
winds to shift and save them.
Isle of the Dead's most famous showpiece is justly well

regarded, due to the unorthodox— even for a Lewton film—
handling of an otherwise prosaic horror film event telegraphed
scenes ahead of its occurrence. Having been alerted to the
fact that Katherine Emery is subject to spells of catalepsy,
we know it is only a matter of time before this is going to
happen. When it does, nothing quite plays to type. A mere
quiver of the nostrils (hysterically parodied by Jacques
Tourneur in 1963 with A Comedy of Terrors) tips us off that
the lady in question is still among us. Then comes the big
scene with Robson slowly tracking through the crypt up to the
coffin— the only sound being the steady dripping of water.
Finally coming into close-shot, we are confronted with—
nothing. Robson then pulls back, completely out of the crypt
and it is only then that the expected scream of the "dead"
woman pierces the soundtrack, taking us quite by surprise.
That very little else about the film carries this punch is
unimportant, since the final murderous prowlings of the now
quite insane Emery and the plague-infected Karloff's growing
conviction that the woman is one of the dreaded vorvoloka (his
civilized, matter-of-fact veneer having peeled away due to
sickness and circumstances) do manage to maintain the film's
unusual tone of morbidity.
Everything that was bad about The Body Snatcher is

magnified no end in the final Lewton entry, Robson's Bedlam.
This just may be the longest 79 minutes ever committed to
film. Having struck aesthetic gold with Isle of the Dead,
Lewton and Robson (neither of whom ever seemed to realize that
this sort of thinking was every bit as pointlessly formulaic
as the much derided Universal variety) decided to do the same
thing with the eighth plate of Hogarth’s The Rake's Progress.
Though somewhat in advance of Igor Stravinsky's opera
historically, the pair were way off base artistically. What

they ended up making is a slightly sadistic, utterly
non-horrific indictment of the casual cruelty of the era it
depicts— something like Charles Dickens at his soap-box worst
minus the point (what possible service to mankind is a
non-allegorical work about asylum conditions better than 100
years after the fact?). Casting Karloff as the social climbing
director of the asylum known as Bedlam probably seemed like a
sound idea at the time, but in truth the film wastes him
except in isolated instances such as his trial at the hands of
the inmates he has so long mistreated. Perhaps the best
measure of the film's failure, though, are the astoundingly
boring romantic leads. Through them the good points about Kent
Smith and Jane Randolph in Cat People and Curse of the Cat
People emerge with a terrifying clarity, proving at least how
relative things are.
Though the individual films in the Lewton series are more

variable than was long assumed by critics who normally didn't
see "B" pictures, let alone "B" horror pictures, they do make
up an impressive body of work. Ironically, the films were
merely stepping stones for almost everyone concerned, yet only
Tourneur with his masterpiece, Curse of the Demon (1958), ever
did anything as good again. Perhaps it isn't only horror films
that suffer from inflated budgets after all.
Cat People. 1942. RKO. Producer: Val Lewton. Screenplay:

DeWitt Bodeen. Music: Roy Webb. Photography: Nicholas
Musuraca. Director: Jacques Tourneur.
Players: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane

Randolph, Jack Holt, Alan Napier, Elizabeth Russell.
74 minutes.
_I Walked with a Zombie. 1945* RKO. Producer: Val Lewton.

Screenplay: Curt Siodmak, Ardel Wray. Story: Inez Wallace.
Music: Roy Webb. Photography: J. Roy Hunt. Director: Jacques
Tourneur.
Players: Frances Dee, James Ellison, Tom Conway, Edith

Barrett, Christine Gordon, Sir Lancelot, Darby Jones. 69
minutes.
The Leopard Man. 1943* RKO. Producer: Val Lewton. Screenplay:

Ardel Wray. Story, Black Alibi, by Cornell Woolrich. Music:
Roy Webb. Photography: Robert de Grasse. Director: Jacques
Tourneur.
Players: Dennis O'Keefe, Jean Brooks, Margo, Isabel Jewel,

James Bell, Abner Biberman. 66 minutes.
The Seventh Victim. 1943• RKO. Producer: Val Lewton.

Screenplay: DeWitt Bodeen, Charles O ’Neal. Music: Roy Webb.
Photography: Nicholas Musuraca. Director: Mark Robson.
Players: Tom Conway, Kim Hunter, Jean Brooks, Hugh Beaumont,

Isabel Jewel, Evelyn Brent, Elizabeth Russell. 71 minutes.
The Ghost Ship. 1943* RKO. Producer: Val Lewton. Screenplay:

Donald Henderson Clarke. Music: Roy Webb. Photography:
Nicholas Murasaca. Director: Mark Robson.
Players: Richard Dix, Russell Wade, Edith Barrett, Ben Bard,

Edmund Glover, Skelton Knaggs. 69 minutes.
Curse of the Cat People. 1944• RKO. Producer: Val Lewton.

Screenplay: DeWitt Bodeen, Val Lewton (uncredited). Music: Roy
Webb. Photography: Nicholas Murasaca. Directors: Robert Wise,
Gunther V. Fritsch.
Players: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Ann Carter,

Julia Dean, Elizabeth Russell, Sir Lancelot. 70 minutes.
The Body Snatcher. 1945* RKO. Producer: Val Lewton.

Screenplay: Philip MacDonald, Carlos Keith (Lewton). Music:
Roy Webb. Photography: Robert de Grasse. Director: Robert
Wise.
Players: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, Edith

Atwater, Russell Wade, Rita Corday, Mary Gordon. 78 minutes.
Isle ofthe Dead. 1945* RKO. Producer: Val Lewton. Screen

play: Ardel Wray, Josef Mischel. Music: Roy Webb. Photography:
Jack Mackenzie. Director: Mark Robson.
Players: Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer, Katherine

Emery, Helene Thining, Alan Napier, Jason Robards. 70 minutes.
Bedlam. 1946. RKO. Producer: Val Lewton. Screenplay: Mark

Robson, Carlos Keith (Lewton). Music: Roy Webb. Photography:
Nicholas Musuraca. Director: Mark Robson.
Players: Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, Billy House, Richard Fraser,

Ian Wolfe, Glenn Vernon, Jason Robards. 79 minutes.
THE GEORGE ZUCCO PRC FILMS
The Mad Monster (1942)

Dead Men Walk (1943)
The Black Raven (1943)
Fog Island (1946)
The Flying Serpent (1946)
If Bela Lugosi was the Boris Karloff of the "B" picture,

then George Zucco was undeniably the Bela Lugosi of the "C"
picture. Unlike Lugosi, the balding, cultured-toned,
Manchester-born Zucco was never a major star despite strong
supporting performances in a number of important and relative
ly important films. Indeed, Zucco became a horror film star by
default— almost a default twice removed.
In 1940 the tiniest and cheesiest of all Hollywood

studios, Producers' Releasing Corporation (commonly known as
PRC, letters which, according to rude legend, were often as
not pronounced as a word) offered Boris Karloff the role of
Dr. Paul Carruthers in The Devil Bat. Karloff took one look at
the casual insanity of a screenplay that called for him to
create monster bats trained to kill anyone wearing his special
after-shave lotion ("Just rub a little on the tender part of
your neck!") and decided against the project. While clearly
patterned after the classy little series of "Mad Doctor" films
he'd been making for Columbia, The Devil Bat was just as
clearly at least three times as absurd as any of the Columbia
films, and, worse, it was wrong-headedly ambitious, requiring
special effects in the giant bat department of which PRC were
obviously incapable. So the part made its way to Lugosi who
couldn't afford to be quite so picky about his material, and
for whom PRC didn't even bother to alter the singularly inapt
name of Carruthers. (One assumes they considered such an
undertaking a superfluous extravagance.)
In truth, The Devil Bat without Lugosi is unthinkable.
155
Whether the viewer bought him as the kindly and well-loved Dr.
Carruthers or not, it was the gleeful nastiness he brought to
his nefarious chores that gave the film what merit it had. The
experience, though, was seemingly not a terrifically pleasant
one for Lugosi and by the time PRC had readied their next
horror opus, The Mad Monster, he was firmly ensconced in his
own series at Monogram. It was thus that George Zucco— however
briefly— became a horror star in his own right with a six
picture contract (only five were ultimately made) that gave
him the type of leading roles no other studio really offered.
The Mad Monster was shot in a whirlwind five days by Sam

Newfield— a filmmaker who might well be dubbed "The Mad Auteur
of PRC.” Newfield (whose brother rather conveniently owned the
studio) wrote (under a variety of pseudonyms) and directed
(occasionally under an alias as well) a great deal of PRC's
overall output. In fact, all but one of the Zucco offerings—
Fog Island being the exception— bear his directorial
signature. While it is unarguable that Newfield had no
particular identifiable style, he did have the ability to get
the most out of a non-existent budget, he could create
something of a credibly creepy atmosphere, and, best of all,
he let Zucco have his perfidious freedom. On the debit side,
Newfield seems to have been totally unaware of the more
foolish aspects of his films and was either incapable of— or
not interested in— obtaining much in the way of performances
from anyone else in the casts. As a result, the films work—
when they do work— on the strength of their dark-tinged atmos
phere and Zucco*s performances.
Often viewed as a cut-rate cash-in by PRC on Universal*s

The Wolf Man, The Mad Monster, regardless of the presence of a^
wolf man (Glenn Strange in his horror film debut as the dim-
witted Pedro— a role handled as if Lon Chaney’s Lennie from Of
Mice and Men [ 1939] was playing The Wolf M a n ’s Larry Talbot !T7
is more of an instant remake of, yes, The Devil Bat. Instead
of giving us Lugosi as an embittered scientist revenging him
self on those who "robbed'* him of his fortune by appropriating
his cold cream formula via enlarged, trained bats, PRC
presents us with Zucco as Professor Lorenzo Cameron, embitter
ed scientist, revenging himself on those who scoffed at his
theories and ruined his career by turning his handyman into a
werewolf. The Mad Monster even goes so far as to repeat the
blatantly expository sequence where Lugosi explains his plight
by "thinking aloud"— only this round we have the added bonus
of having the culprits fade into view to argue with Zucco,
imbuing the film with delusions of the German Expressionist
school of cinema. Considering that Zucco appears to have

inherited Lugosi's old laboratory it is perhaps all very
natural.
Actually, the variation on The Devil Bat opening is fairly

skillful and affords Zucco some of his ripest purple dialogue.
"Gentlemen, I wish you were here to see the proof of my claim
that the transfusion of blood between different species i£
possible! A few moments ago Pedro was a man— a harmless,
good-natured man. Look at him now," Zucco enthuses to an empty
conference table. Right on cue the previously comatose Pedro—
complete with crepe hair and dubious dental embellishments—
snarls and growls for the benefit of Zucco's non-existent
audience. "He’s no longer human! He's a wolf— snarling,
ferocious, lusting for the kill! You're looking at a
scientific miracle, gentlemen," Zucco concludes, only to be
branded as (what else?) a "madman" by the spectres of his
previous associates. "That's exactly what you said to the
newspapers, wasn't it, Professor Blaine? That I was a madman—
not fit to occupy a science chair at the university! Perhaps
you'll change your mind one day soon— when Pedro tears at your
throat!" gloats Zucco. One by one his former colleagues appear
to lodge wonderfully cliched claims of transgressions against
nature, despite Zucco's wartime patriotic enthusiasm for his
discovery as a boon to the military, offering them "an army of
wolf men— fearless, raging, every man a snarling animal!" Both
Zucco and the script blithely sidestep answering the question
of how he proposes to round up this army of monsters after the
fact and administer the antidote. "Silence! I'm not interested
in your imbecilic mouthings," Zucco counters by way of splen
did non-answer when the point is raised perhaps because both
he and screenwriter Fred Myton realize all too well that PRC
could never afford to pursue the enticing prospect of an army
of wolf men.
The revenge theme served the Zucco films well (and speak
volumes about the inferiority complexes of low-budget screen
writers)— in fact it plays a major role in all five films— and
regardless of the lunacy of his original scheme and its more
than usual scientific spuriousness, not to mention Strange's
decided sub-Chaney werewolf make-up, The Mad Monster is a
marked improvement over its parent model, The Devil Bat, in
part because a marginally acceptable wolf man was more within
PRC's grasp than a giant bat (a fact lost on the studio for
the last of the Zuccos, The Flying Serpent, an outright remake
of, yes, The Devil Bat). Zucco's Professor Cameron mayn't be
as deliriously flamboyant as Lugosi’s Dr. Carruthers, but his

dry wit and thinly veiled contempt for those around him make
The Mad Monster a more effective film on the whole.
Some measure of the admittedly limited success of The Mad

Monster must go to Sam Newfield. True, he never generates any
actual horror and promotes a number of unintended laughs
(notably in allowing Zucco to continually climb atop the
strapped down Strange to administer the antidote). Then too,
most of the cast— apart from Zucco and Anne Nagel (whose
presence stresses the similarity of the film to George
Waggner's Man Made Monster [Universal, 1941]), and Mae Busch
(in an uncharacteristically sympathetic role as a backwoods
mother whose child falls prey to Strange's murderous bent)—
are awkward, under-rehearsed, and over-taxed. Still, for a
five day film, Newfield achieves a remarkable atmosphere in
bits and pieces, especially in those scenes in the fog-
shrouded swamp and in the wholly romanticized presentation of
the impoverished dwellers therein. Those scenes and Zucco's
bravura performance make The Mad Monster a considerably better
film than is generally allowed and a constantly entertaining
one, even if some of that entertainment is generated by
unconscious humor.
Not quite as ludicrous— and not quite as much fun— is Dead

Men Walk, a singularly odd little vampire picture featuring
two Zuccos for the price of one— a good Zucco (Dr. Lloyd
Clayton— Zucco with hairpiece) and an evil one (Dr. Elwyn
Clayton— Zucco sans hairpiece). By way of a bonus we are
treated to Dwight Frye in his next to last film as Zolorr,
Elwyn's familiar— a hunchbacked composite of Frye's more
famous roles as Renfield in Dracula, Fritz in Frankenstein,
and Herman in The Vampire Bat. Also on hand is one-time Bing
Crosby co-star Mary Carlisle as the lady in distress. Fred
Myton scripted again and Newfield directed with even more
assurance than he had on The Mad Monster. The occasional
atmosphere that had helped pull the first Zucco slightly out
of the mundane, here permeates the film, which is a dark
work— literally and figuratively— to which night and shadows
cling like a well-fitted shroud. Unfortunately, it is also a
film that demands a suspension of disbelief that one is hard-
pressed to grant owing to the lamentable supporting perfor
mances. Even so, Dead Men Walk is a surprisingly accomplished
work.
"Whence came the story told in frightened whispers down

through the ages of witch and warlock, werewolf and vampire,
and all the Spawn of Hell, born on the sable wings of night to
unholy communion of the witches' sabbath?" a disembodied head
superimposed over a book burning in a fireplace inquires prior
to the opening credits of Dead Men Walk, and while the film
never really answers the question, it does set the tone for
the events to follow. The vampire of Myton's screenplay, Elwyn
Clayton, is not the run-of-the-crypt variety, but one of those
curious creatures who becomes a vampire after his death, owing
to his mastery of black magic. This unusual touch— which
rather prefigures the vampire spawned of sexual degeneracy in
Terence Fisher’s Brides of Dracula (i960)— removes any trace
of sympathy one might find for the character, making Zucco's
Elwyn Clayton one of the nastiest of all screen horrors— a
chore to which Zucco is more than equal.
The film opens with Elwyn's funeral, the solemnity of

which is shattered by the arrival on the scene of "old Kate"
(Fern Emmett), who, we are later told, "hasn't been quite
right since the murder of her little granddaughter last year."
While the cast might charitably overlook her outburst— "How
can you defile this sacred house with the body of that evil
man? That servant of the devil? His hands are stained with the
blood of the innocent and his unspeakable sorceries!"— it is
much more difficult for the viewer to overlook her complete
lack of acting ability, which is helped not one bit by her
resemblance to Margaret Hamilton. Indeed, it is the casting of
this pivotal role that hurts Dead Men Walk more than any other
single factor.
It is quickly revealed— in a wonderfully purple dialogue

exchange between Lloyd Clayton and Zolorr— that Elwyn died by
his twin brother's hand in a clifftop fight to the death. Not
unreasonably, Zolorr holds Lloyd responsible for his master's
demise. "You'll pray for death long before you die!" he warns
Lloyd, who is busily burning his late brother's library of
occult books and manuscripts ("The world will be a cleaner
place without them"). Enjoyable as all this is, it is with
Elwyn's return from the dead that the film hits its stride. "I
live. I am not strong yet, but the power has been given me to
draw everlasting life from the veins of the living. They will
give me the blood from their hearts while I destroy them!" he
enthuses to Zolorr upon his resurrection, Zucco relishing each
hissed line.
The usual run of bloodless bodies, baffled sheriffs,

skeptics, and, alas, "old Kate" are upon us in short order,
but this is mostly preparatory to the main thrust of the
film— Elwyn exacting his revenge on Lloyd. "You burned the

book that would’ve given you the information you want,” Elwyn-
Zucco purrs upon appearing to Lloyd-Zucco in his library. "No,
I'm not dead," Elwyn assures upon his brother's anticipated
objections to finding a dead man wandering about the house. "I
have life far beyond anything you can understand— but that
doesn't make you any the less guilty of murder. You took it
upon yourself to sit in judgment of me and destroy my mortal
span of life." "Am I losing my mind? There was no sign of life
in Elwyn's body when it was placed in the vault," Lloyd
reasons as if his doppelganger wasn't present. "You'll know
I'm no intangible figment of your imagination when you feel
the weight of my hatred. Your life will be a torment. I'll
strip you of everything you hold dear— before I drag you down
to a sordid death," Elwyn promises, chuckling evilly as he
backs into the shadows to observe the romantic meeting of
Lloyd's niece (Carlisle) and her young man (Nedrick Young) in
the garden. "Young love in the moonlight— the theme of so many
poetic rhapsodies," observes Elwyn, who then elaborates, "Gail
was an easy hypnotic subject. I would've made her my disciple
and to save her from being initiated into the dark mysteries
the imminently respectable Dr. Clayton stooped to murder!"
"Yes," agrees Lloyd, "your life— a menace to all that was
clean and decent had no right to exist." "But you failed!"
laughs Elwyn, announcing, "By the power of those I serve my
life is indestructible— eternally sustained by the life I take
from others. I'll take life from Gail— slowly. You'll see her
life ebb day by day and be powerless to save her!" The
obligatory shooting effort ensues and Elwyn vanishes.
The first encounter between the two Zuccos is notable for

two reasons, beyond the always enjoyable addition of such a
scene to the vampiric catalogue of Dracula-Van Helsing styled
encounters. In the first place, Newfield and his crew do
manage to pull off a credible use of double exposure technique
(albeit for one shot only in the scene), but far more
importantly, pairing Zucco with Zucco affords him something
not found in any of the other PRC outings: for once he plays a
scene with an actor of his own calibre! Again we find the
harbinger of Brides of Dracula (wherein a suitably appalled
Van Helsing comments at one point, "He has vampirised his own
mother") in the incestuous implications of Elwyn's designs on
his niece.
Very little out of the ordinary in the way of vampire

picture plotting may occur, but it is all accomplished with a
good sense of impending doom and is thoroughly professional
and admirably straight faced. The only true problems hinge on

the film veering off to follow the efforts of "old Kate" to
help the situation, and the ill-advised attempt to dress up
the proceedings by saddling it with an atrocious Leo Erdody
musical score in place of the usual stock "B" picture music
favored by both PRC and Monogram. Erdody*s invariably over-
emphatic scores were generally reserved for PRC's more
"prestigious" films by Edgar G. Ulmer (his abominable music
for Ulmer's Bluebeard [1944] defaces an otherwise very good
film). Why he was assigned to Dead Men Walk is something of a
mystery, but he was and the film suffers for it. The Erdody
score is as bad as— or worse than— the usual canned music
without the quaint charm inherent in those creaky favorites as
compensation.
Nothing, however, can totally dissipate the nightmarish

tinge of such scenes as Elwyn's second appearance before
Lloyd, nor the relish with which Zucco delivers such
classically rich lines as his hissed complaint, "You've
failed, Zolorr," when Frye is prevented from removing Gail's
protective cross. Best of all is the film's climactic
sequence— a somewhat unusual occurrence in low-budget
thrillers which all too often just peter out when an adequate
running time has been reached, e.g., the perfunctory confla
gration that ends The Mad Monster.
The final Zucco-Zucco showdown is a fine sequence. From

the moment Lloyd enters his brother's secret crypt to be
jumped by the snarling Zolorr ("You'll never leave here
alive!") the film springs to life. Perhaps the most satisfying
thing about the ending of Dead Men Walk is the almost
swashbuckling style of dialogue exchanged between the Zuccos.
Once Lloyd has disposed of Zolorr (by toppling a pedestal on
him), he has to deal with Elwyn who appears announcing, "You
don't wait for death, you come to meet him." (Shades of Val
Lewton!) "Carry this thought with you to your death— Gail will
become a vampire and a slave to my will forever!" he advises
Lloyd before attacking him. In the process, of course, a
candle gets knocked over and the crypt catches fire, but the
Zuccos fight on to the accompaniment of Frye crying for help.
"You're weakening, aren't you? Your time has almost come!"
laughs Elwyn as they struggle, but his joy is short-lived when
a cock crows. "At dawn you'll be as helpless as one truly
dead!" chortles Lloyd, "Let me go! We'll both be burned
alive!" reasons Elwyn. "I’ll hold you here even if it costs me
my life," Lloyd assures him. Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone
couldn't have played the scene with more panache. Ultimately,
Elwyn collapses and Lloyd, with rather absurd stoicism, also

perishes in the flames, which it should be noted are as
convincingly achieved an effect as anything from a major
studio, and the matching of doubles (again there is only one
actual double-exposure) for the two Zuccos is beautifully done
and wholly convincing. It is probably the most accomplished
scene in the entire series.
Curiously, Dead Men Valk seems to have harbored delusions

of art. It is structured in a circular pattern, ending as it
began— with a funeral following a (previously offscreen) fight
to the death between the two brothers, only this time it is
Lloyd's funeral. Admittedly, this is light years removed from
such pointedly fatalistic uses of this kind of structure in
films like John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and Ken Russell's
Tommy (1975), but it is a very interesting attempt to convey a
not dissimilar feeling of the inevitability of what has gone
before, and suggests that screenwriter Myton and director
Newfield were a little more serious in their work than is
casually presumed.
That the triple threat teamof Neufeld, Myton, and

Newfield should next turn their attention to a somewhat
claustrophobic murder mystery (a vague rehashing of a very
silly 1956 film, The Rogues' Tavern, in which aging silent
star Clara Kimball Young murdered various and sundry with a
pair of false dog teeth) for the next Zucco opus is almost as
strange as the fact that the resulting film, The Black Raven,
has all but been overlooked. True, it isn't strictly speaking
a horror film, but it has all the elements of a traditional
old dark house tale and is likely the most thoroughly
enjoyable of the Zucco PRC's. Gone (thankfully) is the Erdody
score and back is the canned music applied by David Chudnow in
all its cheesy glory.
With the possible exception of William Beaudine's The Ape

M an, B horror exercises of the period tend to be sorely
lacking in a sense of humor about their casual absurdities,
taking the most outrageous nonsense with brain dead serious
ness— with often unintentionally funny results. Not so The
Black Raven. This version of the story may not boast anything
quite so incredible as false dog teeth, but it never remotely
takes itself or anything about its plot or characters
seriously. In that Zucco's character, Amos Bradford ("Alias
the Raven"), is given a sidekick named Andy (Glenn Strange) it
seems unlikely that the project was conceived with any degree
of belief in itself as a straight thriller. Moreover, all the
characters (save the ever inept heroine Wanda McKay and

victory casting hero Robert Randall) who end up spending the
night at Zucco's Old Dark Inn, The Black Raven, due to a
thunderstorm and washed out bridges are singularly over-the-
top in their obvious perfidy. Indeed, the genially shifty
Zucco, who seems to specialize in smuggling miscreants across
the Canadian border, is considerably less dubious than his
guests, spending an equal amount of time helping the romantic
leads and dropping nicely acid remarks about the mental
vacuums in which everyone else in the film appears to operate.
The film isn't many minutes old before Zucco finds himself
being held at gunpoint by escaped convict and old partner in
crime Whitey Cole (I. Stanford Jolley). Fortunately for him,
the interloper is quickly overpowered by the hulking Andy, who
asks, "What's the matter with him? Didn't he like the
service?” "He’s suffering from rapid delusions aggravated by a
moronic mentality," explains Zucco. "Gee, I hope it ain't
catching," worries Andy. "It might prove fatal," opines Zucco
before getting down to the business of running the inn.
Enter Mike Bardoni (or as Zucco pronounces it, "Bordoni,"

or as a newspaper headline has it, "Baroni," but played by
Noel Madison, who signs the register as "John Smith" in any
event), a big time racketeer in need of Zucco's aid. "I hear
you can slip a hot guy across the border into Canada," he
bluntly states upon meeting the proprietor. After some
discussion this arrangement is agreed upon as soon as the
storm subsides. In the meantime, they are joined by a mousy
little fellow (Byron Foulger), who also signs in as "John
Smith," and whose closely guarded satchel intrigues Bardoni no
end— even more so when a glimpse inside reveals a tidy bundle
of money. Next come eloping couple Lee Winfield (Wanda McKay)
and Allen Bentley (Robert Randall), who are fleeing her
disapproving, vindictive, politically powerful, corrupt, and
generally unlikable father, Tim Winfield (Robert Middlemass),
who soon appears on the scene himself, immediately offending
everyone in sight and attempting to have Bentley arrested for
kidnapping. Before he can do so, though, the phone goes dead.
"As you may have noticed, there's a storm," deadpans Zucco in
explanation. Meanwhile a man tries to break into Foulger's
room ("Why would a woman want to break into my room?” he asks
when queried on the gender of the assailant). Soon Winfield
recognizes Foulger as a bank embezzler and confiscates the
cash— not with the slightest intention of making restitution,
however, as is made abundantly clear when he walks off patting
the money filled satchel and smiling to himself! In next to no

time, Winfield is murdered and the money stolen, whereupon the
aggressively stupid sheriff (Charles Middleton) arrests
Bentley, despite Zucco*s level-headed assessment of the reason
for the killing ("Evidently someone didn't like him"), his
deft character analysis ("That boy’s no murderer"), and
obvious regard for the law ("You're more stupid than usual,
Sheriff").
The bulk of the film concerns a series of attacks— real

and imagined ("With your imagination you could see the Statue
of Liberty do the conga!" Zucco explodes at one point over
Strange's imbecilic antics)— on the players until the none-
too-involving mystery is solved ("The evidence was clear
enough, though it did take a little intelligence to unravel
it," explains Zucco) and the ever-skulking Whitey plugs Zucco.
"I hope you'll both be very happy," mutters Zucco to the
lovers as he expires for a screwily arbitrary fade-out. Art it
may not be, but there's no denying that The Black Raven has
its moments and Zucco seizes and savours each and every one of
them.
Considerably less successful, though in a similar vein, is

Terry Morse's Fog Island, which features Zucco as one Leo
Grainger, a former financial wizard ruined and sent to prison
by crooked associates. His ruination is somewhat hard to
believe since he still boasts a private island complete with
castle-like residence and a butler, but Pierre Gendron's
screenplay has it that he's ruined so we must overlook this
doubtful point and simply marvel over the unusually solid and
elaborate settings in which the action of the piece takes
place. Unfortunately, the screenplay isn't up to that for The
Black Raven (the story kills off Zucco— and our interest— far
too early in the proceedings), and Morse's direction is
uninspired and too tame for the genre. A former editor, Morse
seems to have had a curious personal distaste for showing
corpses (as evidenced here and in his Charlie Chan opus,
Shadows Over Chinatown, made the same year). In itself this
might not be a bad thing, but it results in some damnably
strange and awkward camera angles in stories dealing with
multiple homicides.
The film has it that Zucco invites all his former friends
and partners to the island in an effort to get to the truth of
the matter. Of course, once they arrive they find themselves
trapped, but Zucco's plan is not one of revenge as such (even
if he does want to snare his wife's killer). He merely brings
this shady collection under one roof to allow them to be them

selves, certain of what will follow. The bulk of them dlo get
their come-uppance through Zucco's machinations, but only in
pursuit of their own greedy ends. There are several bright
moments, such as Zucco entering the room just as an uninvited
guest tosses his butler over the balcony, and graciously ask
ing, "Having fun, Doc?" Also, his one big scene with Atwill is
nicely melodramatic with Zucco rasping, "You've signed your
own death warrant," as he expires, knowing full well that the
murderous Atwill's avarice will be his undoing. In the end,
all but Zucco's step-daughter and her boyfriend perish in a
sealed room that floods when they attempt to uncover Zucco's
non-existent ill-gotten gains. It's nothing more nor less than
a poverty row And Then There Were None, solely distinguished
by the rich playing of its stars.
The irrepressible Newfield returned— under the alias of

Sherman Scott— to direct the final Zucco outing, the delirious
Flying Serpent, surely one of the major joys of Bad Cinema.
The claim that the film is from an original story and screen
play by John T. Neville is hardly borne out by a film that we
all know is The Devil Bat with Aztec mythology trimmings.
An erudite foreword on Aztec myths lets us in on the fact

that Montezuma's treasure (hidden in some ruins in New Mexico)
is perpetually guarded by the ruler's ancient gods— "Among
these gods was the feathered serpent— QUETZALCOATL." God or
not, the lovably preposterous animal in question has somehow
become Zucco's pet. "For more than 500 years, Quetzalcoatl,
you've guarded the treasure for Montezuma. Now, you protect it
for Professor Andrew Forbes," he tells the creature for our
benefit. "No other human eye shall see it and live," swears
Zucco, snatching a feather from the animal and taunting him
with it, "You want it, don't you? You're proud of your
plumage, aren't you? You'd kill for it, wouldn't you? No doubt
you'll kill for it again— many times." As usual when left
alone like this, Zucco gets wound up and goes on at great
length. "The foolish people of San Juan think I'm only a poor
eccentric archaeologist. They don’t know how rich I am— or how
smart! If they were to see you now, they would think you were
some monstrous left-over from the prehistoric age! They
wouldn't believe that you were Quetzalcoatl, the serpent god!"
(Actually, chances are that they wouldn't believe the creature
was other than the sketchy puppet it obviously is, even though
it must be admitted that the beast is an improvement over the
flying slab-of-beef bats from Lugosi's film.)
Absolutely nothing out of the way or unexpected happens,

of course, but that's part of the charm of the film. The
feathers obviously serve the same function as did Lugosi's
after shave lotion and Zucco's villainy is, if anything, even
more transparent than his predecessor. At one point, learning
that his intended victim has wandered off with the feather
Zucco planted for him, he breaks off in the middle of a con
versation with his step-daughter to announce, "Oh, you better
not wait supper for me, dear," turns and leaves to unleash the
monster!
In the main, The Flying Serpent follows the plot of The

Devil Bat exactly, climaxing with the death of Zucco at the
teeth of his own monster, but the film is frankly better made.
The hysterically obvious secret chamber (there's a clearly
visible doorway in the side of a rock leading to it!) contain
ing the treasure and Quetzalcoatl is a surprisingly elaborate
and solid set. And, ridiculous as it is, the serpent is fairly
complex in design (late in the film, it even breathes steam),
so it is apparent that even this late in the game PRC were at
least still in there trying, something unusual for a film that
came from a studio on its last shaky legs and the last entry
in a series. It's not the best of the Zucco thrillers, but it
certainly is one of the most fun— and ambitious.
The Mad Monster. 1942. PRC. Producer: Sigmund Neufeld. Screen

play: Fred Myton. Photography: Jack Greenhalgh. Music: David
Chudnow. Director: Sam Newfield.
Players: George Zucco, Johnny Downs, Anne Nagel, Glenn

Strange, Mae Busch. 60 minutes.
Dead Men Valk. 1943* PRC. Producer: Sigmund Neufeld. Screen

play: Fred Myton. Photography: Jack Greenhalgh. Music: Leo
Erdody. Director: Sam Newfield.
Players: George Zucco, Mary Carlisle, Nedrick Young, Dwight

Frye, Sam Flint, Hal Price, Robert Strange, Fern Emmett. 63
minutes.
The Black Raven. 1943* PRC. Producer: Sigmund Neufeld. Screen

play: Fred Myton. Photography: Robert Cline. Music: David
Chudnow. Director: Sam Newfield.
Players: George Zucco, Noel Madison, Byron Foulger, Robert

Middlemass, Charlie Middleton, Robert Randall, Wanda McKay,
Glenn Strange, I. Stanford Jolley. 65 minutes.
Fog Island. 1946. PRC. Screenplay: Pierre Gendron, based on

the play, Angel Island, by Bernadine Angus. Photography: Ira
Morgan. Music: Karl Hajos. Director: Terry Morse.
Players: George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Jerome Cowan, Sharon

Douglas, Veda Ann Borg, John Whitney, Jacqueline DeWitt, Ian
Keith, George Lloyd. 61 minutes.
The Flying Serpent. 1946. PRC. Producer: Sigmund Neufeld.

Screenplay: John T. Neville. Photography: Jack Greenhalgh.
Music: Leo Erdody. Director: Sherman Scott (Sam Newfield).
Players: George Zucco, Ralph Lewis, Hope Kramer, Eddie Acuff,

Wheaton Chambers, James Metcalfe, Henry Hall, Milton Kibbee,
Budd Buster, Terry Frost. 62 minutes.
THE "INNER SANCTUM" FILMS
Calling Dr. Death (1943)

Veird Woman (1944)
Dead M a n ’s Eyes (1944)
The Frozen Ghost (1945)
Strange Confession (1945)
Pillow of Death (1945)
"This is the Inner Sanctum— a strange, fantastic world

controlled by a mass of living, pulsating flesh— the mind. It
destroys, distorts, creates monsters, commits murder! Yes,
even you, without knowing, can commit murder!" So begin the
films that make up Lon Chaney's brief-lived series of vaguely
supernatural thrillers for Universal, and while almost nothing
in any of the six movies quite lives up to this rather
alarming blurb— muttered by a disembodied head (belonging to
an unbilled David Hoffman) in a crystal ball— they do form an
interesting low budget series that stretched Chaney's talents,
provided a welcome respite from the Wolfman and the Mummy, and
allowed the actor (for some unknown reason) to sport a variety
of outlandish neckties. Of the six entries only Weird Woman is
overtly horror film oriented, but all of the films at least
verge on the supernatural, and since they feature the 40s
primary new horror star and originate at the "Home of Horror,"
they are included here.
Taken as a group, the "Inner Sanctum" films are very

different territory for Universal, though they likely have
their roots in the studio’s vastly enjoyable "Crime Club"
films from the late 30s. However, the "Inner Sanctum"
offerings are more thoughtful where their predecessors had
tended toward the hard-boiled. In fact, they seem to have
delusions of intellectualism, coming across as middle-brow
Lewton— substituting a kind of forced subtlety for the
studio's usual run of genre antics. Certainly, they are
nowhere near the level of the original Universal horror films
169
from the 30s, hut neither are they quite such uninteresting
failures as their detractors often insist.
The films do not have a connecting storyline, boasting

only a very marginal connection to the Inner Sanctum radio
programme, but the stylistic similarity of the entries make
them far more unified than are the 1940s Frankenstein films
with the Whale pictures that spawned the series. Generally
speaking, each film presents Chaney— somewhat incredibly— as
an intellectual man caught up in a nightmarish situation that
defies his intellectualism and tests his very reason.
Surprisingly, for an actor whose main claim to fame rests

on the appeal of his none-too-bright helpless quality, Chaney
handles himself with a fair amount of assurance. Presented
with a pencil-thin mustache and a degree of sartorial dash,
Chaney manages to overcome his screen image much of the time.
Thankfully, Chaney's acceptability as a worldly American is
much greater than that evidenced by his turn as a worldly
European in Son of Dracula.
The series' first entry, Calling Dr. Death, is one of the

better films, not in the least because of a striking and
unusual cast that included Broadway's Patricia Morrison,
Ramsay Ames, David Bruce, and, best of all, J. Carroll Naish
as Inspector Gregg, a cynical detective who is quite ready to
believe that Chaney’s Dr. Mark Steele is responsible for the
murder of Mrs. Steele (Ames). Casting Chaney as a psychiatrist
was a bold stroke, but somehow one believed in him here if
only because it seemed reasonable that Chaney's psychiatrist
would be utterly incapable of bringing any degree of
psychological order into his own life, and this certainly is
the case in Calling Dr. Death. The man not only is saddled
with a faithless, shrewish wife, who (as is typical in such
thrillers) refuses to divorce him, but he is embroiled in a
seemingly hopeless affair with nurse Stella Madden (Morrison)!
Is it any wonder that his wife's death and disfigurement by
acid causes suspicion to fall on him as well as on her lover?
Besides Chaney's credible performance and Naish's top-

notch one, Calling Dr. Death is notable for a refreshing lack
of traditional romanticism (the solution to the crime is
cynical and unsentimental in the extreme— one might even say
misogynistic), and a surprisingly stylish hynoptism sequence
wherein the murder of Marcia Steele is solved. In the main,
Reginald LeBorg's direction is merely competent, but in this
one section he demontrates considerable flair and a taste for
the fantastic, which held him in good stead for the second
entry, Weird Woman.
Weird Woman is without question a travesty of Fritz

Leiber's source novel, Conjure Wife, which, for that matter,
has never been adequately brought to the screen, despite two
subsequent attempts. However, it is— excepting an inane South
Sea island flashback that looks for all the world as if it was
lifted out of a Crosby-Hope "Road" picture— also the best film
in the series in many respects. While the more bizarre— and
interesting— aspects of the novel have been deleted
(presumably in an attempt to make the film more mystery than
horror), the basic storyline is retained, and it is a
sufficiently strong one to carry the film over the top. (This
may well be due to the adaptation being the work of W. Scott
Darling, an all too often shameless plagiarist, who, however,
was a very rare Hollywood type— a writer who actually read his
source material rather than work from a three page outline
prepared by a $50 a week studio "reader.")
As with the initial entry the cast is a strong one. In

addition to Chaney as an ultra-rational anthropology professor
coming to grips with the fact that his wife practices
protective witchcraft, the film has Anne Gwynne as the wife,
Ralph Morgan as a weak-willed, possibly plagiaristic
colleague, Elizabeth Russell as his dominating wife, and, in a
bold casting departure, Evelyn Ankers as a frustrated spinster
and the villain of the piece. All concerned handle their
assignments with professionalism, though Chaney and Ankers are
particularly fine. (As with the Sherlock Holmes entry, Pearl
of Death, she very likely enjoyed the change of pace from much
put-upon heroine.) Chaney's Prof. Norman Reed seems tailored
to the actor's personality by trading on his innate lack of
imagination. True, the radio drama organ music and voice-over
narration of Chaney thinking (a staple with the series that
tends to become unintentionally funny when the films are
encountered in quantity) occasionally make him appear a little
unbelievably cerebral. This, however, is balanced by his
stubborn refusal to see what goes on before his eyes based on
his unimaginative view born of nothing more than his
"knowledge" that such things simply do not happen.
Despite the high quotient of deleted material a surprising

amount of Leiber remains, particularly in the film's scathing
depiction of the vicious inner circle of academic politics and
the backbiting of the "publish or perish" ethics (or lack
thereof) of that society. While the entire plot of the novel
revolved around that concept (and the behind the scenes

workings of wifely witchcraft that control it all), the film
uses the idea effectively to bring about its denouement,
resting its plot instead on a rather more mundane— and
generally accessible— jealousy motive. Simplified this may be,
but it does work within the context of Weird Woman. The crux
of the climax lies in the fact that Ankers drives Ralph Morgan
to suicide by planting the (false) idea that Chaney is going
to expose him for publishing a paper based on a dead student's
work. It is with the discovery of this machination that
Chaney, Gwynne, and Elizabeth Russell wear Ankers down by
working on her conscience and her basic superstitious nature.
The idea that the screenplay's reworkings are meant to be

more rationally believable than the flat out supernatural
occurrences of the novel is laughable when we examine the last
section of Weird Woman in any detail. In order to work on
Ankers, Russell tells her of a strange dream in which Morgan
appeared and told her, "He said he was dead because a woman
lied." The montage of events that follow— some manipulated,
some apparently mere coincidence— is well done, but patently
absurd, especially when Ankers is confronted by a billboard
for a new play called The Lady Lies! Somehow Leiber's more
fantasticated soul-snatching seems less ludicrous than this
exercise in skillful writing. Regardless of this drawback, the
conclusion with Ankers trying to make a getaway across an
arbor and accidentally hanging herself is suitably eerie,
especially since this does mysteriously occur at one minute
past midnight— the time Morgan supposedly set for the lying
woman's come-uppance. "It happened just as he said in the
dream— only there was no dream, just a fantastic story,"
comments Russell with just enough conviction and theatricalism
to pull it off and mask the let-down of the dull-as-dishwater
tag scene in which Chaney dismisses magic.
Less good, but not without its merits, is Dead Man's Eyes,
which has a more direct connection to the earlier "Crime Club"
series by virtue of a borrowed plot device from Mystery of the
White Room (1939), which here becomes the core of the film.
Again, Chaney is presented in a believably enhanced capacity
as artist Dave Stuart. Chaney as a painter would be hard to
swallow were it not for the fact that Stuart is very much a
meat-and-potatoes artist, whose work is not too far removed
from "leg art." One suspects that Chaney the artist would
specialize in gypsy dancing girl paintings of Acquanetta as
the height of his artistic expression.
The plot of Dead Man's Eyes is put into motion when model
Acquanetta accidentally switches some bottles around and
Chaney inadvertently washes his eyes with sulphuric rather
than boric acid, (it would be as well if the viewer did not
question what kind of idiot would keep these two acids side by
side in identical bottles in the first place.) This results in
Chaney's blindness and a great deal of sub-Light That Failed
self-pitying histrionics on his part that drag the film
several notches below the standards of the first two.
Fortunately, this is soon put to flight with the bequest of
the eyes of prospective father-in-law Stanley Hayden (Edward
Fielding) upon his death— a legacy obviously made by someone
unaware of the sort of film in which he was appearing. In no
time, Hayden has been murdered and beneficiary Chaney is the
prime suspect. If this sounds a little familiar it should
since it's more than a little like Calling Dr. Death. The only
real difference this round lies in the casting of Thomas Gomez
as the cynical police investigator, who suspects and intends
on trapping Chaney. The bulk of the latter sections of the
film revolve around Chaney playing blind detective a la Edward
Arnold in The Night Has Eyes (MGM, 1942). Some of the scenes
are pretty savvy, especially one, following the supposedly
unsuccessful eye transplant, in which Gomez tries to trick
Chaney into admitting he can see. The somewhat convoluted
conclusion is less satisfying due to the film's scarcity of
legitimate suspects.
The exact meaning of the title of the next film, The

Frozen Ghost, is something of a mystery— and about the only
thing that is. This round Chaney is cast as Alex Gregor— or
Gregor the Great, a radio show hypnotist, who comes to believe
that he murdered an inebriated "contestant" (Arthur Hohl) with
his hypnotic powers, simply because he had wished the abusive
drunk dead. Despite the fact that the man had a weak heart and
was about to drop dead anyway, this gives Chaney ample footage
to feel sorry for himself and wander about thinking aloud.
None of this is very auspicious, nor is the by now tired-and-
true device of a close friend of Chaney's being at the bottom
of the ensuing mystery. A good supporting cast— Ankers,
Milburn Stone, Tala Birell, Elena Verdugo, Martin Kosleck, and
Douglass Dumbrille— help, as does the film’s use of Mme.
Monet's (Birell) wax museum as a major setting. This round
there are no suspects, so it is obvious that Stone— in league
with Kosleck— is the villain of the piece. More than the
previous entries the film's concept of Chaney as the hottest
romantic property in town (Ankers, Birell, and Verdugo— in
short, the whole female cast— all have designs on the man)
strain credulity, since Gregor the Great is Chaney at his

morose worst. Quite the best thing about the film is Douglass
Dumbrille's Shakespeare quoting Inspector Brant, even if his
part is just a variation on the detectives from the earlier
films.
The penultimate Inner Sanctum entry, Strange Confession,

was an updated and unauthorized remake of the 1935 Claude
Rains vehicle, The Man Who Reclaimed His Head. The fact that
the film was not sanctioned by the copyright holders of the
original material has resulted in its unavailability for
reassessment. However, it seems safe to conclude that it
wasn’t one of the better entries, since the story of a
munitions maker forcing a pacifist into virtually selling his
soul for the sake of financial gain (resulting in the
beheading of the villain as revenge) was not all that
appealing in its original form. The weak and conscience
stricken main character would seem to have all the elements
necessary for Chaney’s most self-indulgent and unlikable
sympathy-mongering.
The concluding entry, Pillow of Death, is nearly on

par with the original two entries, even though it trods a not
dissimilar path to Calling Dr. Death. As with the other films,
the cast is uniformly good with J. Edward Bromberg as
spiritualist Julian Julian(!) a standout. The plot has Chaney
as unhappily married lawyer Wayne Fletcher, whose (naturally)
shrewish wife, Vivian (voiced by Victoria Horne, who otherwise
does not appear in the film), is conveniently murdered
(smothered with a pillow), leaving Fletcher free to marry his
secretary, Donna Kincaid (Brenda Joyce). This round not only
are the police skeptical of Chaney's innocence, so are members
of Joyce's family, especially Rosalind Ivan as spiritualism-
obsessed Amelia Kincaid. In a strict departure from form
Chaney turns out to be the killer this time, and it is
Bromberg's supernatural jiggery-pokery that wears him down
into revealing his psychopathic self.
What sets Pillow of Death apart from the other entries is

likely the no-nonsense, cold-blooded direction of Wallace Fox,
whose atmospheric techniques and off-hand approach to violence
had produced two of the better Bela Lugosi Monogram thrillers,
The Corpse Vanishes and Bowery at Midnight. The Fox technique
was perfect for a film in which the hero turns out to be a
certifiable madman. Moreover, his ability to get much out of
very little made his splendid use of such relatively elaborate
(compared to the Monogram equivalents) Universal settings as a
graveyard and an old darkish house seem almost elegant, even

when one of the film's more evocative scenes— a search for
Vivian Fletcher's ghost— turns silly-cute with a rational
explanation involving an escaped pet raccoon in the attic. The
departure from convention, a good script, Bromberg, and Fox's
direction help raise Pillow of Death to a level that allows
this interesting and too often dismissed series to end on an
unexpectedly pleasant high note.
Calling Dr. Death. 1943* Screenplay: Edward Dein, "inspired"

by the radio series Inner Sanctum. Music: H.J. Salter.
Direction: Reginald Le Borg.
Players: Lon Chaney, Jr., Patricia Morrison, Ramsay Ames,

David Bruce, Fay Helm, J. Carroll Naish, Holmes Herbert, Alec
Craig, Isabel Jewell, George Dolenz, Lisa Golm, Mary Hale,
John Elliott, David Hoffman. 63 minutes.
Weird Woman. 1944* Associate Producer: Oliver Drake.

Screenplay: Brenda Weisberg, from the novel Conjure Wife by
FritzLeiber. Adaptation: W. Scott Darling. Music: H.J.
Salter. Direction: Reginald Le Borg.
Players: Lon Chaney, Jr., Anne Gwynne, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph

Morgan, Elisabeth Risdon, Lois Collier, Elizabeth Russell,
Harry Haydon, Phil Brown, David Hoffman. 64 minutes.
Dead Man's Eyes. 1944. Producer: Will Cowan. Screenplay:

Dwight V. Babcock, "based on an Inner Sanctum mystery." Music:
H.J. Salter. Direction: Reginald Le Borg.
Players: Lon Chaney, Jr., Jean Parker, Paul Kelly, Thomas

Gomez, Jonathan Hale, Acquanetta, Edward Fielding, George
Meeker, Pierre Watkin, Eddie Dunn, Beatrice Roberts, David
Hoffman. 64 minutes.
The Frozen Ghost. 1945* Associate Producer: Will Cowan.

Screenplay: Bernard Schubert, Luci Ward. Story: Harrison
Carter, Henry Sucher. Adaptation: Henry Sucher. Music: H.J.
Salter. Direction: Harold Young.
Players: Lon Chaney, Jr., Evelyn Ankers, Milburn Stone, Tala

Birell, Elena Verdugo, Martin Kosleck, Douglass Dumbrille,
Arthur Hohl, David Hoffman. 61 minutes.
Strange Confession. 1945* Producer: Ben Pivar. Screenplay: M.

Coates Webster. Story, "The Man Who Reclaimed His Head:" Jean
Bart. Music: H.J. Salter. Direction: Jack Hoffman.
Players: Lon Chaney, Jr., Brenda Joyce, J. Carroll Naish,

Milburn Stone, Lloyd Bridges, Addison Richards, Mary Gordon,
Jack Norton, Gregory Muradian, George Chandler, Wilton Graff,
Francis McDonald, Christian Rub, David Hoffman. 65 minutes.
Pillow of Death. 194-5* Producer: Ben Pivar. Screenplay: George

Bricker. Story: Dwight V. Babcock. Music: H.J. Salter.
Direction: Wallace Fox.
Players: Lon Chaney, Jr., Brenda Joyce, J. Edward Bromberg,

Rosalind Ivan, Clara Blandick, George Cleveland, Wilton Graff,
Bernard B. Thomas, J. Farrell MacDonald, Victoria Horne, David
Hoffman. 66 minutes.
THE WALLY BROWN-ALAN CARNEY FILMS
Zombies on Broadway (1945)

Genius at W o r k ~TT946)
RKO wanted an Abbott and Costello they could call their

own so badly that they lost all sense of perspective and
signed up Wally Brown and Alan Carney, a pair of very lower
class radio comics, for a series of films. For a studio that
hadn't had a successful comedy team since Wheeler and Woolsey,
RKO were clearly grasping at straws over what to do with this
pair when they chose to feature them in a pair of comic-horror
pictures produced on the cheap. The results were less than
brilliant.
The first entry, Zombies on Broadway, is by far the better

of the two, but that's not saying much. A certain amount of
care was devoted to the production, especially in casting the
other players. Bela Lugosi's Dr. Paul Renault may not be one
of the actor's shining moments, but his presence in a fairly
well conceived role is the one thing that holds the film in
place and the only reason that it survives today. In all fair
ness, strong support from Sheldon Leonard, Joseph Vitale, Ian
Wolfe, Darby Jones, and Sir Lancelot helps, but none of these
players would be sufficient to make the film of any interest
today without Lugosi. The only drawback to this heavily
weighted supporting cast is that it throws the deficiencies of
Messrs. Brown and Carney into sharp relief. Everyone in the
film is a better, more likable, more professional, and, worst
of all, funnier performer than the leads— and this extends to
a cunning capuchin monkey that figures in the plot.
The storyline casts the duo as Miles and Strager, two

press agents who have stupidly promised "a real live zombie”
for the opening of former gangster Ace Miller's (Leonard) new
nightclub, the Zombie Hut. Unfortunately for them, the bogus
zombie they've hired turns out to be a boxer friend of a radio
177
reporter (Louis Jean Heydt) who has it in for Miller, and the
pair are forced to seek out the genuine article. After a weird
encounter with a Professor Hopkins (Wolfe), they take his
advice and set out to find Dr. Paul Renault ("Some people said
he was crazy, but I don*t think he was crazy— not very crazy
anyway,” opines Hopkins), who retired to the island of San
Sebastian some 25 years previously to study the living dead.
The film picks up steam once we arrive in San Sebastian

with the participation of Sir Lancelot reprising his duties
from Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and
Lugosi plying his trade as resident mad doctor. It turns out
that Lugosi did not go there to study zombies, but to learn
how to create them scientifically— something he has not quite
perfected after 25 years. "They are covering up my latest ex
periment," he tells henchman Joseph Vitale, indicating a gang
of grave-diggers. "Oh, what's wrong? What ±3_ wrong? How can
the natives do with their silly voodoo what I cannot accomp
lish by scientific means?” he asks of no one in particular.
(Just why he wants to make a zombie in the first place is not
overly clear, but then Lugosi’s experiments very often do seem
to lack much point.) "You’ve seen what I ’ve been able to do.
Y o u ’ve seen me create a zombie— if only I could keep them in
that state, if only they didn't die or return to normal in a
short period," he complains to Vitale, deciding, ”1 must have
some new subjects!" It does not take a genius to see where
this is leading, but i t ’s pleasantly ripe Lugosiana all the
same.
In the meantime, Brown and Carney have hooked up with a

stranded nightclub singer (Anne Jeffreys), who knows a bit
about zombies ("You know where they keep them in stock?" asks
Carney) and offers to help them in return for being taken back
to civilization. This leads the trio through some perfectly
dreadful day-for-night nonsense involving a weak voodoo
ceremony and a chase by natives that leads them (surprise) to
Lugosi’s castle. "Dr. Renault is on the island to study a
blight that affects banana trees," Vitale tells them when they
mention zombies, only to have Lugosi claim, ”1 know nothing
about zombies. I came here to study a strange cocoanut
blight." When this discrepancy is pointed out to him, the mad
doctor dismisses it simply enough— *'0h, Joseph is color
blind.” This is funny enough, as is Lugosi’s subsequent state
ment on Hopkins ("Hopkins always was strange. People said he
was crazy, but I didn't think he was crazy— not very crazy
anyway"), but the problem is that Brown and Carney never for a
moment doubt anything they are told. Of course, it is the
The Wally Brown-Alan Carney Films 179
nature of comics to be somewhat credulous, but these boys

actually come across as mentally retarded.
From here on the film becomes extremely predictable,

though a few pleasant moments do crop up. There is one nice
bit where Lugosi crosses a room to stand above a table lamp,
basking in the obvious use of the style of lighting that bears
his name. Also, some of Lugosi's dialogue is nicely written.
"Just keep them out of my way— or better yet have them dig a
couple of graves for themselves in case the experiment fails,"
he instructs Vitale when quizzed as to what to do with the
boys. The film even boasts a very unusual stretch of physical
comedy for Lugosi when the monkey makes off with his syringe
of zombie fluid. Watching Lugosi pursue the animal as it pops
in and out of various drawers in his laboratory is enjoyable
in its atypical use of the actor, who quite appears to be
having a good time.
Overall, though, the latter portions of the film are a

little tedious and even inconclusive. MissJeffreys beans
Vitale and pops him into zombie Darby Jones' coffin, after
which we never see him again. Similarly, Lugosi is crowned by
Jones (for no very good reason except that monsters turn on
their creators, as we all know) and unceremoniously dumped
into one of the newly dug graves, but the filmleaveshis fate
very much up in the air as it plunges along with the non
adventures of its starring duo. (Once Lugosi is gone the film
loses whatever punch it had.)
Whatever its faults, Zombies on Broadway is a fine film

when put alongside Genius at Work. The obviously minimal faith
RKO had in its new team was gone by this opus. The smaller
economies of Zombies (dragging in the stuffed gorilla and even
its accompanying music from David Butler's You'11 Find Out
[1940], etc.) have given way to a film so brazenly cheap that
it is virtually a scene for scene remake of the studio’s 1937
Jack Oakie film Super Sleuth— despite the claim on the credits
that Genius at Work is an '‘original screenplay." Lugosi is on
hand again, but this time he is cast as Lionel Atwill’s butler
and partner in crime. It is a generally thankless role. The
best the script offers him is a reworking of a gag from Ghosts
on the Loose (1943)— not a film that most people would care to
plunder for material in the first place. Lugosi, however, does
manage a few nice touches on his own in his reaction to Brown
and Carney's imbecilic antics. His part is obviously designed
to cut down on the number of days required for him to play it.
Atwill (in his last feature film) is a little better

served by the script. His character, Latimer Marsh, a noted
criminologist and author of such tomes as Murder and Torture
Can Be Fun, seems tailor-made at least in concept. Unfortun
ately, screenwriters Robert E. Kent and Monte Brice seem
unable to write for either Atwill or Lugosi, (in this they
achieve the impossible— a Bela Lugosi performance without one
quotable line.) Quite the best bit for the pair occurs quite
late in the film and features Atwill in drag (as a wheelchair-
bound old lady) and Lugosi as his crepe-bearded husband!
Again, the concept exceeds the execution, since they are given
very little to do. The stunt is almost redeemed by a shot of
Atwill clambering out a window in a pair of black patent
leather pumps— almost.
The oddest thing about Genius at Work is that it is

designed as though Zombies on Broadway had been a major hit.
Brown and Carney play the same characters (now turned radio
detectives), as does returning leading lady Anne Jeffreys
(only she seems to have wised-up since the romantic involve
ment with Brown in Zombies is quickly thrown over in this
entry). It could never have been a good picture, but carrying
over the spiritof the first film's better scenes would have
been a much more rational choice. Even RKO had to admit that
the series was a mistake after this.
Zombies on Broadway. 1945* RKO. Producer: Ben Stoloff. Screen

play: Lawrence Kimble, adapted by Robert E. Kent. Story:
Robert Faber, Charles Newman. Photography: Jack Mackenzie.
Editor: Philip Martin, Jr. Music: Roy Webb. Director: Gordon
Douglas.
Players: Wally Brown, Alan Carney, Bela Lugosi, Anne Jeffreys,

Sheldon Leonard, Frank Jenks, Russell Hopton, Joseph Vitale,
Ian Wolfe, Louis Jean Heydt, Darby Jones, Sir Lancelot. 68
minutes.
Genius at Work. 1946. RKO. Producer: Herman Schlom. Screen

play: Robert E. Kent, Monte Brice. Photography: Robert
DeGrasse. Editor: Morris Coil. Musical Director: C.
Bakaleinikoff. Director: Leslie Goodwins.
Players: Wally Brown, Alan Carney, Anne Jeffreys, Lionel

Atwill, Bela Lugosi, Marc Cramer, Ralph Duncan. 61 minutes.
THE HAMMER FRANKENSTEIN FILMS
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1966)
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)
Only Universal Studios may boast as ample a contribution

to the horror genre as Hammer Films. (And, truth to tell, it
is a debtable point whether or not Universal and its Golden
Age of Horror would be held in quite the same esteem had
Hammer not existed, since it was the popularity of their new
product that single-handedly prompted television stations to
clamour for the old Universal films in order to get a piece of
the pie.) They deftly produced almost two decades of cinematic
excursions into the macabre, setting the standard (or trend)
for all subsequent horror films, and creating a filmic yard
stick by which Hollywood's often less than palatable shlock
offerings from the same time must ultimately be measured— with
Hollywood seldom measuring up. Not surprisingly, purists of
the self-designated variety have argued the merits of Hammer's
output since its inception. Criticisms referring to pale
imitations of the Universal product, blood-soaked tripe, and
blatant British exploitation come readily to mind. The argu
ments are debatable and largely miss the point. The Hammer
films were never meant to compete per se with the older
Universal output (much of which— in the post-Laemmle years—
was not that good anyway), and were, as much as anything, a
well-needed slap in the face of the limp world of so much
1950s filmmaking in general and the constipated British film
industry in particular.
To understand Hammer, one needs grasp their unique and

groundbreaking approach to the subject matter— unrestrained,
undiluted, and, on many occasions, graphically depicted
181
horror. This they established with a vengeance in 1957's Curse

of Frankenstein. While many critics and audiences alike were
righteously appalled, only the critics stayed away. Moviegoers
attended en masse, netting the low-budget film a handsome
profit (five million dollars) and whetting the audience's
appetite for more of the same. With such undreamed of rewards,
Hammer was only too happy to comply— and American distrib
utors were queueing up with front money and wide-release con
tracts. Hammer had unveiled a previously taboo brand of horror
film, catching many filmgoers (still recovering from Bug-eyed
Monster lag) off guard with their overt sexuality and unre
strained blood-letting— all in gloriously rich, fully-satura
ted Technicolor (the studio did not switch to the duller
Eastman Color stock till the 1960s). While all this was not
completely new to audiences, the quantity of what was show
certainly was! The severed limbs, disemboweled organs, and
gouged eyeballs all displayed with unflinching aplomb.
Curse of Frankenstein was the film instrumental in cata

pulting Hammer into the forefront of horror film production,
just as Dracula had done with Universal back in 1931* After
it, horror (forbetter or worse) would never be the same.
Hammer sought out the talents of two relatively unknown

performers for the role of the Baron (Peter Cushing) and the
Creature (Christopher Lee). Cushing was already an establish
ed stage actor, having appeared with the likes of Laurence
Olivier and Vivien Leigh, but his film work had mostly con
sisted of bit parts in often unimportant films. The turning
point came with his portrayal of Deborah Kerr's husband in
1955's The End of the Affair. It was this performance that led
his manager, John Redway, to push the actor into the plum role
of Baron Frankenstein. Reluctant at first, Cushing relented
when he read the surprisingly literate script— and destiny was
appeased.
Even with nearly thirty features to his credit, Christo

pher Lee lacked Cushing's prestige. Up to this time, his
appearances in films like Corridor of Mirrors (1947), Song for
Tomorrow (1948), and Captain Horatio Hornblower (1950) had
been in very minor capacities (one often has to look quickly
to even spot Lee in many of his early films). Often as not, he
was cast because of his height, and, frankly, it was his im
posing physical quality that landed him the part of Cushing's
creation.
Hammer enlisted the creative writing skills of Jimmy

Sangster for the project, inaugurating a lengthy liaison that

would benefit both studio and horror fans alike. Upon receiv
ing legal threats from law-suit-minded Universal, Sangster
found himself forced to return to the Mary Shelley novel for
his inspiration. In so doing, much of the novel’s original
characterizations and concepts were more successfully trans
posed than in Universal's film, though a good deal of James
Whale's loftier ambitions were lost in the process, result
ing in a film more faithful in the letter, but not in the
spirit of the Shelley novel. The parallels between creator and
creation are clearly evident. The creature born of Franken
stein is indeed a stark reflection of himself, where Whale's
Monster had been a kind of unwanted extension of the man.
Both, however, serve as a pathetic reminder of Man's inability
to come to terms with his own inadequacies and accept his
impotence to resolve that which cannot be resolved.
Handling the directorial chores was Terence Fisher, a

veteran director capable of turning out good-looking
productions on often less-than-modest budgets. Although Curse
was by no means bottom-of-the-barrel in the budget department,
there wasn't money to burn, and its success would rely heavily
on the resourcefulness of all involved.
Of particular importance was the Creature's appearance.

With the Jack Pierce make-up owned by Universal, make-up
artist Phil Leakey was left to create an entirely new ap
proach. Theresulting make-up, while lacking the mythical
power of the Whale-Pierce-Karloff version, very much in
keeping with Mary Shelley’s description of the hapless
experiment. The re-designed laboratory was not the over-sized
cathedral-like structure of Whale's film, but rather a
somewhat modest facility, brimming with pseudo-scientific
hardware and a plethora of body parts. Charles D. Hall's
soaring designs and Kenneth Strickfadden's electrical wonders
are absent, but an unnerving aura of scientific authenticity
has taken their places, and its relatively mundane atmosphere
serves to underscore Cushing's less grandiose (and more ego
centric) aims. This is a man bent on proving himself right
more than anything else— he doesn't want to "be God," only to
show Him up.
The film itself is structured as a lengthy flashback with

Cushing awaiting execution in a prison cell, vainly trying to
convince a priest that it was not he who committed the murders
of which he is accused. From this, the film quickly moves to
the Baron as a young boy (Hayes), who has recently become the
sole proprietor of the Frankenstein estate on the death of his

parents. The precocious— and somewhat obnoxious— Victor forms
a relationship with Paul Krempe (Urquhart), a learned man
hired (by Victor himself) to tutor him in science. As the
years pass, a mutual respect grows between the two, as does
their knowledge of the unknown, culminating in an experiment
in which the pair bring a dog back to life. Not content with
this feat, Victor wants to delve further into this new field.
Krempe, hesitant at first, is finally convinced by the younger
man's enthusiasm for the need of more elaborate experiments.
Frankenstein theorizes that building a body of his own

design in which to instill the lifeforce is the only way
possible to achieve his goal. Robbing the body of a criminal
from the gallows is the Baron*s first course of action.
Unfortunately, this specimen is not in the best of condition
and the head must be removed (a real audience grabber in
1957!)* The headless corpse is then swathed in bandages and
submerged in liquid storage. Upon returning home from a
secretive trip, Victor presents his colleague with the severed
hands of a great sculptor. Appalled by the growing evidence of
Victor's lack of simple humanity, Krempe decides to end his
role in the experiment. However, matters become complicated
when Victor's cousin Elizabeth (Court) arrives on the scene.
Unable to convince the young woman to quit the premises (not
in the least because of her betrothal to the unhinged
nobleman), Krempe finds himself still tied to the household
out of concern for her well-being, while the obsessed Victor
plunges ever deeper into his great undertaking. This finally
leads to his murdering an old professor (Hardtmuth) in order
to use his brain in the nearly complete creature. (By now,
there are no questions as to who the monster of this piece
is.) Suspecting foul play, Krempe returns to the chateau just
as Victor has completed his task. In the ensuing struggle the
brain is damaged (of all things to steal from Universal why
this, the weakest of Robert Florey's contributions to the
original script?), but quickly patched up and slipped into the
skull of the Creature for the final experiment. Goading Krempe
into assisting him "one last time", Victor attempts to bring
his creation to life— seemingly failing.
Unbeknownst to Victor, though, the Creature comes to in

his absence, and like all movie monsters since time began is
less than enthused when he meets his maker, whom he at once
tries to throttle. Krempe arrives on the scene and saves
Victor from his murderous handiwork, but that night the
Creature escapes and murders a helpless blind man, before
being shot in the head by Krempe. With the Creature dead and
buried (for now anyway), Krempe decides that his presence is
no longer needed and he departs the Frankenstein menage. No
sooner is he gone than Victor digs the damned thing (now
looking even worse than before) up and revives it.
In the meantime, Victor's maid, Justine (Gaunt), turns

troublesome, threatening to reveal her condition (pregnant
with Victor's child) to Elizabeth and the nature of his
experiments to the authorities. Not surprisingly, she is the
next victim of the Creature. From here, the film— none too
scrupulously structured in the first place— simply plunges
into its climactic scenes. (The otherwise thoughtful script is
about on par with the arbitrarily arrived at ending of Brown
ing' s Dracula.)
Arriving for Victor and Elizabeth’s wedding, Krempe learns

that the deceased Creature isn't and leaves to inform the
proper authorities. The Creature then breaks free, seeking
refuge on the chateau's roof (all monsters go up) where he
meets Elizabeth, who has gone looking for Victor. Still of a
less than amiable nature, the Creature attempts to murder her,
but is stopped by a bullet from Victor (after this less than
Wild Bill Hickok marksman has wounded Elizabeth), sending him
plunging through a skylight into a vat of acid (used for dis
posing of unwanted body parts) below.
The film switches back to Frankenstein in his cell as he

finishes his sordid tale. With the Creature effectively eaten
away, the priest, of course, thinks the Baron simply insane,
(it is not clear what exact benefit the man hopes to derive
from a story that includes a confession of murder in any
case.) The only hope left is that Krempe and Elizabeth will
verify his mad story, but they remain silent, leaving Victor
to his fate on guillotine.
Although structurally specious and occasionally tedious

(especially by today's standards), the subject matter of Curse
of Frankenstein is invariably fascinating, and the perform
ances of a calibre not generally seen in the genre since the
1930s (Cushing and Hardtmuth in particular are exceptional).
True, the film does miss the mark on occasion and is perhaps
too reticent at times, but it still manages to evoke the raw
emotion and conflict inherent in the Frankenstein legacy.
With the resounding success of Curse, Hammer immediately

laid the groundwork for a sequel, The Revenge of Frankenstein.
With Fisher once again at the helm and Jimmy Sangster (with a
little help from Hurford Jones in the dialogue department)
resuming his post as screenwriter, things were at once under
control. Since reviving the first film’s none-too-interesting
Creature was a task not even a Universal screenwriter would
have attempted, the idea was to follow Victor’s further forays
into creating life.
Instructed to make the new Creature even more ghastly than

before, Sangster turned the beast into a cannibal. Hammer was
not displeased, even though Sangster also opted to shy away
from the "road accident" make-up of Curse, giving the film a
healthy, handsome creation (at least at first) with the horror
lurking just beneath the appealing facade. But the real
monster of the piece is still Cushing’s Frankenstein.
Hammer's funds were appropriately utilized on every level,

imbuing the production with a stylish ambience uncharacter
istic in most 1950s genre efforts. Leonard Salzedos' musical
score is both restrained and effective, the cast is of course
top-notch, and Jack Asher's cinematography quite on par with
the rest of this thoroughly commendable production.
The film begins exactly where Curse ended— with Cushing

awaiting execution. Borrowing a bit from the cheating of the
old cliff-hanger serials, the film introduces a hitherto
unheard of character, a deformed dwarf named Karl (Quitak),
who manages to substitute the disbelieving priest for Victor
at the last moment. Leaving us to wonder just how this worked,
the film jumps ahead three years to find the Baron has assumed
the identity of one Dr. Stein, and has established a thriving
practice in the town of Karlsbruck. Treating both the rich and
the poor, he takes full advantage of his circumstances. The
well-to-do provide the good doctor with much needed funds to
continue his research, while the less fortunate provide a
ready source of body parts (via unnecessary amputations and
the like).
Eventually, the Baron is recognized by an aspiring young

member of the antagonistic medical council (Dr. Stein is both
too self-sufficient and too popular for their taste), Hans
Kleeve (Matthews). Agreeing to keep Frankenstein's true ident
ity a secret, Hans inveigles himself into the position of
assistant to the great man. Unfortunately, the great man is
not so much great as he is obsessed, and Hans' notions for the
betterment of mankind have nothing to do with Dr. Stein's ego
trip experiments. In the name of science (and Frankenstein),
the new Creature is pieced together from his unwitting indi

gent patients (a far cry from the goals of a man who previous
ly pilferred hands from sculptors and brains from scientists,
but no matter) and the brain of Karl popped into the skull of
the new body (Gwynn). (if it seems that we are here back in
the world of Ghost of Frankenstein with its rampant brain-
swapping and House of Frankenstein with its hunchback who
wants to be made normal, that's because we are.)
With the experiment a success, Frankenstein (having

learned the value of holding on to the evidence) preserves
Karl's old body in order to prove what he has done to the
undoubtedly dubious medical world when he chooses to reveal
his genius to them. In the meantime, Hans discovers that a
monkey who had suffered a similar brain transplant has turned
cannibal and devoured its mate. Frankenstein blames this un
fortunate occurrence on the fact that the animal received a
blow on the head. (One suspects that he takes this view more
out of convenience than conviction.) He is, however, cognizant
of the fact that a similar blow could instill similar un
acceptable tendencies in Karl.
Showing all the social sense of a wildebeest in heat, Hans

blurts out the truth of Frankenstein's intention of turning
the recuperating patient into a kind of medical side-show, and
Karl, after a lifetime of freakishness, decides to destroy the
"before" half of the proposed show. Unfortunately, he is
interrupted in this by Frankenstein's unscrupulous caretaker
(Woodsworth), who takes Karl for a burgular and proceeds to
thrash him. Understandably perturbed, Karl kills the man and
escapes, but the damage is done. Soon Karl suffers the fate of
the monkey and murders a young girl to satisfy his hideous
hunger. In no time at all, his new body starts degenerating
into a version of his old one. In desperation, he corners
Stein at a society function where he blurts out the doctor's
real name before dying in his creator's arms.
Thinking he can brazen out the accusation, Frankenstein

bluffs the medical council into accepting him as someone with
the same name. His words, however, have little effect on his
patient-victims at the clinic, who turn on him and bludgeon
him nearly to death. "You know what to do," he tells Hans, who
deftly transfers the dying man's brain into the head of a
newly formed body of Frankenstein's own design— in his own
image. In this guise, the doctor resurfaces in London as none
other than Dr. Victor Frank.
Of the Frankenstein series, this is probably the most sat

isfying and certainly so on a thematic level. Revenge is a
mature and thought-provoking work, far in advance of its
parent film— and everything that followed.
After a six year hiatus, Hammer decided to resurrect the

Baron for Evil of Frankenstein. Terence Fisher, suffering from
the commercial failure of his 1962 version of The Phantom of
the Opera, was here replaced by former cinematographer Freddie
Francis, a capable, but less talented director, and the film
suffers accordingly. The screenplay by Anthony Hinds moves
well enough, but is curiously lacking in point and substance
when placed alongside its predecessors. The connection between
this film and Revenge of Frankenstein is about on par with
that between Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Meets the
Wolfman. Don Mingayes' art direction is certainly not at fault
(indeed, the film, in common with many Hammer productions
often seems more art directed than directed), and Les Bowie*s
effects were not lacking.
The film's major flaw was the Creature himself. Now that
Hammer was turning out a Frankenstein in conjunction with
Universal, they were allowed to utilize something that one
must conclude is supposed to be along the lines of the old
Pierce make-up. The resultant Roy Ashton concoction gives new
meaning to the term "block-head." The new Creature, now more
terrible than terrifying, works against the believability of
the film as a whole.
Further compounding the problem, the film's narrative

virtually ignores the two prior installments. The performances
help in alleviating the situation. Cushing is fine as the
embittered Baron, and the supporting cast does the best it can
with the uninspired material, but it's an uphill battle and
the script's plundering of (often less than thrilling) old
Universal scripts for this device and that one only serves to
point up the fact that Hammer wasn't Universal and shouldn't
have tried to be.
This round we find the Baron in apparently diminished

circumstances, trying to once again, yes, create an artifi
cial being in a little shack in the woods. (Since the man has
already accomplished this at least three times, the experi
ment now seems lacking in point and is starting to become
something of a tiresome parlor trick.) In this he is thwarted
by the local priest with the usual cries of heresy and blas
phemy, so, rather than be torn apart by the usual run of
unreceptive villagers, Frankenstein and his assistant, Hans

(Eles), flee to the Baron's old chateau in Halstaad. This
hardly seems the most prudent of moves since the Baron is a
fugitive in his home town, owing to yet another of his
slightly disastrous experiments 10 years earlier.
As luck (and the screenplay) would have it, they arrive

during a local festival that affords them the anonymity they
require— that is until the Baron spots his ring being worn by
one of his old enemies, the Burgomaster (Hutcheson). For a man
in hiding, the Baron shows remarkably little intelligence by
raising a fuss about the ring. Not surprisingly, the Baron is
recognized and he and Hans end up taking refuge in the wagon
of a traveling hypnotist, Zoltan (Woodthorpe). After a scuffle
with the law, Zoltan is instead arrested for operating without
a proper license, while our heroes beat a hasty retreat into
the mountains. A mute beggar girl (Wilde) beckons them into
the shelter of her cave in which the Baron stumbles upon an
unbelievable discovery. Trapped, frozen in the ice of a
glacier, is the perfectly preserved Creature (Kingston) from
10 years ago. Quite forgetting (as does the script) that the
local authorities are on to him, Frankenstein thaws the thing
out and takes it back to the chateau for reviving. In the
tradition of the latter day Universal Monster, the Creature
lives, but stays on the table in a comatose state, whereupon
the Baron decides to enlist Zoltan's hypnotic assistance to
jolt the thing's brain into action. This works, but— wonder of
wonders— only the evil hypnotist can control the Creature. As
far as Zoltan is concerned, the Creature (whom he has also
turned into a minor league lush) is useful only as a tool for
committing nocturnal robberies. Upon learning of this, the
Baron escorts the hypnotist from the premises. Taking excep
tion to this treatment, Zoltan attempts to have the Creature
kill the Baron, but the thing turns on Zoltan instead and
skewers him with a spike. The police arrive, charge the Baron
with murder, and lock him up. He soon escapes and races back
to the chateau in an effort to thwart (how is not explained)
the usual throng of angry villagers. Arriving ahead of the
mob, he finds the Creature in a drunken stupor and the
laboratory in flames. The Creature rouses himself long enough
to be a nuisance and mistakenly swill down a bottle of chloro
form, which sends him completely 'round the bend. Hans and the
girl escape, leaving the Creature and the Baron to their pre
sumed deaths in a fiery explosion.
As is evident from the plot, there are bits and pieces of

just about every Universal Frankenstein picture ever made
floating around in Evil of Frankenstein. Unfortunately, they

only float, they never land. At its best, the film is a pale
copy of one of Universal*s last gasp "monster rallies" with
out the collection of monsters. At its worst, it*s a rather
silly, empty film that goes nowhere because there isn*t any
where for it to go.
Having come a cropper with Evil of Frankenstein (the film

did not do very well at the box-office), Hammerwaited two
years before reviving the saga with the more untraditional—
and extremely cerebral (in a kinky way)— Frankenstein Created
Woman. Instead of concentrating on the action of the previous
film, the script strayed into the more metaphysical realm of
the sciences (with enough quirky sexual implications to warm
James Whale's heart). Fortunately, Fisher was brought back to
direct. Recognizing his contribution to the first two films,
Hammer were not about to repeat the mistake of replacing him
on Evil. John Elder redeems himself after the misfire of the
previous script— at least on a thematic level. Here Elder
weaves a much more involving scenario, discarding the inherent
shallowness all too often associated with subjects of this
nature, while Fisher utilizes Elder's well-crafted script with
creative fervor, producing a film of substantial impact and
insight. The clever juxtaposition of events and subtle under
tones imbue the production with an almost art film styliza
tion. The cast was as usual first-rate with Cushing reprising
his role of the Baron and Thorley Walters in strong support as
his assistant. The less said about the tastefulness shown in
casting ex-Playboy Playmate Susan Denberg as the Baron's
creation the better, but it made for a good deal of rather
misleading cheesecake advertising, which is presumably what
the studio wanted.
While the production values are not especially outstand

ing, the are certainly more than adequate. A switch from the
staple Technicolor film stock to the more muted Eastman Color
did the film a great justice, as does Arthur Grant's carefully
constructed and often poignant cinematography.
The film’s plot centers around the Baron's newest discov

ery— a process that allows soul transference. After suffering
one failure after another (his own rebirth exempted, one
assumes) in his attempts to create a living creature worthy of
attaining life, the Baron reasons that the only logical step
is to abandon his previous approach and concentrate his
efforts on the actual soul of an individual. He theorizes that
the very essence of life is a form of energy trapped in a
magnetic field inside the human body. It's not long before the
Baron is able to test his new hypothesis. After witnessing the
execution of her lover, Hans (Morris), a young girl (Denberg)
commits suicide by drowning. Pulled from the water by the doc
tor, she is soon his pet project. Under the skillful hand of
Frankenstein, the once homely girl is turned into a ravishing
beauty and endowed with life through the soul of her dead
lover. However, the Baron receives more than he bargained for
in the exchange. An identity conflict arising in the unlucky
lady leads (as would seem obvious to anyone but Frankenstein)
to bisexuality and confusion. The beautiful, but malevolent
Christina is bent on exacting her/his revenge on those re
sponsible for framing her executed lover, who, of course, is
actually now a part of her. Stalking the streets by night, she
seeks out the perpetrators, seduces and murders them. With her
desire for vengeance quelled, Christina is still tormented by
her own inner conflicts and takes her own life a second time.
Unarguably, this potentially explosive material would have

been a great work in the hands of James Whale and might have
well benefited had it been made a few years later when censor
ship restrictions would not have prevented a more thorough
examination of the implications of a man's soul using his new
found female body to sexually amuse himself with the very men
responsible for his death prior to killing them. As it stands,
Frankenstein Created Woman is still second only to Revenge of
Frankenstein as the most intellectually stimulating entry in
the series. Had its makers only been as good artists as they
were craftsmen, it could have been one of the all-time great
genre-transcending horror films.
From this unexpected high point, the series hit bottom

with the threadbare Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (many were
tempted to agree!) in 1969* Despite Fisher's efforts to inject
some life into the proceedings, the best he manages is to
attain a certain brooding atmosphere in what is frankly a
rather boring film. This is hardly unexpected since the lame
screenplay by Bert Batt is little more than a pointless exer
cise in brain-swapping, bearing more than a little resemblance
to (of all things) Phil Rosen's Return of the Ape Man (1944)•
The plot (such as it is) has the Baron involved with a

once brilliant surgeon, Brandt (Pravda), whose specialty is
brain transference. Unfortunately, Brandt has gone quite
insane by the time Frankenstein arrives to meet him. Not one
to let such a thing stand in his way, the Baron blackmails a
young couple into kidnapping the madman. Before Frankenstein

can learn the man's great secret, though, Brandt meets an
untimely demise, sending the Baron off on his own brand of
brain swapping (it never worked before and we know it isn't
going to work now, but the man is nothing if not persistent).
Slipping the brain into the head of asylum physician Dr.
Richter (Jones) works at first, but the patient's condition
rapidly deteriorates, sending us into the usual run of events
that lead up to the Baron being carried into a blazing inferno
by his latest effort. At 97 minutes it all seemed too tedious.
About the only positive thing that can be said about

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is that the gloves are off as
concerns Frankenstein's character. Anyone harboring the least
doubt as to the real monster in these films can hardly keep
that doubt after this entry. The Baron is utterly ruthless,
inhuman, and cruel throughout, even to the point of raping one
of his blackmail victims, Anna (Carison). (This, like the
Baron's impregnating Justine in Curse of Frankenstein is a
little hard to swallow since nothing in Frankenstein's charac
ter suggests the man could be bothered with such things.)
1974's Frankestein and the Monster from Hell was to be the

final installment in the series. Something of a deviation from
the rest of the series, the film is an unexpectedly fine piece
of gothic filmmaking, laced with bits of irony throughout.
Fisher was once more in charge, producing a fitting coda to
both the series and his career (he died shortly afterwards).
John Elder's screenplay provided the solid foundation upon
which Fisher meticulously built his film. Absent are the usual
scenic locales and warm colors of the previous entries. In
their place we have the cramped, inhuman confines of a grey
asylum and cinematographer Brian Probyn's almost clinically
detached view of the proceedings.
No longer the abhorred Baron of old, Frankenstein has

established himself with the medical world, even though he
resides in an asylum as an inmate with an exceptional level of
freedom and control, presiding over the staff and demented
denizens with unchallenged resolve. Under these circumstances,
the Baron cannot of course resist building himself a new
Creature from the ample supply of body parts available to him
via his fellow inmates. (Yes, this is more than a a little
like the free clinic of Revenge of Frankenstein.)
Enlisting the aide of a young surgeon (Briant) imprisoned

for following in Frankenstein's fingerprints, the Baron makes
his newest creation (Prowse) from the huge body of an insane

murderer, the hands of a sculptor, and the brain of a musical
and mathematical genius. As always, the creation awakes to
find himself in a world he is less than pleased to inhabit.
The contradictions and conflicts arising .from the Baron's in
human experiment (by now Frankenstein's sole interest seems to
lie in simply undertaking these redundant bits of scientific
showing off) are explored by the film to an unsettling degree.
Prowse gives the Creature human frailties and genuine pathos
(something not associated with the Hammer series). The experi
ment's point of being is to father a child through a mute
girl, Angel (Smith), but before the Baron can pull off this
grotesque bit of matchmaking, the pathetic Creature is torn
limb from limb by the inmates.
Despite its overall high quality, Frankenstein and the

Monster from Hell fared poorly at the box-office, owing to the
simple fact that Hammer was clearly out of joint with the
times. Half-hearted attempts at injecting more gore and skin
into the Hammer product (always done so that the offending
portions could be easily snipped for television, making them
seem even more like gratuitous graftings) did little to help.
In essence, the studio was stuck in time, producing a 1964
film ten years too late. It was a fitting farewell to the
series, but no one much seemed to care in the age of The
Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The studio that had
started the whole cycle of graphic horror had outlived its
usefulness and its power to shock.
— John Micheal Prestage
The Curse of Frankenstein. 1957. Hammer. Producer: Anthony

Hinds. Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster, from the novel by Mary
Shelley. Photography: Jack Asher. Director: Terence Fisher.
Players: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Hazel Court, Robert

Urquhart, Valerie Gaunt, Noel Hood, Michael Mulcaster, Patrick
Troughton, Marjorie Hume. 82 minutes.
The Revenge of Frankenstein. 1958. Hammer. Producer: Anthony

Hinds. Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster, H. Hurford Jones. Music:
Leonard Salzedos. Photography: Jack Asher. Director: Terence
Fisher.
Players: Peter Cushing, Michael Gwynn, Francis Matthews,

Eunice Gayson, John Welsh, George Woodbridge, Lionel Jeffries,
Oscar Quitak, Richard Wordsworth, Michael Ripper. 89 minutes.
The Evil of Frankenstein. 1964* Hammer. Producer: Anthony

Hinds. Screenplay: John Elder (Hinds). Photographer: Jack
Wilcox. Art Direction: John Mingayes. Special Effects: Les
Bowie. Director: Freddie Francis.
Players: Peter Cushing, Peter Woodthorpe, Kiwi Kingston,

Duncan Lamont, Sandor Eles, Katy Wild, David Hutcheson. 86
minutes.
Frankenstein Created Woman. 1966. Hammer/Seven Arts. Producer:

Anthony Nelson Keys. Screenplay: John Elder (Anthony Hinds).
Photography: Arthur Grant. Special Effects: Les Bowie.
Director: Terence Fisher.
Players: Peter Cushing, Susan Denberg, Thorley Walters, Robert

Morris, Duncan Lamont, Peter Blythe, Alan MacNaughton, Peter
Madden, Barry Warren, Derek Fowlds. 86 minutes.
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. 1969* Hammer. Producer:

Anthony Nelson Keys. Screenplay: Bert Batt. Photography:
Arthur Grant. Director: Terence Fisher.
Players: Peter Cushing, Veronica Carlson, Freddie Jones, Simon

Ward, Thorley Walters, Maxine Audley, George Pravda, Geoffrey
Bayldon, Harold Goodwin, Colette O ’Neil. 97 minutes.
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. 1974* Producer: Roy

Skeggs. Screenplay: John Elder (Anthony Hinds). Photography:
Brian Probyn. Special Effects: Les Bowie. Director: Terence
Fisher.
Players: Peter Cushing, Shane Briant, Madeline Smith, Bernard

Lee, David Prowse, Charles Lloyd-Pack, Patrick Troughton,
Sydney Bromley, John Stratton.
THE HAMMER DRACULA FILMS
Horror of Dracula (1958)

Brides of Dracula (1960)
Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1965)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969)
Scars of Dracula (1970)
Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1975)
Having struck paydirtwith Curse of Frankenstein what

could have seemed more natural for Hammer than to revive— and
revitalize--Universal' s other major monster, Count Dracula?
Not wishing to tamper with the formula that had served so well
on their first Frankenstein entry, the studio brought back not
only that film's stars, Cushing and Lee (well on their way to
becoming Hammer's Karloff and Lugosi), but also director
Terence Fisher, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, and photographer
Jack Asher. As had happened (for somewhat different reasons)
with Universal in the early 1930s, the second film in the new
cycle of horror stood head and shoulders above its parent mod
el, going on to become a bigger money-maker, and one of the
few unchallenged classics of the genre to emerge from the
1950s.
In creating Horror of Dracula Sangster and Fisher did not

so much reject the Browning-Lugosi original as they rethought
and updated it. Remembering that the bulk of Lugosi's fan mail
for Draculahad been penned by women who were more than a
little anxious to have the silky vampire sink his teeth into
their throats, they fashioned their film with this aim for
their Dracula. (Lugosi's sexual magnetism often seems odd to
modern audiences, but his exotic otherworldliness was indeed
very sexy to an audience that hadn't quite gotten over the
death of Valentino.) As a result Christopher Lee's Count was
fashioned as something of a cross between a brooding Lord
195
Byron and a sulky James Dean— the perfect embodiment of 1950s

sexuality. In the process, they at least flirted with Stoker's
incipient homosexual panic (a key aspect of Stoker's writing
and character not really explored until Ken Russell's The Lair
of the White Worm in 1988). Their vampire ladies were not to
be the ethereal Theda Bara-like creatures of Browning's film,
but overtly sexual (almost to the point of caricature) 1950s
pneumatic cuties in push-up bra period costumes with Grand
Canyon cleavage. The male fear of the sexually aggressive (not
to say, voracious) female had only been suggested in the scene
where Mina attempts to vampirize Harker in the Browning film,
but it is often at the forefront of Horror of Dracula.
Strangely, for a film often considered to be a more faith

ful reading of the Stoker novel, Sangster and Fisher's work
turns to the Hamilton Deane-John L. Balderston play for much
of its interpretation of the characters of Van Helsing and the
Count. As in the play, Van Helsing (top-billed Cushing) is
very much the central character, and the whole affair is often
nothing more than a contest of wills between two egomaniacs.
Both Van Helsing and Count Dracula are compulsively driven,
one no more obsessed than the other. However, neither man's
obsession is gratifiable as long as the other exists. This
fascinating juxtaposition is explored with great insight by
Fisher. The eternal conflict occurring between the forces of
good and evil pervades even the film's most conventional
proceedings with the too thin line that separates those forces
perpetually threatening to be crossed.
The film opens as Jonathan Harker (Van Eyssen) arrives at

Castle Dracula to assume his duties as resident librarian. The
Count is away at the moment, but Harker makes the acquaintance
of a strange young girl (Gaunt) with a disconcerting penchant
for wandering about in a stylized nightgown. She paints a most
unflattering picture of his position in the household and
pleads for his assistance in escaping the castle, whereupon
the Count appears at the top of the staircase, frightening her
away. Introducing himself ("I am Dracula," he announces in a
disappointingly flat manner meant to bring the difference be
tween this vampire and the Lugosi version into focus), he
makes his disconcerted guest welcome, escorting the young man
to his quarters. That night Harker makes an entry in his diary
(the film does try to reproduce some of the flavor of Stoker's
epistolary structure) that reveals his mission as an emissary
of Van Helsing sent here to "end Dracula's reign of terror
forever." (What is not convincing about this is Harker’s wide-
eyed bafflement at the events surrounding him and his amazing
credulity concerning the supposedly captive girl— surely, he

would be expecting what he finds and on his guard against it
as Van Helsing's assistant.)
Later that evening, Harker is again visited by the mystery

lady, whom he attempts to comfort. However, her embrace proves
to be a fatal one as she leaves her crimson mark on his neck
(a wholly Stokerian caveat against the advances of a sexually
forward female). Dracula, upon witnessing this act, furiously
(and with genuinely unsettling savagery) attacks the girl,
beating her into unconsciousness and carrying her away, leav
ing Harker to work out the perverted floor show to which he
has been treated for himself.
Harker awakes the next morning to find himself apparently

safe in bed, but he soon discovers the puncture wounds on his
throat and finds himself a prisoner in his own room. Realizing
that it is only a matter of time before he joins the ranks of
the undead, he makes a final diary entry explaining his situ
ation and makes his escape through an open window in an effort
to complete his mission. Locating the crypt containing Dracula
and his mistress, he manages to dispatch the girl with a stake
through her heart, but finds the Count missing, at which point
the crypt door slams, throwing the scene into darkness.
Meanwhile Van Helsing arrives in the area searching for

his henchman only to find the usual run of unhelpful peasants,
Harker's diary, and the Count beating a hasty retreat from the
castle just as he makes it to the scene. (Though it is a dy
namic image, someone keeps forgetting that vampires do not
cross running water in having Dracula's coach cross the bridge
to the castle on more than one occasion.) Exploring the
castle, Van Helsing discovers a picture frame (that once held
a photograph of Harker's fiancee) broken on the floor, the
picture carefully removed. He then ventures into the crypt to
carry out Harker's last request by freeing him from the curse
of vampirism with hammer and stake.
Returning home to personally inform Harker's fiancee, Lucy

(Marsh), and family, Arthur (Gough) and Mina (Stribling), of
the young man's death, Van Helsing learns that Lucy's health
has taken a mysterious downward turn. Upon examining the
ailing Lucy, he finds the girl nearly drained of blood and
bearing the vampire's mark, whereupon he engages in the time-
honored rituals of locked windows, stern warnings, crucifixes,
and garlic flowers. And, as usual, it is all to no avail,
since the ailing lady prompts a maid to remove the flowers and
is found dead the next morning. In an effort to convince the

skeptical Arthur of the seriousness of their plight, Van
Helsing confides the whole story to him and shows him Harker's
diary. What even Van Helsing has not quite reckoned with is
the immediacy of the situation, a fact thrown into sharp
relief when a constable arrives that evening with the daughter
of the Holmwoods' maid. The girl, Tania (Faye), claims to have
taken a stroll with her Aunt Lucy. This intolerable situation
is soon righted when Van Helsing and Arthur follow the novice
vampire on her attempt on the girl's life and put her to rest.
(At least that's the theory— in practice it is obvious that
''heroic" Van Helsing is getting his kicks in this fashion.)
Having lost two mistresses due to Van Helsing's meddling

(not until Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers [ 1967] bas
it been so apparent that most of the trouble is caused not by
the isolated vampire, but by the zealous antics of the self-
appointed saviour of the forces of good), Dracula opts to kid
nap Mina and take her back to Castle Dracula as yet another
replacement. The chase to the castle and final confrontation
between Dracula and Van Helsing is perhaps the single most
exciting sequence in Hammer's history, quite righting the
messy structure of their first Frankenstein opus. Upon exami
nation, the whole thing may seem to owe more to the Hollywood
western (as did a not dissimilar sequence in Universal's House
of Frankenstein [1944]), but that hardly dispells its power,
while the final moments with Van Helsing forcing the vampire
into the sunlight with a make-shift cross is one of the great
moments in horror history. At the time of its release, no one
had seen anything remotely like the disintegration of Dracula
in the sunlight. The tasteful time-lapse transformations of
Lon Chaney, Jr. in Son of Dracula (1943) and John Carradine in
House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula (1945) bad not pre
pared viewers for this, nor had the melting wax of the Lugosi
vampire in Columbia's Return of the Vampire (1944)• The un
flinching close-up withering and crumbling of the vampire's
flesh was strong meat in 1958, and it remains an indelible
image today.
Proving just as intractable about reprising the vampire

role as his famous predecessor, Lee opted out of the next
Hammer installment, Brides of Dracula, not wishing to be typed
for all time as the Count. Lee's wish failed, of course, but
the resulting Fisher series entry did not— at least on the
grounds of art. Never one of the more popular Hammer films,
Brides is nonetheless one of the studio's most strange,
perverse, and, occasionally, poetic works.
Leaving Lee's Count blowing into oblivion with the dawn

breeze, the film instead plunges Van Helsing (Cushing, of
course) into a new, even weirder adventure in the case of the
willfully evil Baron Meinster (David Peel). In a new and
decidedly kinky twist, this young man has become a vampire
through his sexual degeneracy. (Whether this is simply some
form of wrathful curse or the result of a homosexual tryst
with Dracula is never made clear, but either seem perfectly in
keeping with the film.) His overindulgent mother (Hunt) keeps
him in check by chaining him to the castle, while helping to
procure victims for him. The Freudian implications of this
set-up (the whole affair seems to have been written as if
Tennessee Williams was working as script consultant) become
even more pronounced when Meinster (a jump ahead of the pur
suing Van Helsing) vampirizes his mother and escapes into the
world. (The incestuous implications are amazingly pronounced
with the vampire mother shamefully hiding her fangs and Van
Helsing disgustedly announcing, "He has vampirized his own
mother.")
Unfortunately, the plot of the film fails to ever quite

live up to the basic premise, opting instead to turn into a
somewhat pallid standard vampire thriller, redeemed to some
extent by an exciting climax in which the bitten Van Helsing
cauterizes his wounds with a hot poker (a bit of masochism
that still packs a wallop) and traps the Baron in the shadow
of a cross formed by moonlight shining through the blades of
the vampire's windmill lair (shades of Whale!). As a concept
piece, Brides of Dracula is easily the most thought-provoking
and degenerate film ever to come from the studio. In practice,
it is a fascinating excursion into new territory that its
makers couldn't quite turn into effective drama.
Christopher Lee did not return to the cape and signet ring
until 1965 with Terence Fisher’s eagerly awaited Dracula,
Prince of Darkness. Frankly, the wait wasn't worth it, in
large measure because Cushing did not return as Van Helsing,
robbing the film of the impact of Horror of Dracula. In his
favor, Fisher does manage to elicit a marginal amount of
atmosphere and horror (some of which is simply repulsive) from
the John Samson-John Elder screenplay.
The production is up to standard and Andrew Kier's Father

Sandor is an acceptable, if unexceptional, stand-in for Van
Helsing. Most of the cast, however, are not remarkable (apart
from a nice turn by Barbara Shelley as a vampiric vamp and

Charles Tingwell as the unfortunate Alan) and the entire thing
is quite predictable once it gets underway.
The film opens with the ending of Horror of Dracula (a

move that only reinforces this entry's inferiority)". While Van
Helsing vanishes (presumably to deal with Baron Meinster), the
story follows the (successful) efforts of Dracula's hitherto
unheard of manservant, Klove (Latham), to snare some victims
for a black magic ritual that will revive the Count. His
chance arrives in the form of some stranded travellers, one of
whom (Tingwell) is suspended over Dracula's ashes and slit
open, his blood returning the vampire to life in an effective,
but decidedly repellent scene. (Those with better memories
than screenwriters might rightly question how he gathered
these remains since we clearly saw Dracula's ashes blown to
the winds in the first entry.)
Again, the set-up is better than the results. It isn't

long before the reconstituted Count is back to his old evil
ways. As might well be expected, the lesser members of the
cast are subsequently subjected to numerous atrocities— both
in the name of Dracula and religion. The film's hero, Father
Sandor, proves to be a most ungracious fellow, whose actions
result in the understandably bewildered vampire being thrown—
lock, stock, and coffin— from a speeding coach into the icy
moat of Castle Dracula, perishing as Sandor directs a hail of
bullets around the Count, plunging him to a watery grave.
While not up to its predecessors, Dracula, Prince of

Darkness seems like a minor masterpiece put cheek-by-jowl with
its progeny. One fact stands out, though— Hammer had no real
idea of what to d£ with Count Dracula. For this entry, he is
made curiously mute and is well on his way to becoming little
more than a presence. What had been a performance from Lee in
the first film is here reduced to an appearance. More and more
the poor Count is diminished to the level of a shock cut,
serving no more function than the usually comatose Monster of
Universal's last few Frankenstein films.
Fisher skipped Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and the
assignment went to Freddie Francis, whose competency was just
as unquestionable as his talents were faceless. (Oddly, for a
former cinematographer Francis' films tend to be visually
rather stodgy.) Working from an adequate John Elder screen
play, Francis does manage to evoke a pleasantly fairy tale
mood in this entry, especially in the film's many rooftop
sequences, but the bulk of the proceedings are given over to

some of the most gratuitously gory effects in Hammer's entire
history. Lee's Dracula has little to do but stand around look
ing frightening (the shock cut approach), that is when he
isn’t flitting about rooftops looking much the same.
The cast does what it can with the material, which

obviously aims at loftier goals than it can reach with its
examination of the effects of this experience on its atheistic
leading man (Andrews). Barbara Ewing as the bawdy waitress
enslaved by the Count delivers the film's most enjoyable
performance, but then her role is also the best-written since
it doesn't try so hard to be more than it is.
The story finds two priests journeying through a raging

storm to the rugged cliffs that border Castle Dracula, seeking
to seal it off from the vampire for all time by affixing a
golden cross to its doors. One of them suffers a fall and the
resulting cut on his head provides the blood that revives the
previously frozen vampire (Hammer seems to have had a minor
obsession about pinching Universal's fondness for freeze-dried
monsters). This interesting opening soon gives way to a trite
vampire story that only picks up steam in its final moments
with its graphic depiction of the vampire impaled on the
golden cross from the film's opening. Playing fast and loose
with vampire lore, the script (in its forced and feeble effort
to create a stirring drama of faith) insists that vampires do
not expire unless their attacker prays over them, resulting in
an embarrassing and unconvincing finale in which our
unbeliever hero has a crisis of faith and destroys the
skewered vampire by invoking the Deity over his writhing form.
An attempt to inject some new blood into the proceedings

by transporting the next entry, Taste the Blood of Dracula, to
Victorian England did little to bolster the f i l m T appeal, not
in the least because Hammer's standard parade of Cockney-
accented Transylvanians never suggested a very convincing
European backdrop in the first place, attaining more of a
fairy tale otherworldly feeling. Bringing on newcomer Peter
Sasdy as director didn't help. Although reputed (by the likes
of the publicity department, no doubt) as the rightful heir to
Terence Fisher's throne as the key Hammer director, Sasdy
proved little more than adequate.
The John Elder screenplay starts out admirably, but

quickly becomes nothing more than a kind of Peyton Place with
vampires. Once again, Lee's diabolical abilities are sadly
wasted, while the rest of the cast tend to deliver their

stilted lines as if their chief concern is hitting the local
pub at opening time.
The crux of the plot revolves around three unsavoury gents

(Carson, Keen, Sallis), who bear witness to a sinister ritual
intended to revive the evil Count through the eccentric (and
equally unsavoury) Lord Courtley (Bates), possessor of the
Count's cloak, signet ring, and a vial of the vampire's dried
blood. Courtley quickly perishes upon drinking Dracula's
reconstituted blood and the others beat a hasty retreat with
the Count's precious belongings in their possession. The trio
soon discover that crime does not pay when the newly awakened
vampire decides to settle his score with them through their
offspring. Not surprisingly, two of these children (Hayden,
Blair) are of the desirable female persuasion with the
remaining child (Corlan) being both undesirable and, as it
turns out, a thorn in the Count's side. After making the usual
nuisance of himself, Dracula expires in a chapel while
attempting to destroy a stained-glass window emblazoned with a
crucifix. Largely uninspired and uninspiring, Taste the Blood
of Dracula is one of the worst films in the series.
Marginally better is Scars of Dracula, but only slightly.

Hammer veteran Roy Ward Baker certainly held a tighter grip on
the material than had Sasdy, but the film suffers from a sense
of urgency to merely turn out a product— any product— to fill
a contractual commitment. Lee himself commented, 'What can I
say except that it was another Dracula picture?” when asked
about the film in later years. The formula for the picture is
one born of desperation— add nudity, sadism, sarcasm and stir
in a hopeless effort to keep up with the times. The production
does have a few memorable moments, such as Dracula scaling the
walls of his castle like a monstrous lizard and the fiery
finale (if anyone was still awake for it).
The film's story concerns an unruly youth (Matthews) who

fumbles his way into Castle Dracula. Not far behind are his
lover (Hanley), brother (Waterman), and a local man of the
cloth (Gwynn). The Count is soon up to the usual hijinks with
a little help from his crippled servant (Troughton). Lee takes
his own sweet time (as does the film) getting around to offing
his guests. Finally, only two guests remain. The Count must
rid himself of the young man in residence before getting down
to cases with the young lady, but before he can accomplish
this, the metal spike he intends using on his victim is struck
by lightning (apparently by an outraged universe), sending the
vampire plummeting over the castle wall in a hellish fireball.
Dracula A.D. 1972 (also known as Dracula Chases the Mini

Girls, which explains much) was even more desperate. Updating
the series did nothing to improve matters and even the return
of Cushing's Van Helsing (actually descendant of same) did
little to help. By now the series had strayed so far from the
Fisher-Sangster concept that it was no longer believable on
any level. Cushing and Lee are reduced to little more than
ciphers this time around. Director Alan Gibson goes through
the motions, but that's about it.Some rich imagery by ace Ken
Russell cinematographer Dick Bush isn't enough to raise the
proceedings to any heights. The uninvolved direction and
script do the thing in at every turn.
The film opens (1873) with a heretofore unseen duel to the

death 'twixt Cushing and Lee atop a runaway carriage. Dracula
perishes on the spokes of a broken wheel when this crashes,
but his ashes and mystical belongings are carted off by one of
the seemingly endless stream of evil disciples. The film jumps
to swinging London 1972 (despite the fact that London had
stopped swinging a couple years earlier— Hammer was even
behind the times on its updates!) and Dracula is resurrected
by a thrill-seeking disciple, Johnny Alucard (Neame). Of
course, the Count is ready for some blood and a taste of night
life after his hundred year repose and descends upon the
swingers with a vengeance. Van Helsing III has other notions
and tracks the overaged swinging Count in typical fashion
before putting him to rest— again.
The odd thing about this messy entry is that it almost

works on the so-bad-it's-good level. Its campy silliness is so
forced (and so obviously the work of oldsters completely out
of touch with what they are attempting to depict) that it
holds a curious fascination that is at least more amusing than
its predecessor.
The Satanic Rites of Dracula was the last groan in the

series. This one wasn't even picked up for U.S. distribution
until the early 1980s when it played briefly as Count Dracula
and His Vampire Bride. A viewing of the film clearly shows why
no one wanted to import it. In all honesty, acute atrophy had
set in and there was little that could be done at this late
date. Once again, the setting is modern London (so much easier
than a period piece) with Dracula transformed into a kind of
James Bond ultra-suave villainous mastermind.
The paint-by-numbers direction of Alan Gibson does nothing

for this lopsided scenario involving big business, black
magic, mad bikers, and Dracula's scheme for germ warfare. One
might be curious to know how all this fits together. Simple—
it doesn't. Dracula is now a multi-millionaire businessman
named D.D. Denham with a death wish desire to destroy the
world via a deadly plague, in which he is foiled by the ever-
resourceful Van Helsing. How he does this hardly matters,
though the dialogue is occasionally unintentionally hilarious
between the two. At one point, Van Helsing pulls a gun on the
vampire, who scoffs at such an attempt. "But this is a silver
bullet, Count," ripostes our hero in a tone that suggests he
will soon refer to it as "new and improved." The usual quota
of grafted on flesh (nudie cutie vampires killed in the
running water of fire sprinklers) is on hand, but little else,
and the whole affair is a pathetic fade-out on the once
ground-breaking series.
— John Micheal Prestage
Horror of Dracula. 1953. Hammer. Producer: Anthony Hinds.

Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster, from the novel by Bram Stoker.
Photography: Jack Asher. Art Director: Bernard Robinson.
Music: James Bernard. Director: Terence Fisher.
Players: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough,

Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, Valerie Gaunt, Miles Malleson,
John Van Eyssen, Charles Lloyd-Pack. 82 minutes.
Brides of Dracula. 1960. Hammer. Producer: Anthony Hinds.

Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bryan, Edward Percy.
Photography: Jack Asher. Director: Terence Fisher.
Players: Peter Cushing, David Peel, Martita Hunt, Yvonne

Molanur, Miles Malleson, Mona Washbourne, Michael Ripper,
Henry Oscar, Andre Melly. 85 minutes.
Dracula, Prince of Darkness. 1965* Hammer. Producer: Anthony

Nelson Keys. Screenplay: John Samson, John Elder (Anthony
Hinds). Photography: Michael Reed. Special Effects: Les Bowie.
Director: Terence Fisher.
Players: Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley,

Francis Matthews, Suzanne Farmer, Charles Tingwell, Thorley
Walters, Philip Latham.
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. 1968. Hammer. Producer: Aida
Young. Screenplay: John Elder (Anthony Hinds). Photography:
Arthur Grant. Director: Freddie Francis.
Players: Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Veronica Carlson,

Barbara Ewing, Barry Andrews, Ewan Hooper, Michael Ripper,
Marion Mathie. 92 minutes.
Taste the Blood of Dracula. 1969* Hammer. Producer: Aida

Young. Screenplay: John Elder (Anthony Hinds). Photography:
Arthur Grant. Special Effects: Les Bowie. Director: Peter
Sasdy.
Players: Christopher Lee, Linda Hayden, Isla Blair, Anthony

Corlan, Geoffrey Keen, Peter Sallis, John Carson, Ralph Bates,
Michael Ripper. 95 minutes.
The Scars of Dracula. 1970. Hammer. Producer: Aida Young.

Screenplay: John Elder (Anthony Hinds). Photography: Moray
Grant. Director: Roy Ward Baker.
Players: Christopher Lee, Jenny Hanley, Dennis Waterman,

Christopher Matthews, Anoushka Hempel, Patrick Troughton,
Michael Gwynn, Wendy Hamilton, Delia Lindsay, Michael Ripper,
Roy Kinnear. 96 minutes.
Dracula A.D. 1972. 1972. Hammer. Producer: Josephine Douglas.

Screenplay: Don Houghton. Photography: Dick Bush. Special
Effects: Les Bowie. Director: Alan Gibson.
Players: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Stephanie Beacham,

Michael Coles, Christopher Neame, William Ellis, Marsha Hunt,
Caroline Munro, Janet Key, Michael Kitchin. 95 minutes.
The Satanic Rites of Dracula. 1973* Hammer. Producer: Roy

Skeggs. Screenplay: Don Houghton. Photography: Brian Probyn.
Special Effects: Les Bowie. Director: Alan Gibson.
Players: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Joanna Lumley,

Michael Coles, Freddie Jones, William Franklyn, Richard
Vernon, Patrick Barr, Barbara Yu Ling. 87 minutes.
THE HAMMER MUMMY FILMS
The Mummy (1959)

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
The Mummy's Shroud (1966)
Blood from the Mummy1s Tomb (1971)
With already successful variations on Universal's Dracula

and Frankenstein films, it must have seemed a good idea to
tackle that old bag of bones, the Mummy. Despite the fact that
this series was hardly one of Universal’s more inspired
efforts, Hammer plunged boldly into their third cod-Universal
series in 1959*
Perhaps recognizing the fact that the original Karl Freund

Mummy (1952) was a strange effort and totally in and of its
time, Hammer chose to base their version more on such later
entries as The Mummy's Hand (1940) and The Mummy's Tomb
(1942). This was a savvy move, since no one was likely to get
too worked up over anything the studio might do with these
less-than-venerated sub-classics. With the combined talents of
Terence Fisher and Jimmy Sangster in their corner, Hammer felt
certain they could bank on at least a minor genre classic,
and, to a large extent, that is what they obtained.
Once again, Hammer called on Peter Cushing and Christopher

Lee to handle the starring roles of archaeologist and mummy.
Cushing's John Banning is another of the actor's personal
triumphs in his Hammer films. On the other hand, Lee's mummy
is clearly a case of name value and impressive height, since
there was little he could do with the thankless part in terms
of characterization. Well, somebody had to do it. One thing
Lee and Hammer did bring to the monster was speed. This mummy
is not the torturously slow creature of Universal myth (so
slow that a turtle with rigor mortis might escape its grasp),
but a quick and fearsome figure with an almost reptilian
quality— a force to be reckoned with.
207
The supporting cast is quite good, even exceptional

(George Pastell's turn in the old Turhan Bey role of Ahmet Bey
is a delight). Bernard Robinson’s production design is a
triumph of ingenuity over finances, creating a picture book
array of settings that range from ancient Egypt to turn of the
century England. The beautiful sets are imaginative and
lavishly appointed (Ananka's burial chamber in particular),
further highlighted by the unusual use of non-realistic (not
quite surrealistic) colored lighting. The elaborate props and
costumes are top-notch, making the film seem more costly than
it obviously was. Cinematographer Jack Asher does his usual
fine job of conveying the eerie essence of the strange tale,
while Franz Reizenstein1s mock-Eastern score is a worthy
companion to the images.
The story more or less follows the plot of The Mummy's

Hand (with a few doses of The Mummy) in its opening reels,
telling of the discovery of Ananka's tomb by archaeologists
Stephen Banning (Aylmer) and Joseph Whemple (Huntley). Despite
the warnings of a mysterious Egyptian, Ahmet Bey, they enter
the tomb where Banning reads from "the scroll of life" and
accidentally reanimates Kharis (Lee) in the process. When a
scream comes from the tomb, Whemple runs in to find the
professor in shock, babbling an incomprehensible story.
The story moves ahead six months to find John Banning

(Cushing) still in Egypt when he receives a letter from
England that his father's condition has not improved and may
well be irreversible. Banning decides to return home and while
the tomb is sealed with dynamite Ahmet Bey vows to his god,
Karnak (a place, not a being, in the Universal films), to
exact revenge on those responsible for the desecration of
Ananka's tomb through the instrument of the living-dead
Kharis.
At this point, the film turns into The Mummy's Tomb— only
it's better. Banning returns to find his father somewhat more
coherent, but obsessed with tales of the doom that awaits them
for defiling the tomb. Naturally, this only serves to convince
Banning of the need for further treatment of the old man.
While all this is going on, a large crate supposedly con

taining Egyptian artifacts falls from a carriage and sinks in
a bog. That night Ahmet Bey arrives on the scene and summons
the mummy from the misty depths and sends him out to revenge
himself on the elder Banning. Banning and Whemple set out to
discover the identity of the murderer, at which time the young
man puts forth the mummy theory, explaining the legend of

Ananka and Kharis (this differs little from the Universal
version and allows for the requisite flashbacks) to Whemple.
The older man remains unconvinced, dismissing the tale as a
myth, and warning Banning that dwelling on such might be
detrimental to his own mental health. The penalty for this
kind of pomposity, ofcourse, is a visit from Kharis, who
crashes in on the proceedings to strangle Whemple. Emptying a
revolver into the creature does no good, so it is hardly a
shock when a shotgun blast and a spear harm him not at all in
his subsequent call on Banning himself. However, while Banning
is having the life choked out of him, Kharis catches sight of
wife Isobel (Furneaux) and stops dead in his tracks because
the film has now turned into The Mummy's Ghost (1944) and
Isobel is a dead-ringer for none other than Ananka. So con
founded by this turn of events is the mummy that he wanders
back into the night.
Having survived the attack, Banning soon learns of the

presence of Ahmet Bey in the vicinity and decides to pay a
call on his shifty new neighbor. Being intentionally rude and
xenophobic, Banning nearly goads Bey into revealing himself,
but has to settle for merely urging him on to a second murder
attempt. The mummy soon has Banning by the throat again and
once again Isobel gets in the way. Bey, following in the foot
steps of his predecessor, overplays his hand by instructing
the monster to kill her. Since this Kharis cannot bring him
self to do, he naturally kills Bey and makes off with Isobel
into the nearby bog. Inthe process he makes the fatal mistake
of letting the girl goand isimmediately torn asunder in a
hail of gunfire, disappearing into the dark embrace of the
bog.
Despite the fact that The Mummy is mostly a reshuffling of

ingredients from earlier films, it is still one of Hammer's
finest achievements— something that cannot be said of the
series' next installment, Curse of the Mummy's Tomb. Where The
Mummy had verged on brilliance, Curse is merely bewildering,
though it did well enough at the box-office, probably due to
being double-billed with the vastly superior non-series The
Gorgon.
A scant few of the individuals responsible for the first

film were on hand this round and it shows. Michael Carreras
produced and directed this inferior entry from a screenplay by
Anthony Hinds (hiding behind the alias of Henry Younger). Even
the brilliant cinematography of the great Otto Heller can do
little to help. The production design is adequate, hut Roy

Ashton's mummy make-up is not. The title creature (Owens) is
next to ludicrous, looking like a cross between a malpractice
victim and a deranged stucco artisan. The cast is not much
better. Even George Pastell returning in guise of Hashim Bey
is a let-down since he has no worthy adversary to play off.
Indeed, the best moment in the film is given to American Fred
Clark, who, confronted by the mummy, asks the creature, "Who
the hell are you?”
The pedestrian and predictable plot concerns a pharaoh,

Ra-Antef, murdered by his brother and mummified wearing a
secret life-giving amulet. When his tomb is plundered (against
the warnings of Bey, of course), there is the expected curse
to be reckoned with. Alexander King (Clark), an unscrupulous
showman, hits on the notion of transporting the mummy and his
belongings back to England for a sort of one mummy travelling
sideshow. Shunning this limelight (but not, it seems, averse
to knocking a few of the public dead), the mummy goes about
making quick work of his violators. Soon, it's a family act as
his immortal brother, Be-Antef (Morgan), comes into the
picture. Desiring to be released from the curse of immortality
(something only the mummy can do for him), the evil brother
baits the mummy with the film’s heroine (Roland) wearing the
infamous amulet. Still nursing a grudge for being murdered in
the first place, the mummy drowns his brother, retrieves the
amulet and brings the house down on himself. At least, he
didn't sing "Mammy," but, frankly, the whole affair might have
worked better had the mummy taken his act on the road.
The Mummy's Shroud offered the novelty of two mummies for

the price of one, even if only one of them comes to life (con
sider it a blessing). Writer-Director John Gilling must take
the credit for this tour-de-force of tedium. It's actually not
so much bad as it's just plain knock-down-drag-out boring (a
much worse sin).
Suffice it to say that there's only so much a mummy can

do, but this poor fellow's been put out to pasture. Perhaps,
there is a deep, underlying meaning to it all, but this seems
doubtful in the extreme. The entire production has a shoddy
feel to it, but the cast isn't bad in those few and far
between moments when they are given something to do. On the
bright side, the mummy (Powell) is an improvement over their
last plaster-covered oaf.
The papyrus-thin plot is yet another in the endless series

of kill-the-infidels affairs with tomb desecrators being set

upon by the title character. This tomb disgorges the remains
of a young pharaoh and his guardian, the unlikely named Prem,
who was obviously not too successful as guardian of the boy's
longevity (as witnessed earlier in the film's prologue,
narrated by Cushing). Enter the usual deranged Egyptian
(Delgado) who is soon raising the dead (he should have tried
his spell on the film!). In no time Prem is up and about and
doing that which mummies do best— killing the unbelievers.
Alas, one of their number arms herself with an even better
incantation than the one that raised Prem and reduces him to
powder with it (might we theorize that she at least had seen
the Freund picture?).
After the two middle entries, the fourth and final

chapter, Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, comes across as a
classic by default. Not in the same league as the original
entry, it was nonetheless a big improvement. Helming the
production was the ill-fated, but talented Seth Holt, who died
during production. Fortunately, his replacement by Michael
Carreras was not enough to ruin the project, since most of the
film was completed beforehand.
Christopher Wicking's literate script, adapted from Bram

Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars, thematically elevates this
entry above its peers, while Holt's direction maintains a nice
sense of foreboding throughout the film's length. Surprisingly
enough (but perhaps it's for the best), there is no mummy to
contend with this round. In his lumbering stead, we have a
young girl possessed by an ancient evil spirit. Valerie Leon
elicits a memorable performance as the unfortunate girl.
Holt suggests his horrors for the most part, opting for a
subtle Jacques Tourneur approach, rather than the convention
al jack-in-the-box jolts that riddle more conventional genre
efforts. Arthur Grant redeems himself after several uninspired
efforts with a beautifully composed and atmospheric essay in
genre cinematography (it helps to have a director who knows
what he wants).
If anything mars the production, it is the sensational

title, which just doesn't belong on this film. It would appear
that Hammer were apprehensive about the film's cerebral brand
of horror and sought to bolster its popularity with a lurid
title, (it didn't work in any case.)
The film opens as do all mummy pictures with the desecra-

tion of an ancient tomb, this one containing the mummified

Queen Tara, As archaeologist Julian Fuchs (Kier) uncovers the
tomb, his wife dies in childbirth and the evil spirit of Tara
enters the body of his child. Upon reaching her twenty-first
birthday, the daughter (Leon) is given a ring from the tomb by
her father. The malevolent spirit then slowly takes her over,
finally driving her to murder with the aid of one of her
father’s villainous detractors (Villiers). The pair manage to
recover an array of artifacts from the tomb so that they may
attempt to resurrect the actual queen. Before the deed can be
done, the girl's understandably concerned father arrives and
destroys the mummified remains, releasing a force of energy
that demolishes the building. In a tag scene that foreshadows
the ending of Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976), the girl
awakes in a hospital bed— completely swathed in bandages.
Blood from the Mummy's Tomb handles its subject matter in

an overtly serious, uncontemptuous manner that results in a
sincere and thoughtful production (streets ahead of its
inferior mainstream remake, The Awakening) . More films of this
calibre might have made a difference to the mummy saga, but
the audience just wasn't interested and the series faded from
view.
--John Micheal Prestage
The Mummy. 1959* Hammer. Producer: Michael Carreras. Screen

play: Jimmy Sangster. Photography: Jack Asher. Special
Effects: Les Bowie. Music: Franz Reizenstein. Director:
Terence Fisher.
Players: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Yvonne Furneaux,

Eddie Byrne, Felix Aylmer, George Pastell, Raymond Huntley,
John Stuart, Michael Ripper. 88 minutes.
The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb. 1964* Hammer. Producer: Michael

Carreras. Screenplay: Henry Younger (Anthony Hinds). Photog
raphy: Otto Heller. Director: Michael Carreras.
Players: Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, Fred Clark, Jeanne

Roland, George Pastell, Jack Gwillim, Dickie Owen, John Paul,
Michael Ripper, Harold Goodwin. 81 minutes.
The Mummy's Shroud. 1966. Hammer. Producer: Anthony Nelson

Keys. Screenplay: John Gilling. Photography: Arthur Grant.
Special Effects: Les Bowie. Director: John Gilling.
Players: John Phillips, Andre Morrell, David Buck, Elisabeth

Sellers, Maggie Kimberley, Michael Ripper, Richard Warner,
Roger Delgado, Catherine Lacey. Dickie Owen, Eddie Powell. 84
minutes.
Blood from the Mummy's Tomb. 1971* Hammer. Producer: Howard

Brandy. Screenplay: Christopher Wicking, from the novel Jewel
of the Seven Stars by Bram Stoker. Photography: Arthur Grant.
Special Effects: Michael Collins. Director: Seth Holt, Michael
Carreras (uncredited).
Players: Andrew Keir, Valerie Leon, James Villiers, Hugh

Burden, Rosalie Crutchley, Aubrey Morris, David Markham, James
Cossins, Tamara Ustinov, Penelope Holt. 94 minutes.
THE ROGER CORMAN-POE FILMS
House of Usher (1960)

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
The Premature Burial Q 961)
Tales of Terror (1962)
The Raven (1963)
The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)
After years as the master of shlock exploitation films,

Roger Corman suddenly suffered an attack of Art combined with
a desire to emulate the success of the Hammer films and a
gnawing sense that the days of down-and-dirty drive-in fodder
of the old school were numbered. The result was a series of
wide-screen, color adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories, all
but one of which (The Premature Burial) were designed as
vehicles for Vincent Price. So with an American star and an
American author for his source, Corman filtered the successful
Hammer formula through his own American vision and created
something best termed as American gothic horror. If no single
film in the series is great in itself, the cumulative power of
the group of films is hard to deny.
Corman*s first effort, House of Usher, pretty much set the

tone for what was to follow— albeit on a smaller scale. The
film is marked by a (not uneffective) studio-bound— even
claustrophobic— feeling, Corman1s mobile visual style, a
surface faithfulness to Poe's plots, a more faithful under
current of the sickness that pervades Poe's work, and, of
course, Price's bravura performances. An effective formula it
was to be sure, but it was soon clearly a formula— and this
finally resulted in a problem on Corman's part. No such diffi
culty surfaced in the first film, which stands up rather well
as a brooding piece of distinctively American horror.
The film concerns the disintegration (through madness) of
215
a once great family presided over by Roderick Usher (Price),

whose own mental imbalance is hardly obscured by his concern
for the sanity of his sister, Madeline (Fahey). Though never
stated outright, Usher's over-protective attitude toward the
woman (to the extent of attempting to drive away any potential
suitors) is fairly clearly the result of an incestuous desire
on his part. The bulk of the film’s horror content centers on
Madeline being buried alive while suffering from a cataleptic
seizure, and her subsequent return from the dead to revenge
herself on Usher. This, of course, is more than a little bit
along the lines of Mark Robson's Val Lewton picture, Isle of
the Dead, and comparisons are inevitable. Corman's film only
just loses, being nearly the equal of the earlier work in its
portrait of a woman being buried alive. The major failing in
Corman's film in this regard stems from a certain hesitancy on
his part to break the film free from its more sombre approach
for this final act. To some extent, this may well be due to
the film being made in Cinemascope, since in 1960 it was still
commonly believed that the format did not lend itself to great
mobility. Corman and cinematographer Floyd Crosby challenged
this notion in a number of virtual breakthrough uses of the
medium, but the mobility in these slower paced scenes may have
seemed less daunting.
If there is a central problem with House of Usher, it lies

in the fact that the work is clearly a mood piece and a por
trait of the corruption inherent in an upper-class family that
has shut itself off from the world they consider inferior to
themselves. This is fine, and the very fact that Corman wanted
to make a film of ideas rather than mere exploitation is in
itself admirable. However, the problem remains that mood and
theme do not necessarily make for compelling entertainment
with the result that House of Usher often seems rather slow
going.
As if sensing that his first Poe film was perhaps a little

too restrained for its own good, Corman's next entry, The Pit
and the Pendulum, very nearly goes too far in the opposite
direction. Since the Poe story is virtually unadaptable (at
least for purposes of a feature length film), Corman and
screenwriter Richard Matheson opted to work toward the concept
of a film that would simply incorporate the title device,
while fashioning a plot to get them to that device that is
more or less a reworking of House of Usher. The differences
are minimal. In place of a suitor coming to an old dark house
to call on his intended, The Pit and the Pendulum offers a
brother (Kerr) coming to an equally old dark castle to learn
the fate of his sister (Steele). Price, more obviously and en-
joyably unhinged than in the first film, tells him of the
death of his sister (price's wife) in an accident in the
castle torture chamber where Price had once watched his father
murder his wife's lover and then entomb his faithless spouse
alive. Price's problem stems from the fact that he has come to
fear that his own wife may not have inadvertently suffered a
similar fate as that of his mother (again, the sexuality of
the piece is extremely twisted). Evidence has mounted to
suggest to Price that Steele is quite possibly wandering the
castle in a deranged state of mind after suffering the shock
of waking to find herself mistakenly buried. All this is well
and good, but the screenplay decides to overcomplicate itself
(possibly in an effort to emulate Henri-Georges Clouzot's
Diabolique [1955]) by having the entire affair turn out to be
a hoax engineered by Steele and her lover (Carbone) to send
the already strange Price over the edge. Unfortunately, for
them, the plan works a little too well and Price descends into
full-blown insanity, thinking himself his own father, result
ing in Steele's entrapment in an iron-maiden while the raving
Price topples to his death beneath the swinging pendulum of
the torture chamber's pit.
While The Pit and the Pendulum is considerably more excit

ing than its predecessor, something seems to have been lost in
the process. Possibly the too convoluted plot, or maybe just
the increase in the action has ever-so-slightly damaged the
sustained moodiness of the original film. More likely, though,
the film errs in its Spanish locale. The reasonable enough (in
light of Poe's source story) attempt to exoticize the film by
setting it in Spain works against its inherently American
quality.
Having already buried two women alive (one real, one

bogus), Corman next decided to bestow the honors on a man in
The Premature Burial. The results are a lesser entry in the
Corman-Poe series, partly because it was beginning to appear
that the director had a one-plot-mind, but perhaps more due to
the decision to cast Ray Milland in the central role instead
of Price. The reasoning behind this move may have been that
Milland would give a more restrained and le-ss showy perfor
mance than Price, thereby boosting the film as a film, rather
than a Price vehicle. The problem with this is that the role
may be played by Milland, but the script by Charles Beaumont
and Ray Russell is written for a more flamboyant actor— in
short, Vincent Price. What would have registered as bravura
theatrics with Price tends to come across as ill-tempered with
218 A Critical Guide To Horror Film Series
Milland. Corman may well have been suffering from the same
blow to his ego with Price that James Whale had suffered with
Karloff, and his decision to cast someone else in the film
could reflect this. Certainly, the finished product emerges as
one of the director's most directed ventures with more effects
and flourishes than is good for the film. This showiness may
have been the intention right from the start (a brazen show
case for Corman's talent), but it might just as easily be the
result of a desperate filmmaker trying to mask the existence
of a miscast lead.
The setting this time out would appear to be England

(there are references to shillings, moors, and a pair of
ersatz Burke and Hare graverobbers are tossed in as part of
the plot), but it hardly matters since the entire film is so
clearly a studio work. The film never leaves Milland's old
dark house (which appears to be an old dark castle in the
insert shots of lightning) except to prowl around a rather
nice studio graveyard and woods (all improbably covered in
Spanish moss), or to spend some time in Milland1s home-made
premature burial-proof crypt. The very fact that Milland's
estate seems to not only contain a family vault in the cellar,
but is also built in the middle of a cemetery that is never
less than overflowing with knee-high movie fog, makes the
locale so absurdly uninviting that one doubts the basic sanity
(or at least taste) of anyone who would live there. Frankly,
the setting is so overdone and so confined that the film feels
more like a live television show than a theatrical feature,
while the overkill combined with Corman's almost non-stop use
of shock (and gross-out) effects becomes unintentionally
funny.
The Premature Burial ultimately throws in everything and

the kitchen sink in a mistaken attempt to liven things up by
the sheer volume of the material. Since Corman presents us
with a nightmare vision of Milland being buried alive prior to
the actual title event, he gets two premature burials for the
price of one— and neither is anything to get overheated about
in any case. When Milland makes his escape from the grave late
in the film, the actor (now boasting heavy eye make-up) goes
on a killing spree that seems little more than an incipient
version of the splatter film with its "creative death" format,
(in a very few minutes, Milland strangles one grave-robber,
impales another with a crowbar, electrocutes his father-in-
law, and suffocates his wife by burying her alive.) The final
"surprise" revelation that the whole affair of his shock-
induced "death" was a plot by his gold-digging wife (Court) is
just plain silly, since so many of the mechanics of her scheme

relied on such unlikely devices as having the grave-robbers
lurking in the wings on the vague chance that Milland might
wander into shock-effect range. Worse, the fact that his
incestuously possessive sister knows what's going on, but says
nothing for fear of his disbelief is amazingly unconvincing,
since this requires her to claim not to have seen such things
as a grave-robber popping up at a window when she obviously
has, thereby only helping Court achieve her aims. None of this
makes the film unwatchable (it is often quite entertaining in
an off-center fashion), but it does make it impossible to take
very seriously.
Tales of Terror, Corman's immediate follow-up, undoubtedly

seemed like a good idea on paper. After all, presenting the
Poe short stories in an omnibus fashion kept the need to pad
out the material to a minimum. In execution, though, the film
works only in fits and starts. There is, of course, an inher
ent problem in any omnibus film, since the format requires the
viewer to shift moods with each story, and this is particular
ly tricky with horror. Corman's film compounds this difficulty
by placing a ghoulishly comic version of Poe's The Black Cat
(combined with The Cask of Amontillado) at its center.
Judged individually, the episodes are at least an improve

ment over The Premature Burial. The first, Morelia, is the
least effective, since it is little more than a cut-down
version of the three films that preceded it. The incestuous
storyline, the demise of a once great house, the fog-bound
settings, the vengeful return from the grave were all becoming
a little tedious. The fact that the return from the dead was
this time a supernatural occurrence hardly justified it, and
the addition of a vaguely necrophilic tone concerning Price
and the corpse of his wife added little.
The comic centerpiece of Price and Lorre in The Black Cat

is certainly enjoyable and immediately established the pair as
a screen team. Not since his films with Sydney Greenstreet had
Lorre found an actor who so perfectly complemented his style.
Lorre's wry humor punctuated with explosive outbursts played
wonderfully against Price's silky tones and bravura villainy.
The story involves Lorre revenging himself on his faithless
wife (Jameson) and her paramour (Price) by playing on Price's
vanity as a wine expert, getting him drunk, and walling him up
with Jameson— and the expected beast of the title. Its merits
lie more in that it started a memorable screen collaboration
and paved the way for the delightful Jacques Tourneur-Richard
Matheson feature, The Comedy of Terrors (1963), which also

mercilessly parodied Corman's beloved cataleptic vengeance
theme. On its own, The Black Cat is little more than an engag
ing sketch.
Not so much fun as The Black Cat, but fresher than Morelia
is The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, a more traditional—
and less cerebral— horror opus with Basil Rathbone as a
villainous hypnotist who cons the dying Price into being hyp
notised at the moment of his death. Since all of this is a
plot by Rathbone to secure the dead m a n ’s wealth it comes as
no surprise that he falls prey to Price (in a grotesque make
up that has him look like a melting wax figure) in one of the
director’s beloved vengeance from beyond the grave climaxes.
The constant retreading of familiar themes and material

seems to have gotten to Corman (and Matheson, for that matter)
as well as the viewer, so that his next Poe film, The Raven,
turned into an unusually successful horror comedy. Taking its
title from Poe's poem, the film happily ignores any aspect of
its source, which is just as well since translating a poem
into a film is no easy task. Instead, we have Price as an
eccentric cuckolded magician, who teams up with inept (and
corrupt) magician Lorre in an attempt to retrieve his wife
(Court) from master magician Boris Karloff, finally resulting
in a showy magical duel between Price and Karloff where Price
bests the older man, only to reject his faithless spouse and
leave her with the burnt out magus.
The plot of The Raven is nothing more than a workable

story on which to string a variety of often delightful comic
scenes that send up everything from Poe to Corman’s own films.
Despite the fact that the film is set in a kind of middle ages
never-never land, Price seems perfectly conversant with Poe's
poem, sadly inquiring of a raven that arrives at his house if
the bird knows what has become of his beloved. "How the hell
should I know?" responds the bird in Lorre's voice, whereupon
it is revealed that the raven is in reality Lorre under one of
Karloff's enchantment spells. The opportunistic Lorre cons
Price into reversing the spell by indicating that Mrs. Price
might be in residence at Karloff's castle. Unfortunately, the
best Price can do at first— owing to a lack of the required
quantity of grotesque animal part ingredients ("We don't keep
any of those staples, we're vegetarians," explains Price)— is
to turn Lorre into a tubby bird with a human head. The half
raven Lorre is one of the film's primary delights and one
truly wishes that he had remained in this state throughout the
film, since it is the image of Lorre running his wing along a

bannister and commenting, "Hard place to keep clean, huh?" as
he and Price descend into the family crypt (for some dead
man's hair) that is one of the film's most indelible moments.
The Raven's major fault (apart from an amusingly amateur

ish performance by young Jack Nicholson as Lorre's son) is
that it cannot sustain the lopsided fun of its opening. The
film's middle section tends to meander to no real point other
than achieving a sufficient running time to arrive at the
magical duel. The duel redeems the film to a great extent, but
it is left to Karloff's wonderfully lisped, "I guess I just
don't have it anymore," when he loses to Price, and the film's
refreshing subversion of the usual obsessive husband routine
by having Price decide that Court isn't worth bothering with,
to fully salvage the work.
For his final two Poe films, Corman went to England in an

apparent effort to bolster himself artistically, get away from
the studio-bound feel of the earlier films, and revive his
flagging interest in the series. To some extent, this worked
and the first film, The Masque of the Red Death, while undeni
ably overreaching itself in terms of Corman's thirst for art
and artistic respectability, as well as being a little too
full of the director's almost slavish admiration of Ingmar
Bergman, is probably the best thing Corman made prior to his
recent Frankenstein Unbound (1990). The film is still very
much a Price horror show, but such a stylized and formal one
that it seems fresher than it probably is.
Price is cast as the sadistic satanist Prince Prospero,

who has supposedly protected himself and the guests in his
castle from the plague (the red death) that rages in the land
by having made a pact with the devil. In reality, this pact
seems to require the sacrifice of his guests to the plague,
which will not only save the duplicitous Price, but allow him
to meet the Prince of Darkness face to face. Ultimately, Death
arrives on the scene and takes Price's entire household in a
marvelously stylized dance that climaxes with Price trying to
curry favor with the creature by virtue of all the souls he
has delivered to its master, only to discover that Death has
no master and has come for him along with the others. Unmask
ing the robed figure, Price only comes face to face with
himself and succumbs to the plague. That really is all there
is to the plot as such (apart from a somewhat arbitrary inser
tion of Poe's story Hop Frog into the proceedings) and it is
obvious that Corman's concern here has little to do with the
story. Rather his interest lies in posing (though not clearly

answering) a number of questions on the nature of good and
evil. While Price's Prospero is an almost wholly unsympathetic
character, the man is not evil for the sake of evil, but
rather seems driven as much by a perverse desire for knowledge
as for the power his Satanic practices may grant him. Indeed,
it is this intellectual angle that affords the film its
unusually disconcerting atmosphere, since the clinically
detached curiosity of the Price character possesses a coldness
that is somehow nastier than his more common dyed-in-the-wool
villainy. Corman may not have had all (if in fact any) the
answers, but the film suggests that he at least had most of
the right questions.
The final Corman Poe film is one of the strangest. The

Tomb of Ligeia is even more of an art film masquerading as an
exploitation thriller than its immediate predecessor. At
bottom this is little more than an 81 minute mood piece,
almost avant gardist in its apparent rejection of drama and
narrative (in the traditional sense). The plot is nothing more
than one last reshuffling of the buried alive hijinks of most
of the series, incorporating actual supernatural elements (the
corpse really is dead this time, but her spirit invades the
body of the second Mrs. Price), a malevolent— possibly super
natural— black cat, elements of sexual inversion (Corman casts
the same actress— Elizabeth Shepherd— as both wives to suggest
an extremely unhealthy motive behind his second marriage), and
the usual somewhat perfunctory climax.
By this point in the series, Corman seems to have lost any

interest in weaving a coherent narrative. His reason for
making the film lies only in the mood it generates, and he
must be given high marks for the success of this. What causes
the film to ultimately fail is the lack of any involvement
with a concern for dramatic validity. The Tomb of Ligeia
chills the viewer without ever quite persuading him. In his
desire for art Corman effectively reduced his characters (and
his actors) to little more than models posing for this eerie
effect and that one to such an extent that his efforts at
imbuing the film with thematic implications are lost symbols
floating around in a void of atmosphere without content.
Even had Corman shown any desire to continue his Poe

series, it seems unlikely that the studio would have been
greatly interested. The films had gone too far into the
cerebral for mass consumption with each one becoming less
compelling dramatically. The Masque of the Red Death had
squeaked by on the strength of Price’s name, but its overtly

artistic nature left a sufficient trail of disappointment with
Corman*s primary youth audience that the even more problematic
Tomb of Ligeia suffered not just attendance troubles, but
distribution ones as well, receiving a much less wide release
than its predecessors. Frankly, Corman had arrived at a filmic
dead end. He followed a path with his Poe series, but that
path led to a brick wall. It was a noble effort, but one that
was ultimately doomed. Its importance now seems to lie more in
the influence of the films on subsequent filmmakers than on
its own intrinsic merits.
House of Usher. 1960. American International. Producer: Roger

Corman. Screenplay: Richard Matheson. Photography: Floyd
Crosby. Director: Roger Corman.
Players: Vincent Price, Myrna Fahey, Mark Damon, Harry

Ellerbe. 80 minutes.
The Pit and the Pendulum. 1961. American International.

Producer: Roger Corman. Screenplay: Richard Matheson.
Photography: Floyd Crosby. Director: Roger Corman.
Players: Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, Luana

Anders, Anthony Carbone.
The Premature Burial. 1961. American International. Producer:

Roger Corman. Screenplay: Charles Beaumont, Ray Russell.
Photography: Floyd Crosby. Director: Roger Corman.
Players: Ray Milland, Hazel Court, Richard Ney, Heather Angel,

Alan Napier, John Dierkes, Dick Miller. 81 minutes.
Tales of Terror. 1962. American International. Producer: Roger

Players: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Debra

Paget, Joyce Jameson, Maggie Pierce, Leona Gage. 90 minutes.
The Raven. 1963• American International. Producer: Roger

Players: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Hazel

Court, Jack Nicholson, Olive Sturges. 86 minutes.
The Masque of the Red Death. 1964* Anglo Amalgamated/American

International. Producer: George Willoughby. Screenplay:
Charles Beaumont, R. Wright Campbell. Photography: Nicolas
Roeg. Director: Roger Corman.
Players: Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher, Patrick

Magee, Skip Martin. 90 minutes.
The Tomb of Ligeia. 1964• American International. Producer:

Pat Green. Screenplay: Robert Towne. Photography: Arthur
Grant. Director: Roger Corman.
Players: Vincent Price, Elizabeth Shepherd, John Westbrook,

Oliver Johnston, Derek Francis, Richard Vernon. 81 minutes.
THE "PSYCHO" SERIES
Psycho (1960)
Psycho II (1982)
Psycho III (1986)
Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990)
Properly speaking Alfred Hitchcock's landmark 1960 film,

Psycho,cannot be said to bea part of theseries it spawned.
A gap of 22years separates the parent film fromits progeny,
and it is doubtful that Hitchcock himself would have much
approved of the idea of turning the concept into a Norman
Bates cottage industry. Second guess Hitchcock and the
reservations of Hitchcockian purists to one side, it must be
admitted that the resulting sequel films— especially Psycho
III— are among the best efforts imaginable. Without question
this is a classy series of films far removed from the type of
Friday the 13th styled knockdowns that so easily could have
occurred.
So much has been written and theorized about Hitchcock's

original film that there seems little left to be said at this
late date, though if we view Psycho dispassionately— without
regard for the effect it had in 1960— certain almost heretical
observations are apt to creep in around the edges. In truth,
Psycho is not one of Hitchcock's most accomplished works
(something most critics were agreed upon in 1960, by the way).
As far as its popular success is concerned, it has little more
to recommend it than three harrowing key sequences, a strong
central performance, and, somewhat amusingly, a series of
legends about gruesome scenes that were never in the film. Of
course, in 1960 those three sequences were unlike anything
anyone had ever seen on the screen. It wasn't just the
horrific— albeit highly stylized— violence that shocked
viewers. It wasalso the iconoclastic structure of the story
itself. No one used to the dictates of Hollywood dramatic
conventions of the time (especially coming at the end of the
225
too cautiously crafted and unadventurous 1950s and Hitchcock's

own star showcase pictures in that decade) could possibly have
expected star Janet Leigh to be brutally murdered scarcely
half-way through the film. This simply wasn't done. But
Hitchcock did it and stood filmgoers everywhere on their
collective ears in the process. (One almost expected the whole
thing to turn out to be a gigantic hoax with Leigh turning up
very much alive at the climax— a torturous prospect that
thankfully did not materialize, but might well have danced
through the head of more than one antsy studio executive.)
In most respects the spectre of Hitchcock's television

work hangs uncomfortably over the film. Despite such plus
factors as Anthony Perkins and Martin Balsam, much of the
film's acting is on the simplistic TV level, and even Bernard
Hermann's score cannot disguise the fact that the film looks
and feels cheap. On the one hand this isn't a bad thing since
the film's implicit thematic importance lies in its portrait
of the American Dream gone horribly and irretrievably sour,
and the inherent pathetic cheesiness of the Bates Motel— a
half-hearted, ramshackle shot at a piece of the pie on a long
ago by-passed road— combined with the decaying imitation
Gothic house (even this is a fake attempt to be something it
isn't) that helped spawn it are effective evocations of that.
Regardless, the overall film has a slapped-together ambience—
as if it, too, is a half-baked imitation. The argument that
this lends a "realistic” documentary flavor to the film seems
very wide of the mark in light of the utter stylization of
Hitchcock's approach.
Reservations to one side, there are many good things in

Psycho and its importance to the history of the modern horror
film is incontestable. The shower murder— a sequence destined
to become the director's most famous set-piece and ironically
shot by Saul Bass on a day when Hitchcock wasn't even at the
studio— is still an horrific bit of cinematic sleight of hand,
bolstered by Hermann's now-obligatory screeching violins and a
sound effects track that boasts quite the most unsettling
slashing noises ever committed to film. Almost more effective
(perhaps because it hasn't been dissected to death) is the
murder of Martin Balsam's detective— a vertiginous scene that
happens so fast that it ends before we can quite grasp what
has happened. Also, Perkins' performance— enhanced and even
eclipsed by his subsequent portrayals of the character— is
beyond criticism, though it is unlikely that anyone involved
even suspected that his Norman ("We all go a little mad
sometimes") Bates would ultimately become a kind of American
folk hero— a psychotic everyman.
If it seems surprising that it took 22 years for the story

to be continued, this may have been because it was considered
presumptuous to trade on Hitchcock's name while the filmmaker
was still alive. More likely no one had the nerve to face the
Master's potentially withering comments on any such attempt.
However, the horror film featuring a knife-wielding madman
slashing away without regard for traditional motivation had
become a virtual sub-genre by 1982 and it was inevitable that
the cause of all this should return to cash in on its spawn.
Thankfully, Psycho II was designed as a class act— but a class
act that would not shortchange an audience raised on the newer
school of a bathful-of-blood-and-a-bucket-of-giblets horror
film.
Australian director— and avowed Hitchcock fan— Richard

Franklin was assigned to helm the proceedings, and perhaps out
of fear of the inevitable comparisons went out of his way to
attempt not to imitate Hitchcock. Unfortunately, this did not
work and could hardly have been expected to with a filmmaker
whose influences scarcely began and ended with Hitchcock. In
fact, one of his Australian thrillers, Patrick (1978), was an
insane rip-off of Ken Russell's Tommy (1975) in both style and
plot devices with the whole affair coming across as a truly
strange hybrid— a sort of "deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure
packs a mean psychokinetic power" inanity. Not only did it
prove impossible for Franklin to avoid aping Hitchcock
(despite egotistical claims to the contrary), but he also
plundered James Whale's theatricalism, directly copied
compositions from Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter
(1955), and even indulged in several "cheating" tricks so
beloved of the sleazier gore mongers. Rarely has a filmmaker
not working on an outright parody so worn his influences on
his sleeve. Without question, Psycho II has a lot of style.
Alas, most of it belongs to other people, and it emerges
unfiltered, impersonal, and only cleverly copied with no sense
of integration or understanding of why it had been effective
in other hands.
Mismanaged as it is on a directorial level, Psycho II is a

handsome— often striking— film (much better looking than
Psycho for that matter) that for about two-thirds of its
length is a good, satisfying follow-up. Where Franklin
falters, Tom Holland's screenplay (until it gets too
convoluted and clever for its own good) holds things together.
Much of the film is blessed with quirkily funny in-joke lines,
all of Perkins' material is first rate, and Holland even had

the wit to play on at least one of the more common collective
fantasies about the original film (the popular notion that
Norman cut up his victim and flushed her down the toilet!) by
incorporating the concept into the proceedings. Moreover, the
performances are universally good throughout the film's
length. And then there is Perkins himself, who is in actuality
the film's whole raison d'etre. No more justification is
necessary than his performance.
Holland's screenplay picks up 22 years after the fact with

Norman's release from the asylum— a scene that Franklin
handles well by introducing Norman in a fast tracking shot
underscoring his all-important status in the proceedings, (in
fairness it should be noted that Franklin tends to do right by
Perkins throughout.) Where Norman had been only a creepy
implicit victim (of his domineering mother, of the blighted
dream, of his impotence on every level, etc.) in the first
film, here he is very obviously the victim from the very
first. Bloodthirsty, vicious, and hateful Lila Crane Loomis
(Vera Miles)— quite unaware of her own perverse jackal-like
tendencies and the basic oddness of the fact that she
inherited and married her late sister's lover (conveniently
dead in light of the fact that the original actor, John Gavin,
since entered a different field of acting as ambassador to
Mexico)— is on the job with a petition in hand to stop
Norman's release. This portrait of wholly wigged-out "the
courts protect the guilty" mentality is one of the screen
play's more pointed, satisfying, and uncomfortable aspects,
and Miles plays it to the hilt— so much so that when she gets
a particularly nasty come-uppance (butcherknife through her
open, screaming mouth and out the back ofher neck) it seems
only fitting. Like most such fanatical persons, Lila isn't
content to let the truth of her beliefs come out on its own,
but intends on creating that "truth" just to be sure that what
she knows is so will be so (even if this means a murder or two
in the bargain). In this instance the ploy is to prove that
Norman is just as crazy as ever by simply launching a reign of
terror against him to make him that way.
There is nothing terribly remarkable in the concept of a

character being either driven insane or at least made to
appear insane. What is remarkable is the character on whom
this trick is being played. First off, we are never sure that
Norman— awkward, frightened, unsure of himself— isn't insane,
not in the least because Lila’s unfettered paranoia about
The "Psycho” Series 229
unwisely released murderers is in keeping with the mood of the

decade that produced the film, thereby playing on our own
fears, despite our dislike of her character (and our refusal
to see our collective selves in it). Moreover, it seems
likely, at least at first, that Norman is back in homicidal
maniac form again. The film’s first murder certainly is
slanted toward pushing all the right buttons to send him over
the edge, and the very fact that he refuses to let go of the
house and the motel— his stake in a warped vision of the
American Dream— indicates a level of self-delusion that might
lead anywhere, (in one of Franklin's best directorial touches
we are given a single indelible image of the pathetic
hopelessness of Norman's illusions when we see his figure—
tiny and insignificant, dwarfed by the house and motel—
gamely, yet so obviously vainly, trying to "put this place
back into shape.") What makes this all unique must be
attributed to Perkins' performance and his innately likable
personality, because psychotic killer or not we genuinely like
Norman and quite soon are as much afraid for him as of him.
Nothing else in the entire mad slasher sub-genre comes
anywhere near this level of complexity in characterization.
Structurally and stylistically, the film holds the

attention throughout most of its length, and it does have the
good sense to dole out its graphic splatter in carefully
measured doses. The first murder, for example, is very brief
and presented with admirable restraint, while the second is
more violent and bloody. In this fashion the film builds its
violence, if not its suspense, until the whole thing erupts
into a rather likable, but slightly silly climactic bloodbath.
Even while this gore fest ending was almost certainly a sop to
the more jaded tastes of a 1982 audience (and not unfair or
even out of character since shock was certainly part of
Hitchcock's aim in the first place), it isn't without its
point, especially when Norman finds himself with stigmata-like
wounds inflicted in the palms of his hands. It is easy to see
the temptation toward this kind of allegory, but it becomes
pure overkill due to Perkins' performance, which has already
made this very fact of the character clear in subtler, more
effective ways.
Despite such winning in-jokes as the fact that all that

needs be said to work on the audience is for Meg Tilly to
express a desire to take a shower, and Perkins' matter-of-fact
conclusion, "That would certainly be a load off my mind," when
his psychiatrist (Robert Loggia) claims he can prove that the
events of 1960 aren't recurring, the film definitely errs in
its final moments. It isn’t so much that dragging in a

heretofore unknown homicidal maniac is too much in and of
itself. After all, we know that it can't have been Norman by
the end of the film, but the cock and bull story that this
knife-wielding madwoman is his real mother, who had herself
been put away earlier while her sister raised him as her own
son, is just a little much, as is Norman's subsequent murder
of her. Mucking about with a legendary set-up like this is a
dangerous business at best— and the third film goes to great
lengths to back out of the whole overcomplicated mess— unless
it serves some very valid purpose, which is hardly a claim
that can be made here.
Psycho II, for all its faults, is a good picture. Psycho

III, on the other hand, is just short of being a little
masterpiece, probably because the man who best understands
Norman, Perkins himself, here takes control of the film on a
directorial level. Having worked with such filmmakers as
Hitchcock and Ken Russell, Perkins brought the one ingredient
to the film that Franklin had been afraid to do— a fearless
will to take what he had learned over the years and turn it to
his own ends without undue concern over originality for its
own sake. Ironically, Perkins comes across as an original
filmmaker of considerable power where Franklin does not. His
forthright inclusions of intimations and echoes of Psycho,
Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), and Russell's Crimes of Passion
(1984) are used to make deliberate points that are
sufficiently filtered through Perkins' own vision to become
his own. As directorial debuts go, it's one of the very best.
Unfortunately, it is also Perkins' only shot behind the camera
to date (apart from a dismal horror comedy, Lucky Stiff, that
vanished before release to emerge as cable filler) and there's
every chance that he will end up a la Charles Laughton with
one brilliant film to his credit.
Nearly everything about Psycho III works from Perkins'

direction to his— and the rest of the cast's— performance to
Charles Edward Pogue's screenplay. Indeed, the Perkins-Pogue
alliance is a wholly winning combination that fully returns
the series to Hitchcock country— and even pokes into some
Hitchcockian areas where Hitchcock himself might have feared
to tread, especially concerning the film's examination of
Catholicism. Where Psycho II could often be read as a
peculiarly gripping in-joke and concentrated on the events at
the Bates house, Psycho III, despite a few good laughs and its
central religious theme that can be taken either in dead
earnest or as satire, is a more sober effort with the action
centering around the motel. This location difference is

important in itself since it brings us back into contact with
the devastating power of the thwarted American Dream to deform
and destroy those who refuse to realize its impossibility.
This is not only more like Hitchcock than the middle film, but
also possesses strong cross-references to the film Perkins
made with Russell, Crimes of Passion, which centered on the
tragedy of the uniquely American fear of admitting failure.
The second film left us with Norman quite 'round the

bend— and, ironically, with a very clean bill of health via a
little speech by the local sheriff that neatly parodied the
pat Psychology 101 lesson delivered by Simon Oakland at the
end of the original. The third film opens, however, not with
Norman, nor even with a hint of Psycho. Instead we find
ourselves confronted with Diana Scarwid's spiritually
tormented novice, who just prior to taking her vows cries,
"There is no God," and attempts suicide by leaping from a bell
tower. This attempt results not in her death, but in the death
of a nun trying to rescue her, prompting a fire-breathing
horror of convent life to assuring the demented girl, "You'll
burn in hell for this! You’ll burn in hell!" The evocation of
Vertigo is at once unmistakable and curiously apt once we
realize where the film is going in its exploration of
characters making others over to suit their personal needs,
mindless of the dangerous fantasy element inherent in such an
undertaking.
When we do get to Norman we find that much of the

marginal improvements of the house and grounds he attempted in
the second film have been allowed to go to seed, while Norman
has taken to poisoning birds and indulging in his old hobby of
taxidermy. The state of his mind is communicated with amazing
brevity in this one little scene. Mindless of even the most
basic of normal human needs, Norman sits at his kitchen table,
surrounded but untroubled by filth, stuffing birds with one
hand and munching on peanut butter crackers with the other.
Yet he is not completely unaffected. The business of taxidermy
on his feathered friends keeps prodding his properly horrified
memory with images of doing the same to the woman who claimed
to be his "real mother," while a streak of his basically
gentle nature shows through when he releases a bird that
recovers from the tainted seed before he gets around to
stuffing it. Clearly, Norman is quite mad, but perhaps not
irretrievably so.
Inevitably Norman meets up with Scarwid, who bears a

striking resemblance to Janet Leigh. Clearly unsettled by

this— and not knowing whether to re-enact the crime or take
this as a kind of second chance— Norman strikes up an
acquaintance with the girl when she comes to the motel.
Unfortunately, the sickness gets the better of him and donning
his transvestite slasher ensemble he heads for her room to do
the deed. But when he arrives on the scene prepared for
mayhem, he is confronted by the poor girl lying in a hot bath
with slashed wrists waiting to die, and instead of being
terrified of her would-be attacker Scarwid's tortured brain
transforms her assailant into a vision of the Virgin and his
butcher knife into a crucifix. This (to say the least)
unexpected turn of events brings Norman back to himself and he
becomes her rescuer rather than her murderer, even becoming
romantically involved with her while she recovers in the
hospital. It appears that each may have found a personal
salvation in the other. Remarkably, the film manages to play
this straight, but not so straight that it can't be taken
satirically if one chooses. It is indeed rare that a splatter
movie— regardless of budget— has an idea in its head. It is
virtually unheard of for such a film to attain a level of
complexity where the viewer is left to draw a conclusion of
this depth. Is this a strangely moving examination of the
power of love and faith and the central Catholic notion of
guilt and redemption? Or is it a vicious parody of this,
suggesting that only a ditsy nun with warped visions and a
homicidal maniac with a mother fixation could take such
concepts this far afield? Perkins so leaves this up in the air
that it contains elements of both, resulting in a thoughtful,
if very uneasy, film that lingers far beyond the confines of a
genre that can't quite contain it.
None of the more cerebral aspects of the film are allowed

to circumvent the film's black humored thrills. Psycho III
manages to be less absurdly gory than its predecessor, yet
seems even bloodier due to Perkins' ability to suggest his
horrors— and our ability to fill in the blanks with nastier
images than the MPAA ratings board could stomach. To quite a
large extent, this is something he learned from Hitchcock and
he pays homage to his teacher by staging the film's first
murder in a telephone booth that serves the same function as
the confined space of the shower in Psycho. Without question
this is unblinking splatter, but with a difference— as in the
shower murder, the knife is never seen to so much as touch its
victim. The entire harrowing sequence is built on editing and
shot breakdown. Much of the subsequent mayhem is in the same
suggestive key, including a pair of truly unhealthy sick jokes
about dealing with a frozen corpse in the motel ice machine.

Additionally, Perkins obviously understands the audience's
ever-growing fear for Norman and works it shrewdly,
particularly in a disturbing scene where he hacks up his own
hand to keep "mother" from taking over and causing him to
murder Scarwid.
As striking as anything in the film is the climax in which

Norman comes to himself. Heavily ironic, this happens only
after Scarwid decides to accept Norman and his earlier
“troubles," comes to tell him so, and is accidentally killed
by falling down the stairs into the very lethal arrow on a
Cupid statue. It is just too late to be of any great value to
him when it is revealed to him that the deranged woman who
claimed to be his mother wasn't. Even so, his violent attack
on and dismemberment of her taxidermied corpse is a
beautifully catharctic moment in the film. For the moment, it
seems as if Norman has finally broken free of his bonds,
though he has lost his personal saviour (for whose death he
will be blamed) and has little to look forward to but the
mental institute. Unfortunately, the film climaxes in such a
way that room is left open for a fourth film by showing Norman
tenderly clutching his bogus mother's dismembered hand on his
way to the asylum. This may be a savvy move, but it undeniably
lessens the impact of his hard won— and excessively short
lived— battle to regain himself.
Psycho III is of such high quality that it is unfortunate

that the long-rumored sequel film finally arrived on the scene
in the guise of a movie for the Showtime cable network. Even
with the unhappy tag scene on Psycho IIIit seemed (for a
time) to have occurred to everyone concerned that there really
wasn't any place to go with the story. The realistic chances
of Norman being released again would strain even the credulity
of Psycho II *s Lila Loomis and her paranoid fears of a too
soft judicial system. Beyond that there seemed little
percentage in having Norman escape, since the motel and house
are intrinsic to the character's sickness and such a move
would both dilute the concept and turn him into just another
severely anti-social nut case with a butcher knife— a clearly
unacceptable solution. So, short of Norman becoming a disciple
of Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
(1952) and wreaking havoc from within the sanitarium by
hypnotic suggestion, it appeared that the character and the
concept would end with the third installment. And that would
have been a much better place to leave it.
Rather than bother explaining just how Norman got released

for round four, the film just plunges into the situation that
he is not only on the loose, but that he has married his nurse
and become a house-husband (this last, of course, allows him
the opportunity to spend much time in the kitchen among the
cutlery) with a taste for the dubious charms of talk radio.
The plot then has it that h e ’s on the verge of reverting to
his old ways owing to some not very mysterious occurrence.
(The script spends ages getting around to the surprise
revelation that Mrs. Bates is pregnant against Norman's wishes
and that this is the reason he feels he has to murder his pro
life spouse. The problem here is that it isn't a surprise how
ever differently the script feels.) The tension of the story
centers on talk show host C.C.H. Pounder first trying to peg
Norman's identity when he calls during a program on matricide,
and then trying to talk him out of his murderous plan. This
aspect of .the film isn't bad as such. Both Pounder and Perkins
are very good in their roles, but the whole enterprise just
seems pointless, and whatever good may be found is seriously
impeded by the flashback sequences meant to explain why Norman
is the way he is. These are almost uniformly uninvolving and
simplistic, despite a game try at Mother Bates by Olivia
Hussey and a rather desperate one by Henry Thomas as young
Norman. The implied complexities of the first three films are
here reduced to Psychology 101 level readings of sexual con
fusion and a homicidal Oedipus complex. Worse, one wonders—
given the script's tone— if Norman would have been a perfectly
adjusted citizen if mother had slept with him.
By way of thrills, the film is limp beyond belief, only

breaking free in its very last section where Norman chases the
little woman (Donna Mitchell) around the old house before she
manages to talk him out of the whole idea, whereupon he burns
the place down and has a catharctic series of run-ins with his
previous victims (at least those from this particular entry).
Perhaps realizing that the turkey being stuffed by Norman in
the opening credits wasn't the only such poultry they had on
their hands, Showtime enlisted Janet Leigh to introduce the
first showings of Psycho IV with a good deal of pretentious
fanfare about the "rest of the story" and the secrecy that
supposedly shrouded the ending (apparently, several versions
were shot). It didn't help. The results under the direction of
Mick Garris were simply lame and the only furor the film
created was with the notoriously conservative TV Guide staff
who were appalled that Norman had been "turned into a hero,"
which only indicated that they hadn't understood the first
three films and were inclined to the belief that Bedlam had
been a casebook on how to treat the mentally ill (neither of

these revelations are greatly surprising).
Psycho. 1960. Paramount. A Shamley Production. Producer:

Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Joseph Stefano, from the novel
by Robert Bloch. Photography: John L. Russell. Art Directors:
Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy. Music: Bernard Herrmann.
Editor: George Tomasini. Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Players: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin,

Martin Balsam, John McIntyre, Lurene Tuttle, Simon Oakland,
Frank Albertson, Pat Hitchcock, Vaughn Taylor, Mort Miles,
John Anderson. 109 minutes.
Psycho II. 1983* Universal. Producer: Hilton A. Green. Screen

play: Tom Holland. Photography: Dean Cundey. Editor: Andrew
London. Music: Jerry Goldsmith. Production Design: John W.
Corson. Director: Richard Franklin.
Players: Anthony Perkins, Meg Tilly, Vera Miles, Robert

Loggia, Dennis Franz, Hugh Gillin, Claudia Bryar, Osgood
Perkins. 113 minutes.
Psycho III. 1986. Universal. Producer: Hilton A. Green.

Screenplay: Charles Edward Pogue. Photographer: Bruce Surtees.
Editor: David Blewitt. Music: Carter Burwell. Production
Design: Henry Bumstead. Director: Anthony Perkins.
Players: Anthony Perkins, Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey, Roberta

Maxwell, Hugh Gillin, Lee Garlington, Robert Alan Browne. 93
minutes.
Psycho IV: The Beginning. 1990. Showtime. Executive Producer:

Hilton A. Green. Producers: George Zaloom, Les Mayfield.
Screenplay: Joseph Stefano. Photography: Rodney Charters.
Editor: Charles Bornstein. Music: Graeme Revell, Bernard
Herrmann. Production Design: Michael Hanan. Director: Mick
Garris.
Players: Anthony Perkins, Olivia Hussey, C.C.H. Pounder,

Warren Frost, Henry Thomas, Donna Mitchell, Thomas Schuster,
Sharen Camille, Bobbi Evors. 103 minutes.
THE GEORGE A. ROMERO "DEAD” FILMS
Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Dawn of the Dead (1979)
Day of the Dead (1985)
Regardless of how one feels about George Romero's talents

(to say nothing of his intentions), it is impossible not to
admire the very fact that his Night of the Living Dead was so
over-the-top in its graphic depiction of cannibalistic zombies
that it was denied an MPAA seal in the first year of the then
loosely defined ratings system. It is also difficult to over
look the fact that the film, though tempered somewhat by our
exposure to more elaborate horrors, retains much of its power
to shock to this day.
Whatever else it is, Night of the Living Dead is a real

triumph of independent (verging on amateur) filmmaking. While
the film often looks and feels amateurish, is poorly recorded,
has an absurdly overbearing canned musical score, and is often
very badly acted (Duane Jones exempted), it is possible to see
that Romero has carefully made the best and most horrific film
possible with the resources his budget allowed. As director,
co-writer, cinematographer, and editor Romero established him
self as an undoubted auteur right from the start (how many
hack directors working in film today who have unfairly
demanded contracts "entitling" them to the credit "a film by"
can lay claim to such credentials?). Romero's ploy went back
to the earliest days of exploitation filmmaking— deliver a
salable product on the genre's terms and the rest of the film
can be (or do, or say) whatever the director desires. In this
case, Romero hooked his distributors and his audience with an
unprecedented amount of graphic violence, while going about
his own business of genuinely disturbing them with a film that
featured a black actor as its only rational (or likable)
character and a sense of the disintegration of many of the
values (particularly family values) viewers had been taught to
237
both hold sacred and take for granted. Audiences believed they
were being so affected by unflinching scenes of zombies eating
their victims when, in fact, the unsettling feeling owed much
more to the ideas the film contained. A zombie pulling the
intestines from its victim is shocking only because it is
repellent, but the images of a zombie trying to devour its own
sister, or a zombie child murdering and eating its own parents
are shocking because the concepts are disturbing. This— along
with a strongly personal visual style incorporating strange
angles and very mobile hand-held camerawork— is what made the
filmmaker a force to be reckoned with, rather than just an
imitation of Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Romero’s film is almost absurd in the simplicity of its

story (which bears more than a little resemblance to Richard
Matheson's JE Am Legend and the 1964 Vincent Price film, The
Last Man on Earth, that was adapted from it). When a vaguely
explained governmental space experiment goes somehow wrong (in
exploitation films it is a given that the government is to
blame) the recently deceased develop the singularly inconven
ient tendency to return to a semblance of life as murderous
zombies with a taste for human flesh. Working from this
premise, Romero's film concentrates on the efforts of a small
group of people to survive the zombie onslaught by barricading
themselves in a deserted farmhouse. While the farm setting is
almost certainly the result of the film's budgetary limits it
serves the film's thematic implications as a symbol of the
mid-American heartland values that are crumbling around the
characters. One significant difference in Romero's handling of
the material lies in the complete absence of build-up. The
film simply jumps right into the thick of things, launching
its first zombie attack within three minutes of its opening.
The film's uncompromising grimness is at least partly due

to the genre conventions of the time. In the main, horror
films had tended toward the downbeat by 1968, but Right of the
Living Dead offers something more than an arbitrary nod toward
gloominess for its own sake. The killing of the one character
(Jones) in the film who possesses the resourcefulness to deal
with the situation comes across like an even grimmer variation
of the climax of The Last Man on Earth. Not only is the man
shot when trigger-happy zombie hunters mistake him (or do
they?) for one of the walking dead, but his death seems to
mark the end of reason and so of hope. When Price is killed in
Last M a n , he dies claiming, "You're all freaks— I am the last
man," and that is the feeling here. The difference lies in the
fact that the killers this time are not the half mutated
beings of the Price film, rather they are what the world at
large has become without the benefit of any mysterious plague
(at least in the traditional sense).
Not all of Night of the Living Dead works by any means.

Apart from its previously mentioned short-comings, the script
is prone to generate certain laughs that are not clearly in
tentional. The insane fervour with which the entire cast lose
control at the mere mention of the possibility of a radio, a
television, or a car may be an indictment of modern man's
utter dependence on such things, but the film seems a little
uncertain of this (perhaps due to the acting) and it often
seems like the viewer is laughing at the film, not with it.
The cult success of Night of the Living Dead did not

insure an immediate career for Romero. His subsequent works
did not have the same impact on audiences and received poor
distribution. To some extent, this was deserved. Romero's
personal obsessions occasionally resulted in works that were
self-indulgent beyond belief. The most obvious example of this
is the film he made after his next "Dead" film, Knightriders.
Even allowing that there may be an audience for a film that
glamorizes the biker mentality, it strains credulity to accept
this overlong (145 minutes!) paean of praise that likens such
thought to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as
the film for that audience. (Not surprisingly, the film was
fairly well liked by viewers who had obviously never met any
real bikers.) The films made between Night of the Living Dead
and Dawn of the Dead were not so self-indulgent, but they did
suffer from a sense of over-reaching. Even the cleverly made
Martin (1978) seems forever just beyond Romero's grasp. His
desire to re-think the vampire myth is certainly admirable,
but the desire is never quite realized.
Perhaps Romero sensed that his only chance for popular

success lay in returning to the one concept that had served
him so well, or he may simply have decided that his zombies
needed re-examination a decade later. Whichever is true, there
is no question that Dawn of theDead is everything Night of
the Living Dead should have been and more, as well as Romero"^
one undeniable masterpiece to date. Designed and shot in color
with a better screenplay, a far better cast, and a wholly
effective, nerve-wracking score by Italian horror director
Dario Argento's The Goblins, Dawn of the Dead set out to over
take its predecessor on every level— 'and succeeded.
A long film (126 minutes), Dawn of the Dead manages to

keep moving for its entire length thanks in no small degree to

Romero’s abilities as an editor, not to mention the fact that
even more than the first film Dawn plunges into its story with
no regard for the niceties of exposition. Romero works on the
assumption that the viewer has probably seen (and certainly
knows about) his first film, and so wastes no time on set-up.
(The requisite information _is there, but it has to be picked
up on the run, since Romero refuses to spoon feed his audience
on any level.) Similarly, he loses no time in establishing the
fact that this second film will be even more violent and
graphic than the original. In the film's first minutes we
witness a raid on the living dead that contains more gore and
grue than the entirety of Night. Granting that this was a much
needed aspect for the commercial success of a film that had no
choice but to ignore the existence of the MPAA and the ratings
board altogether, such overkill would be indefensible on
artistic grounds were it not for the fact that the approach is
thematically sound. This is_ the nightmare into which the world
seemed to be descending at the end of the first film— only it
is far worse than we could have imagined, and its effects on
the people living in that world are devastating in the
inherent dehumanization of the living.
The most striking aspect of the second film is Romero's

decision to stage most of the action in a shopping mall. Taken
with the first film's farmhouse setting, this suggests a
bizarre— yet fully acceptable— turn of events. The American
heartland has shifted from the farm to the malls. Productive
America has become consuming America. This, of course, is
exactly the point Romero wishes to make. Dawn of the Dead was
made on the very threshold of the 1980s and seems to offer a
frightening warning of that which lay ahead. There are no
ideals and dreams here, only the most rampaging materialism
and instant gratification. The zombies return to the mall
because they feel at home therein ("Why do they come here?"
asks one character, who is told, "A kind of instinct— memory.
This is what they used to do. This was an important place in
their lives"), but the worst of it lies in Romero's images.
The glassy-eyed, stumbling, shuffling living dead lurching
about on escalators with the Muzak blaring away are just a
little too close to our everyday experience. The line between
a brain-dead zombie and numbed-brain mall habitue is just too
fine for comfort. The very fact that a zombie has no actual
use for the mall or the goods offered in it, yet is compelled
to go there is little more than the human concept of shopping
for its own sake taken to its extreme. It is the very point
lessness of the existence that is under examination here, just

as the disintegration of accepted values had been in the first
film. (The irony, of course, is that the 1980s would see a
surface return to those values from the first film by a
society that, like the mall zombies, opted to believe that
things could be returned to "normal" simply by pretending they
had been.)
The thematic implications (actually, they are a little too

overt to be called "implications" in Dawn) to one side, Romero
fashioned a thrilling, taut, often horrifying film in his
second entry. The ingenuity with which the film's protagonists
take over the mall and put it to their own uses is invariably
engaging, while the destruction of this new world by the un
timely arrival of a biker gang presents the film with a turn
of events that is at once hilarious and unnerving. The bikers
refuse to treat the zombies with due respect, offering them
(literally) a pie in the face instead of fright. (One senses
the seeds of Knightriders in this with the outsider bikers
being "true" individuals, but Romero keeps this absurd [how
can a member of a gang be an individual?] point of view in
check.) Ultimately, this cavalier attitude toward the problem
results in the bikers' downfall when the butts of their joke
turn them into a quick lunch.
Quite the oddest aspect of Romero's second film is the

decision to end this entry on a note of hope. Where the first
film kept descending, Dawn climaxes with two of the survivors
flying off to a possibly brighter future in some hopefully
uncontaminated part of the world. This ending should not work,
but amazingly it does. Perhaps it works because we would
really rather not believe that Romero's world in violent chaos
is all that lies before us.
Romero planned to cap the series with one more film, Day
of the Dead, but his originally rather grandiose scheme for a
dynamic third act finally emerged in a much simplified form
when the requisite funds failed to materialize. As a result,
the final film is a disappointment on nearly every level— an
often entertaining and exciting disappointment, but a disap
pointment all the same. The third film isn’t as bad as its
major detractors claim, but it is certainly anti-climactic.
This round the story concerns the efforts of science to

find a method of controlling the zombies, since it seems
powerless to actually stop the damned things. The premise is
intriguing, even though it fails to take into account the
obvious flaw in any attempt at training the creatures on a

Pavlovian level, since new, untrained, and hungry ones pop up
with each successive death. Actually, the results— if they had
worked properly— would likely have been little more than the
useful automatons from the days of Lugosi's White Zombie. The
one zombie, "Bub" (Howard Sherman), that becomes more or less
sociable in the course of the film doesn't seem like such a
bad fellow, certainly not much worse than his blood-splattered
mentor, Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), who looks more like a
deranged butcher than a scientist, and considerably better
than the militaristic Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato). He is
the exception not the rule, of course, and the bulk of the
zombie populace are the same rowdy, unpleasant creatures as
before.
Romero's scaled-down version of his original concept has

one major problem in that it appears to save most of its least
expensive aspect— the dialogue scenes. This tends to turn the
remaining film into something of a talkathon, which in itself
would not be so bad were it not for the fact that a good deal
of the talk isn't very good. Romero has never shown a gift for
handling words, but in this particular case he goes further by
mistaking vulgarity for wit with the results that the dialogue
is pointlessly unpleasant. The climax is not much better,
since it is little more than a retread of the ending of the
second film. Day certainly did not repeat the box-office
success of Dawn, though this may well be as much due to its
anti-military tone in a decade where such thought was not
popular. All in all, Day of the Dead hardly qualifies as the
last chapter in the Romero series and a fourth installment is
clearly called for (though what he might call it— Afternoon of
the Dead?— is open to question). Romero’s subsequent film,
Monkey Shines, also indicates that a return to his "Dead"
concept would not be a bad idea, but whether it happens
remains to be seen.
Night of the Living Dead. 1968. Image Ten/Continental Films.

Producers: Russell Streiner, Karl Hardman. Screenplay: John A.
Russo, George A.Romero. Photography: George A. Romero.
Editor: George A. Romero. Music: Capitol Records stock music
library. Director: George A. Romero.
Players: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Russell

Streiner, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra
Schon, Bill Hinzman. 96 minutes.
Dawn of the Dead. 1979* United Film Distributors. Producer:

Richard P. Rubinstein. Screenplay: George A. Romero.

Photography: Michael Gornick. Editor: George A. Romero. Music:
The Goblins with Dario Argento. Director: George A. Romero.
Players: David Emgee, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, Gaylen Ross,

David Crawford, David Early, Tom Savini, George A. Romero,
Christine Forrest. 126 minutes.
Day of the Dead. 1935• United Film Distributors. Producer:

Richard P. Rubinstein. Screenplay: George A. Romero.
Photography: Michael Gornick. Editor: Pasquale Buba. Music:
John Harrison. Director: George A. Romero.
Players: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato,

Richard Liberty, Howard Sherman, Jarlath Conroy, Anton DiLeo,
G. Howard Klar, Ralph Marrero, John Amplas. 102 minutes.
THE DR. PHIBES FILMS
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
In many ways this limited series is the last of the old

style horror films. Certainly, it is the last gasp of the old
concept of a series built around a star— but a fine last gasp
it is. Despite having its roots in the traditional, the Phibes
series is not in itself traditional, owing as much to the
British "Invasion" films of the 1960s (at least in stylistic
terms) as it does to its genre conventions.
While nominally the films are typical Samuel Z. Arkoff-

James H. Nicholson-Vincent Price vehicles, they are thoroughly
British in concept and execution. Indeed, the first film in
particular resembles nothing so much as a warped episode of
The Avengers minus Diana Rigg and Patrick MacNee. (it is
hardly accidental that Price's unofficial follow-up to this
series, Theater of Blood [1973]» co-starred Rigg as his
daughter.) The look, feel, structure, and campy tone of the
films and their relation to The Avengers is, of course,
directly traceable to director Robert Fuest, who had directed
a half dozen of the episodes for that show's final and most
stylish (if least popular) season. It is to the design
conscious Fuest and production designer Brian Eatwell that
much of the films' quality must be attributed, though one can
hardly overlook Price, or screenwriters James Whiton, William
Goldstein (first film), Fuest, and Robert Blees (second).
The storyline of the Phibes films (there really is only

one story) is nothing outstanding— old-fashioned revenge
murders committed by a madman on the doctors he holds respon
sible for his wife's death. Simply described, it is the sort
of thing one might expect from a 1940s Monogram programmer,
but the scripts and the films made from this almost magnifi
cently commonplace notion are something else again. From the
245
moment the first film opens with a full view of Eatwell's art
nouveau set for Phibes1 lair with a black cloaked and hooded
Price rising from the floor playing a marvelous art deco
theatre organ we know we are in for something special. When
Fuest then films Price’s ascent partly with his camera flipped
on its side in then-trendy Invasion style we know that the
approach isn’t going to be just more of the worn American
International cardboard gothic. (The expensive look of the
film is largely an illusion all the same as any close exami
nation will disclose with many "elaborate” sets little more
than cleverly placed drapes, while others are merely suggest
ed such as the great house in the party scene which is only a
staircase and a few strategically suspended chandeliers.)
Hardly any of The Abominable Dr. Phibes is casually done

or uninteresting. There are so many clever touches that they
are virtually impossible to catalogue. The preparations for
the first onscreen murder (the actual first murder occurs
before the film starts) are both stylishly accomplished and
wonderfully tongue-in-cheek as Phibes and his mystical cohort,
Vulnavia (Virginia North), set out to visit the curse of bats
(his murder scheme follows the Biblical plagues on Egypt) on
an unsuspecting medico. Phibes himself is all style and
flourish, quite prepared to jettison common sense safety for
the dramatic and flamboyant. After all, the question arises at
the onset— what sort of murderer goes about his nefarious
tasks in a car with his image painted on its windows? Phibes
does, and not because he realizes (at this point anyway) that
the forces of law and order, Trout (Peter Jeffrey) and Crow
(Derek Godfrey), are ineffectual in the extreme. Rather, he
does so because anything else would not fit in with his sense
of style— nor, it might be added, with Fuest’s sense of style.
The characters and characterizations in The Abominable Dr.

Phibes are unusually fine throughout, as is the casting of the
film. Lacking the usual need for romantic leads (exempting
Phibes and his late wife), the film is free to people itself
with a collection of fine character actors and eccentric
characters. Even the casting of old-timer Joseph Cotten as the
nominal hero (we all know that Phibes is the hero) is nicely
unorthodox since Cotten is certainly beyond the age of the
romantic lead that usually fills this capacity. Peter Jeffrey
and Derek Godfrey at first seem to be the standard thick-as-a-
brick movie representatives of the law, used as comic relief,
but most of their failings are due to Phibes* cleverness more
than their combined stupidity, and the parts are both well
written and the center of gravity around which all the quirky
events revolve. Moreover, the film's "Interested Parties" (the

cast is broken down into "The Protagonists," "The Law," "The
Victims," etc.) are all delightfully eccentric, which serves
to reinforce the feeling of an Avengers episode since a good
deal of The Avengers formula centers on encounters with just
such bizarre characters along an investigational path. And
most of these off-center representatives of humanity are come
across by Jeffrey and Godfrey in their hunt for the killer.
Whether interviewing the brusque goldsmith (Aubrey Woods) who
created Phibes' set ("Of course there’s more than one— that's
why it's a set") of Hebraic symbol amulets indicating the
nature of the curse being inflicted, or checking out the mean
ing of these symbols with a distracted rabbi (Hugh Griffith),
they never meet with what one might call a normal human being.
As a showcase for Price (and the series certainly is that

at all times even if it does right by the supporting cast and
offers unusually strong adversaries in Cotten and later Robert
Quarry), the films— especially the earlier portions of the
first entry— are unorthodox in that Price is by and large
deprived of the use of his trademark voice, since the horribly
disfigured Phibes (he wears a false face in a kind of in-joke
reference to House of Wax) speaks only with the aid of various
electronic gadgets, and then without moving his mouth. Price,
however, proves that he does not need to rely on his more
traditional methods to create an effective character. Like the
film itself, much of Price's characterization is a thing of
touches and flourishes. Beyond his enjoyably hammy mime (Price
at the organ or waltzing with Vulnavia are alone worth the
cost of admission), many of his best moments are little more
than subtle looks. One of the best of these occurs right after
the murder of guest victim Terry-Thomas as a doctor with a
taste for girlie films and bits of erotic art. Passing one of
Thomas' lascivious paintings, Price pauses to cast a knowingly
disapproving glance at his morally dubious victim. (One can't
help but wonder if this— and a later sequence in which Price
cooks up a batch of sprouts as locust bait— is not an in
reference to the actor's well-known status as something of an
art expert and gourmet chef.)
For its time, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is an unusually

gory film, but the blood-letting is invariably in a humorous
vein and the whole enterprise throbs with cheerfully black
comedy— and, of course, what seemed like excesses in 1971 are
very tame 20 years later. The dialogue itself is often in
pointed reference to the film's more unpleasant aspects.
"Medical men are made of flesh and blood just like the rest of
us," insists Trout*s superior at one point, only to have Trout

remark, "I know. I've seen a good hit of their flesh and blood
in the last few days."
The first film's famous climax with Phibes embalming him

self with his late wife in a crypt built for two that includes
a telephone prompted more than one critic at the time of the
film's release to wonder if Mr. Bell's instrument was instal
led so the nefarious doctor could be called for the sequel
film. Whether or not this was so, one year later Phibes was
back in an equally clever film aptly titled Dr. Phibes Rises
Again, wherein Price's plan (seemingly part of his original
scheme) is to take his beloved to Egypt and join her on a
voyage down a secret river to eternal life. Waking from his
embalmed slumber, Phibes discovers, however, that his house
has been destroyed and the secret of the river stolen by his
arch-enemy Biederbeck (Robert Quarry), who needs the secret
for himself since this gentleman is fast running out of the
elixir that has kept him young and living for better than a
hundred years (the film might have been called Dr. Phibes
Meets the Man in Half Moon Street). The bulk of the film then
details their race to this life-giving underground river with
Phibes systematically— and flamboyantly— doing away with
Biederbeck's companions, ultimately forcing Biederbeck into
giving up the key in order to save his lady friend (Fiona
Lewis) from being impaled on a Phibes contrivance, so that
Phibes and his wife can sail away into eternal life. (There
are two versions of this ending. In the one currently avail
able on videotape, the couple merely drift off to the film's
theme music, but a somewhat campier climax with Price singing
"Over the Rainbow" graces other prints.)
Fuest and co-writer Robert Blees pick up the style of the

first film without missing a beat. As before, the accent is on
eccentric characters, and the humor is, if anything, even more
outrageous. Both Terry-Thomas and Hugh Griffith are back on
hand in different capacities from the first film. Thomas plays
the shipping agent on whose line Phibes and company make their
way to Egypt. Asked if anyone "strange" was on the list of
passengers, Thomas snarls, "The whole ruddy lot of them,"
before thinking of the clues that lead the police to realize
who is at the bottom of this. Griffith is a friend of Quarry's
who ends up encased in a giant prop gin bottle and set out to
sea. Peter Jeffrey returns as Inspector Trout, but rather than
pair him with Derek Godfrey's Crow, he is here saddled with
his irritable— and remarkably dense— superintendent Waverly
(John Cater). This pairing works just as well and offers the
script chances for some pretty low jokes that it doesn’t miss.
(”Do you think you know where we are, sir?" asks Trout when
the duo are lost in the desert. "I don't think— I know!" snaps
Waverly. "I don’t think you know, either, sir," remarks
Trout.)
The major difference between the first and second film

lies in the fact that Price— still speaking through electronic
gadgets, of course— is a virtual magpie in the sequel. This is
all to the good, since his lines in Rises Again are actually
better than those in the first film. *'You have done wonders
with the local fish," he conversationally tells Vulnavia (here
played by Valli Kemp) just before extracting a bone from the
hole in his neck he uses for a mouth. Upon entering the temple
that leads to the river and serves as his Egyptian base of
operations, he notes, "Some decorating, a few minor touches
and it will seem like home!" (And, indeed, it does since it is
soon transformed into a stunning Brian Eatwell art deco set
with the Egyptian friezes transformed into top hatted men and
1920s flappers.) Once again Phibes is obsessed with carrying
it all off in his unique personal style, carting his clockwork
orchestra (rechristened "The Alexandria Quartet" in honor of
their new location) and theatre organ with him. (This hardly
seems worth the bother for such a limited stay, but style is
style.)
While not as good or likable an actor as Joseph Cotten,

Robert Quarry provides a good foil for Price. His character is
not particularly sympathetic in any case, but he does have a
few lively exchanges with Phibes in an ersatz swashbuckling
fashion. "What kind of a fiend are you?" Quarry asks late in
the film, only to have Price announce, "The kind that wins!"
And, of course, he does for as Trout remarks early on, "Every
time we build a better mousetrap, Phibes has built a better
mouse."
The outstanding quality of this stylish sequel did not,

alas, show at the box-office. Truth to tell, by 1972 the
film's style worked against it. Audiences were wanting (and
getting) much nastier horrors than the Phibes series were able
(or perhaps willing) to provide. Certainly neither the idea,
nor the character was burned out, though one might rightly
question just what more Phibes could conquer after obtaining
eternal life. Regardless, the series went no further than the
two films, which, if nothing else, made for a classy fade-out
on the traditional horror film.
The Abominable Dr. Phibes. 1971- American International.

Executive Producers: Samuel Z. Arkoff, James H. Nicholson.
Producers: Louis M. Heyward, Ronald S. Dunas. Photographer:
Norman Warwick. Music: Basil Kirchin, Jack Nathan. Editor:
Tristam Cones. Sets: Brian Eatwell. Screenplay: James Whiton,
William Goldstein. Director: Robert Fuest.
Players: Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Peter Jeffrey, Derek

Godfrey, Virgina North, Terry-Thomas, Hugh Griffith, Norman
Jones, John Cater, Aubrey Woods, John Laurie. 94 minutes.
Dr. Phibes Rises Again.1972. American International.

Executive Producers: Samuel Z. Arkoff, James H. Nicholson.
Producer: Louis M. Heyward. Photographer: Alex Thomson.
Editor: Tristam Cones. Music: John Gale. Sets: Brian Eatwell.
Screenplay: Robert Fuest, Robert Blees. Director: Robert
Fuest.
Players: Vincent Price, Robert Quarry, Peter Jeffrey, Fiona

Lewis, Valli Kemp, Hugh Griffith, Terry-Thomas, John Cater,
Gerald Sim, Lewis Fiander, John Thaw, Peter Cushing, Beryl
Reid. 89 minutes.
THE EXORCIST FILMS
The Exorcist (1973)

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
The Exorcist III (1990)
When William Friedkin's film of William Peter Blatty's

novel, The Exorcist, first appeared it created perhaps the
greatest sensation of any horror film since Whale's
Frankenstein. The film's catalogue of grotesqueries, language,
and blasphemies became the stuff of which cocktail party
chatter is made— rather along the lines of a Fellini film with
gyrating heads substituting for "art house" esoterica. These
same "qualities" also became heady fodder for religious groups
(before they discovered that Satan was hiding behind the
grooves of every rock album ever recorded) who, in their more
rational moments, felt the film glorified the devil and
promoted devil worship (how they did not explain), and, at
more zealous times, were quite certain that the film itself
was somehow possessed. In spite— or perhaps because— of these
more outrageous claims and the attempts by the elite to
weirdly intellectualize the film, The Exorcist became one of
the hottest horror pictures of all time.
While the film's box-office success and its ability to

work on an audience (at least a 1973 audience made up in the
main by people who didn't usually see "this sort of thing")
are not in dispute, The Exorcist's somewhat shaky claim to
greatness certainly is. To some extent, time is the culprit
here. What seemed so shocking in 1973 is now old hat and the
once "startling" special effects look very mechanical
indeed— and not nearly so convincing as was once thought. In
less than 20 years, the film has dated more than Frankenstein
has done in 60! However, time alone is hardly the only culprit
because quite frankly The Exorcist never was a very good film.
It was essentially a pre-sold item that rode to popularity by
simply daring to illustrate— more or less— the very things no
251
one thought it would attempt to illustrate from Blatty's

best-seller.
At the time The Exorcist was made director Friedkin's

claim to cinematic importance rested primarily on two films,
the brilliant screen adaptation of Mart Crowley's play, The
Boys in the Band (1970), and The French Connection (1971)•
Neither of these works do anything to indicate that Friedkin
was a wise choice for The Exorcist. Boys in the Band was— and
is— an unusually successful transposition of a very theatrical
work to the screen without any obvious "opening up" of the
play. Friedkin’s clever use of an ingeniously designed set
kept the film in a state of perpetual motion, the speed and
drive of which more than obscured the fact that the film never
"went anywhere." Speed also marked The French Connection, and,
unfortunately, it is speed that Friedkin brought to The
Exorcist. And speed was one thing the film did not need.
The other thing Friedkin brought to the film was his own ego
and this the film needed even less. Since The French
Connection brought the director much critical acclaim and many
box-office dollars, Friedkin felt he was virtually untouch
able. In interview after interview the man praised his own
"genius" while downgrading just about every filmmaker past or
present in the process— in case he should be accused of having
been influenced by anyone. To hear Friedkin tell it, The
Exorcist was a wholly unique work created in a vaccuum and
influenced by nothing and no one. Unfortunately, this
wild— and hardly demonstrable— claim extended to Blatty's
contribution to the film.
Whatever else William Peter Blatty is or is not, the man

is dead serious about getting to the bottom of the nature of
sin, original sin, self-sacrifice, redemption, salvation, and
nearly anything Catholic that touches on the mystical. One may
only agree with him for the length of time one is inside his
world, but his own convictions and worryings in these matters
are such that it is not possible to dismiss them out of hand—
at least while Blatty holds the floor. In the cold light of
day Blatty's Jesuitical meditations may seem very insub
stantial, but in the dark of the movie house (even on the
printed page) they are something else again. Alas, Friedkin
only saw the cold light of day and proceeded to steamroll
Blatty's script into a series of wrongly paced set-pieces with
little or no actual meaning.
While it is neither unusual, nor necessarily even

undesirable, for a filmmaker to tamper with his source
material, some guidelines are needed if this is to be done

successfully. The filmmaker should either adhere to the spirit
of his source, or take open issue with that source so that the
film becomes a kind of debate, presenting the author's ideas
with the filmmaker questioning the validity of those ideas
(Ken Russell's film of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love [1969] is
a good example of this). The filmmaker must be certain that
his tampering "improves" on the original in some way, or, at
the very least, brings the original into line with his own
worldview. Above all, the filmmaker cannot disregard the
structure of the original unless prepared to replace that
structure with one of his own. Friedkin did none of these
things with Blatty's original. Instead, he merely opted to
film the story at a too fast pace, utterly disregard aspects
of Blatty's plot (a sub-plot— fairly complex in the
book— concerning the family's servants is brought into the
film only to be dropped without resolution of any kind),
ignore any thematic concern, evoke a handful of two-fisted
overwrought performances of the painfully obvious school of
acting (Ellen Burstyn in particular veritably screams, "Look
at me— I'm acting!"), and merely revel in shock for shock's
sake.
The Exorcist certainly did contain its fair share of

shocks and nasties. The projectile vomit effect (achieved with
split-pea soup), the crucifix masturbation scene (even in a
muted presentation this was more than anyone expected to find
transposed from the safety of the printed word to the graphic
immediacy of film), the levitations and rotating head were all
pretty strong meat, especially in a mainstream film. The usual
rule that big budgets and horror films don't mix due to an
unwillingness for the studios to really let go with a lot of
money at stake did not apply here. Rather, Friedkin gave us a
film that let go too often, too abruptly, and with all too
little conviction. The film confuses repulsion with horror at
every turn (the graphic detailing of a spinal tap is on a
level with the most gratuitous splatter effect in any Friday
the 15th opus) and fails to achieve even the in-the-dark
momentary suspension of disbelief of Blatty at his most
mystically baffling.
What Friedkin could not do is flatten some of the

dialogue. Blatty has a genuine gift for clever, often
extremely raunchy, lines and at least in the case of Mercedes
McCambridge's radio performance as the voice of the demon
possessing Linda Blair much of that gift manages to shine
through. Unfortunately, the demon’s lines are so peppered with
shock "bits ("Your mother sucks cocks in hell," "Let Jesus fuck
you," etc.) that Blatty's more inventive lines are quite lost
in the bargain. More regrettable is the fact that similarly
witty lines are mangled by the actors. Burstyn to one side,
even Lee J. Cobb and the usually unflappable Jack MacGowran
(here playing the entire film as if ill-temper was a
substitute for wit) fail to register despite sure-fire
material.
Blatty's objections to the film at the time— namely that

Friedkin had cut and blunted the project's thematic concerns—
seemed a little hollow, but time and his own films, The Ninth
Configuration and Exorcist III, prove that his complaints were
well-founded from the outset. His objections, however, were
mild compared with the response the film drew from director
John Boorman, who Warner Brothers wanted to helm the sequel
film, Exorcist II; The Heretic.
Boorman had not only disliked Friedkin's film, he found it

a particular loathsome bit of goods all the way round. It was
his contention (a view shared by Max von Sydow who played the
title character in the Friedkin film) that audiences were only
sickly responding with a kind of vicarious satisfaction at the
abuses heaped upon a 12 year old girl. In his mind, The
Exorcist was little more than child abuse by proxy of which no
good could come, and the film pandered to and encouraged the
worst impulses of its audience. With this in mind, Boorman had
less than no desire to direct the sequel. For reasons never
fully explained (especially after the box-office
disappointment of Boorman's enigmatic Zardoz [1974] for 20th
Century Fox) Warners still wanted him to direct the film from
a screenplay by William Goodhart, and in order to obtain
Boorman's services they dangled an irresistible deal in front
of him— an almost unlimited budget, a cool million dollar
director's fee, and, best of all, total artistic control. Only
a fool would have refused and Boorman is no fool. He took the
deal and presented the studio with what has been called "the
world's first 14 and a half million dollar art film." True
enough, but what Boorman actually gave them was an anti-
Exorcist— a work that baffled, confused, and irritated
moviegoers expecting more of the same.
Exorcist II is a work of genius— not wholly focused

genius, but genius all the same. What it isn't is much of a
horror film. Instead, Boorman and Goodhart have created a
moralistic treatise about the coming of a universal mind,
based more or less on the concepts of the priest Teilhard
De Chardin, a man whose writings on the topic indicate a

childlike wide-eyed quality and a total unfamiliarity with the
human race in terms of practical experience. One might rightly
wonder if Boorman and Goodhart (and, significantly, these
concepts were in Goodhart's screenplay prior to Boorman's
involvement so Warners' tendency to blame Boorman for the
film's failure isn't well-founded) were not guilty of a
similar brand of ingenuousness. The held over elements from
the first film and the few injections of horrific elements
simply could not disguise the fact that Exorcist II was about
something other than flying split pea soup. In itself this
isn’t a bad thing. After all, Whale's Frankenstein films had
certainly been about something more than the creation of an
artificial being. But Whale remembered the thrills and used
them as an integral part of his films (even while spoofing
those elements in Bride) where Boorman simply grafted them
onto an existing theme. Whale's themes seem to have grown out
of the story. Boorman was simply working the wrong way
around— not surprising in view of his attitude toward the
original film. Worse, neither Boorman, nor Goodhart seemed to
realize that those all-important themes were not all that
clearly expressed in the screenplay. To miss a line or two of
dialogue is to miss the point of a film that otherwise relies
on a striking series of paralleled and cross-referenced dream/
nightmare images to tell its story. As a result, Exorcist II
is a film touched with greatness, tinged with genius, and
muffled by the kind of tongue-tied ineptitude that can only
come with genius, making it at once a fascinating, sometimes
annoying work that just misses the power it needs to come
across.
Goodhart's screenplay is part of the problem. The cast is

a bigger part. Linda Blair barely passed muster as the 12 year
old Regan in The Exorcist, and mostly because of the over-
dubbed voice. As a young woman in the sequel film she fails to
convince most of the time. She has one believable and moving
moment where she enters the mind of an autistic child and
heals her, but more often than not she is embarrassingly
awkward. Her performance, however, is not entirely her own
fault. There are just too many strangely constructed lines for
her to deal with, while most of the concepts seem beyond her
mental grasp. It is a rote performance for the bulk of the
film. Some balance is offered by Richard Burton, who seems a
bit miscast (the part was intended for Jon Voigt), but carries
off the assignment with a gravity that helps hold some of the
more fantasticated notions in place. Unfortunately, he gets
very little help from Louise Fletcher at her blandest, while
poor Kitty Wynn is given a pivotal role so vaguely written

that she can barely help herself, much less anybody else.
After a few disastrous days at the box-office, Boorman

recut the film— as many as 125 changes were made— but to no
avail. Some of the more risible moments (such as Fletcher's
unfortunate question to Burton, "Father, don’t you ever need a
woman?") were removable, but no amount of cutting could help
find a horror film that was never there underneath it all. The
recut version (thankfully the first version was made available
on videotape) mostly managed to make a frequently muddled film
nearly incomprehensible, not to mention the fact that some of
the changes (notably a freeze frame at the end to cover the
fact that Burton's character did not disappear in the bottom
less pit in the first cut) were clumsily executed. Moreover,
many of Boorman's subtle uses of cross-referenced visuals (the
link between the possessed girl in the prologue and Blair's
character was undermined by severely pruning the admittedly
rather painful tap dancing sequence) got lost in the shuffle,
while the elimination of Boorman's uplifting ending made the
entire exercise seem curiously pointless. Even granting the
fact that Boorman was responsible for cutting the film, the
bastardized version in no way reflects the filmmaker's
original intentions.
Whatever stand one takes on Boorman's film— misguided and

misunderstood masterpiece or arrogant and self-conscious
disaster— there is no denying the film's technical mastery in
either version. Working with cinematographer William Fraker,
Boorman created some of the most striking images of his career
(many equal to those in his masterful Excalibur [1981]) in an
unusual and unorthodox (for the time) fashion. Despite the
film's heavy usage of exterior locations, a vast majority of
Exorcist II was done in the old Hollywood style of shooting on
soundstages. This created a number of headaches for all
concerned (particularly since the technicians used to this
type of approach had largely retired or died), but it also
gave Boorman an unprecedented amount of control over the
film’s imagery. The use of strong studio lighting allowed the
film to be shot with extremely small camera apertures,
affording the sort of depth of field one normally associates
with works like Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), while the
clever manipulation of other "elderly" effects (a lighted disc
used to simulate a setting sun, distorted imagery by the use
of flexible "ghost glass," etc.) seemed strangely fresh in a
modern film, especially when put alongside such state of the
art effects as some stunning Steadicam shooting. Its thematic
The Exorcist Filins 257
and dramatic qualities to one side, Exorcist II is a visual

experience like few others. However, it must be admitted that
a powerful theme and striking visuals do not necessarily make
for good drama.
Burned by the box-office failure of Boorman's film, the

studios were not anxious to continue the story (indeed,
Boorman's film left them nowhere to go). A full thirteen years
passed before William Peter Blatty's bonafide sequel novel,
Legion, found its way to the screen (not, however, through
Warner Bros., it should be noted) with Blatty himself helming
the proceedings. It came as no surprise that the majority of
the critics were prepared well in advance to attack the film.
After all, Exorcist III was a horror film (strike one), it had
a Roman numeral in its title (strike two), and it dared to
tread on an accepted "classic" by rethinking Friedkin's
original (strike three). Truth to tell, the film is frankly
head and shoulders above both its predecessors and is much
nearer the film Blatty seems to have wanted to make out of The
Exorcist.
To understand Blatty's conceptual approach it helps to

have at least a passing familiarity with his directorial
debut, The Ninth Configuration (1980). Cursed with a torturous
history— from screenplay (originally called Twinkle, Twinkle,
Killer Kane) to novel, back to screenplay, shot, cut, re-cut,
cut again, and receiving almost no theatrical release— The
Ninth Configuration gained a well-deserved cult following upon
its emergence on videocassette. It is a stunning, complex,
witty, and often moving examination of human interaction and
the expiation of guilt through self-sacrifice. In and of
itself, The Ninth Configuration is probably closer in spirit
to Blatty's version of The Exorcist before it was Friedkined
into thematic insignificance. Ironically, this tale of either
mentally unbalanced or goldbricking military personnel
confined to an isolated castle (belonging to an old film
star— in the novel the star is a thinly disguised version of
Bela Lugosi, who is paid subtle homage in the film via a
Dracula poster on one of the castle walls) for treatment
showed Blatty to be a more effective filmmaker than the highly
regarded Friedkin.
Fortunately, Blatty's story doesn't find it necessary to

torturously pretend that the second film never happened since
the events of Exorcist III have nothing whatsoever to do with
the Linda Blair character. Where the second film concentrates
on a church investigation of the circumstances surrounding the
exorcism, the third film centers around a police investigation

of the relation between the old exorcism and a new series of
murders. In essence, this is the adult version of the story,
following the subsequent effects of the demonic force on Lt.
Kinderman (George C. Scott) and the priests who were involved.
As a result, Exorcist III works not as a simple-minded refuta
tion of Exorcist II, but as a separate entity that leaves room
in the series for both films.
Blatty*s storyline has the wit to pose the not unreason

able question of just what happened to the demon once it
entered Fr. Karras' body, since surely the entity did not it
self expire when the priest leapt to his death. His answer—
that the demon somehow returned Karras to life through the
spirit of the freshly executed Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif)—
may be lacking in logic, but not in dramatic tension, not in
the least because much of the humanity of Blatty's original
novel (hardly touched in Friedkin's film) lay in the strange
relationship between the policeman and the priest. Bringing
Karras back to life puts the investigation of the new series
of killings on a fascinatingly personal level for the Kinder
man character.
While it is easy to accept Blatty's dramatic validity,

swallowing his metaphysics is another matter. The man's hip-
deep Catholic mumbo-jumbo is neither fully digestible, nor is
it always wholly comprehensible. What makes it work (at least
while it is on screen) is Blatty's obvious personal belief in
the material. Even those aspects of Blatty that had been
present in the original novel pale compared to the flights of
fancy and fantasy that pervade the third film. The fascination
with sin, guilt, and redemption reaches new heights here until
it often becomes difficult to tell just where Blatty is going,
not to mention how he got there in the first place, while even
the more worldly— and very funny— Blatty here lets his imagi
nation off its lead in a variety of ways that are quite daring
in their over-the-top originality. His fantasy depiction of
heaven in terms of a bad 1940s Hollywood musical (complete
with Tommy Dorsey and his band playing "Song of India!") has
to be seen to be believed. However, it is at once amusing and
exhilirating, while also managing to be consistent with the
nostalgic, movie-obsessed Kinderman in whose precognitive
dream the sequence occurs. Moreover, it isn't without its more
serious side with glimpses of the dead trying to communicate
with earth ("The living are deaf") and Kinderman's weird en
counters with a murdered black boy and his just murdered
friend, Fr. Dyer (Ed Flanders), who assures him, "I'm not
dreaming, Bill." It is a nicely jarring moment that only seems

a little puzzling afterwards— and much of that puzzlement
stems from our disbelief that Blatty could convince a 1989
studio to let him create such a scene!
Praising Blatty's departures from the current genre fasci

nations with overkill is understandable. His use of gore is
minimal, limited mainly to quick, barely perceptible glimpses
that are far more unsettling than all the blood-pumping Friday
the 15th prosthetic jiggery-pokery put together. At the same
time, it must be noted that Blatty can and does utilize the
tools of the genre to remarkable effect. Along with its re
markable atmosphere, the film boasts what is surely one of the
all time great shock effects in the murder of a nurse during
the night in a deserted hospital corridor. Blatty milks the
scene for all the suspense it's worth, setting us up with a
variety of false scares— some traditional (a man's sudden
appearance), some not (a piece of melting ice cracking in a
glass). Indeed, the build-up lasts so long that we become con
vinced that nothing is going to happen. It is at this precise
moment that Blatty strikes with a deceptively simple shock
effect (not using a cut), the image of which (a white robed
figure holding a shiny pair of head-lopping sheers walking
quickly after the nurse) is as memorably disturbing as it is
shocking.
Easily as remarkable as anything else about the film are

its performances. George C. Scott's Kinderman is the finest
thing the actor has done in years, while such Blatty "stock"
players as Ed Flanders, Jason Miller, and Scott Wilson (all
veterans of The Ninth Configuration) give exceptional perfor
mances, getting the most out of Blatty's dialogue. The Karras
part is effectively split between Miller and Brad Dourif with
the Dourif character coming through whenever the possessed
priest (now confined to a padded cell) is totally under his
control. Both actors fare well with the material, but Dourif
is outstanding, managing to be very (sickly) funny ("I do that
rather well, don't you think?" he asks after emitting an in
human howl) and chilling at the same time.
Much of the strength of the film lies in the delight of

Blatty's dialogue delivered by experts. Scott's telling the
story of his inability to go home owing to carp his mother-in-
law has put in his bathtub ("I haven't had a bath in three
days. I can't go home until the carp is asleep because if I
see it swimming, I'll kill it") is priceless. More, it and
other moments like it (an argument between Scott and the
hospitalized Flanders as to whether Flanders' brother's death

in Vietnam had any relation to his similar medical problems,
etc.) serve to flesh out and humanize the characters. We truly
care about and like these people, and so are concerned about
their fates. Even much of Blatty's philosophizing is couched
in witty exchanges. "The whole world is a homicide victim,
Father. Would a God who is good invent something like death?
Plainly speaking, it's a lousy idea. I t ’s not popular. It's
not a winner," Scott argues with Flanders. "There you go
blaming God," counters Flanders. "Who should I blame? Phil
Rizzuto?" asks Scott. "You wouldn't want to live forever,"
assures Flanders. "Yes, I would," insists Scott. "No, you
wouldn't. You'd get bored," Flanders suggests, only to be
told, "I have hobbies." "We have cancers and murders and
raongoloid babies, monsters prowling the planet— even prowling
this neighborhood, Father, right now, while our children
suffer and our loved ones die, and your God goes waltzing
through the Universe like some cosmic Billie Burke," Scott
tells his friend, who rather lamely assures him that it all
works out. "When?" asks Scott. "At the end of time," comes the
non-answer. "That soon?" wonders Scott. Without question, this
is not the stuff of which the usual run of teens-on-the-hoof
modern horror is all too concerned with, but its inclusion in
a horror film (worse, a horror film with a Roman numeral in
its title) has tended to obscure its very existence.
Exorcist III is not perfect. Beyond certain inescapable

reservations on Blatty the mystic, there are some rather
notable lapses in story-telling logic. It seems inconceivable,
for example, that a hospital could "lose" a gigantic— and very
lethal-looking— pair of shears used for severing limbs and not
show the slightest concern. Plus, Scott is often several steps
behind the audience in figuring out what is going on, and it
is simply not believable that he would allow a nurse with the
letter "K" in her name (a prerequisite of the Gemini Killer)
to continue working in the same ward where he knows the killer
has already struck. These, however, are both relatively minor
concerns, and they attest to the fact that Blatty is more
interested in creating a genre-transcending meditation on the
obsessive questions he poses than he is in simply turning out
a horror thriller. In the main, he succeeds on any level he
chooses with this masterful, atmospheric, and genuinely dist
urbing work.
The Exorcist. 1973* Warner Bros. Producer: William Peter

Blatty. Screenplay: William Peter Blatty, from his novel.
Photography: Owen Roizman, Billy Williams. Special Effects:
Marcel Vercoutere. Make-up: Dick Smith. Editor: Bud Smith.

Production Design: Bill Malley. Music: Krysztof Pendrecki,
Hans Werner Henze, George Crumb, Anton Webern, David Borden,
Mike Oldfield, Jack Nitzsche. Director: William Friedkin.
Players: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty

Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Miller, Linda Blair, Rev. William
O'Malley, S.J., Vasiliki Maliaros, Titos Vandis, Barton
Heyman, Mercedes McCambridge. 120 minutes.
Exorcist II: The Heretic. 1977* Warner Bros. Producers: John

Boorman, Richard Lederer. Screenplay: William Goodhart.
Photography: William A. Fraker. Special Effects: Chuck Gaspar.
Editor: Tom Priestley. Creative Associate to John Boorman:
Rospo Pallenberg. Production Design: Richard MacDonald. Music:
Ennie Morricone. Director: John Boorman.
Players: Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, Linda Blair, Kitty

Winn, Max von Sydow, Paul Henreid, James Earl Jones, Ned
Beatty, Belinha Beatty, Rose Portillo, Barbara Cason, Joey
Green, Tiffany Kinney, Lorry Goldman, Robert Lusser, Charles
Parks, Richard Paul, George Skaff. 118 minutes.
The Exorcist III. 1990. 20th Century Fox/Morgan Creek.

Producer: Carter De Haven. Screenplay: William Peter Blatty,
from his novel, Legion. Photography: Gerry Fisher. Editors:
Todd Ramsay, Peter Lee Thompson. Special Effects: Dream Quest
Images. Music: Barry Devorzon. Production Design: Leslie
Dilleys. Director: William Peter Blatty.
Players: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Brad Dourif, Jason

Miller, Scott Wilson, Nicol Williamson, Nancy Fish, George
DiCenzo, Don Gordon, Lee Richardson, Grand L. Bush, Mary
Jackson, Zohra Lampert, Viveca Lindfors, Ken Lerner, Tracy
Thorne, Harry Carey, Jr., Barbara Baxley, Sherri Wills. 115
minutes.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE FILMS
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2_ (1986)
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
One of the most controversial of all horror film series,

due in no small part to the fact that much of the more
reactionary critical community are still in a state of
self-righteous indignation over the fact that Tobe Hooper's
original film was included in the Museum of Modern Art's
permanent film collection. The museum's decision to acquire
the film based on the simple premise that a horror film's
worthiness should be based on its ability to frighten a viewer
(admittedly, this is a simplistic and shallow assessment) cut
no ice with critics convinced that the museum was confusing
repulsion with fright. As a result, The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre remains a sore spot with many, since its
legitimization appeared to open the floodgates for the
onslaught of "splatter" films to come from studios that
previously would not have been caught dead with such a
product.
However one feels about Hooper's original film, there is

no denying that it is a crudely powerful film with more than
its share of both suspense-fright and repulsion-fright,
directed with no little panache by a promising newcomer. The
title may cheat somewhat— one disemboweling by chainsaw does
not a massacre make— but it undoubtedly has a better ring than
The Texas Sledgehammer Massacre, despite the fact that hammers
do seem to be the weapon of choice.
Made on a virtually non-existent budget, Hooper’s film is

not without its problems, especially in many of the
performances, which are on the amateurish side, not to mention
a certain offhand attitude in the staging of many of the
establishing and non-horrific scenes. Some of this offhanded-
263
ness adds a sense of almost documentary immediacy to the film,

but at its best this still jars with the film's more stylized
moments of horror.
On any level, the opening is a grabber with its fragmented

images of corpses in various stages of decomposition showing
up in flashes on a black screen. Ultimately, this is revealed
to be the result of a camera flash from one of the maniacal
chainsaw clan photographing his artistic handiwork in digging
up graves and arranging the bodies in creative tableaux!
Pretty strong meat this, and it gets stronger, but not before
a good deal of not terribly interesting— and indifferently
acted— expository footage of a group of ultra 1970s young
people out for a non-specific good time in a van. Their
troubles begin when they pick up a hitchhiker, who happens to
be the artistically bent lunatic. His behavior is eccentric to
say the very least, leaning toward bizarre discourses on
methods of cattle slaughter, grotesque snapshots, cutting
himself, and finally slashing one of their number with a
straight razor (this last— not unreasonably— gets him ejected
from the van). With his departure, the film settles back in on
more claptrap with our bell-bottomed heroes on their way to a
deserted farmhouse from their childhood. The major flaw with
this section of the film isn't its basic amateurishness
(though it is that) so much as it is the fact that the script
errs in making nearly all the characters unlikable or at least
unsympathetic, so that by the time the slaughter begins the
viewer is quite happy to see them disappear from the film one
by one, especially the whining wheel-chair bound Franklin.
Indeed, the chainsaw clan have far more personality overall
than their victims, and a case could be made that this is
intentional. However, any such case fails to convince on a
dramatic level since it is hard to work up much suspense about
the fate of characters for whom we simply don't give a damn.
Moreover, this sort of thing started the unfortunate precedent
of the current trend in modern horror of viewing the
characters as just so much meat-on-the-hoof for whatever mad
slasher we happen to be dealing with. As such, the film has
much to answer for.
Regardless of these shortcomings and the undeniable fact

that the film, for all its creativity, smacks altogether too
much of a drive-in movie (which, in fact, it is), The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre offers ample proof that there is more on
Tobe Hooper's mind than simply scaring the pants off a group
of half-attentive teenagers. The great strength of the
film— indeed of most of Hooper's work— lies in the sharp
societal observations brought home by his villains. In his

subsequent film, Eaten Alive (1976), Hooper’s main character
is a backwoods Texan with a dream— a combination
hotel-roadside zoo— gone sour. Business is bad and most of his
menagerie (save for a very active alligator that once
amputated the owner’s leg) is dead or dying. Yet with what
might be viewed as admirable tenacity— or, alternatively, the
blanket stupidity of a man refusing to recognize his own
failure— he carries on, becoming more and more unhinged,
violent, and dangerous in the process. It is nothing more nor
less than a case study (albeit a darkly humorous one) in
misdirected anger— frustration taken to the extreme of
insanity. In The Funhouse Hooper presents us with an unlikely
horror in the guise of more-or-less a living, full-grown
Thalidomide baby with homicidal tendencies— the worst of which
are controlled by his father (who at one point goes so far as
to bargain with his son by promising a fishing trip in
exchange for multiple murders!). Both of these factors are at
the center of Hooper's Chainsaw films, though they are some
what less explicit in the original.
The cannibalistic chainsaw family (and they very

definitely are a family) are the remnants of a warped "proud
heritage" of slaughterhouse workers, who, put out of a job by
mechanized slaughter (or, more correctly, by their distaste
for this "inferior" method of dispatching the thundering
herd), have simply moved on from cattle to human beings. As
insane as this sounds, it has a logic by their standards,
since it allows them not to "debase" themselves by changing
with the times (indeed, it allows them to ignore the changes
altogether), and, most importantly, it keeps the Family Unit
together. Their nightmare world of filth, artistically
arranged skeletons, stuffed pets and ancestors, and butchered
human beings has become their norm. Rather than face reality,
they have perverted it into their own reality. This is
horrifyingly brought home in the later stages of the film,
mostly through the performance of Jim Siedow as the eldest
brother of the clan, whose downhome sayings, cliches, and
house-proud attitudes are hilariously chilling. "Had to lock
up and get the lights. The cost of electricity's enough to
drive a man out of business today," he conversationally
informs Marilyn Burns just after he's beaten her senseless and
stuffed her in a large sack! "Look what your brother did to
that door!" he explodes upon seeing the damage inflicted on
their home by Leatherface in his abortive pursuit of Burns.
All of his encounters with his younger brothers are marked
with this kind of everyday dialogue and a tendency toward
dealing with them violently.Horrifying as all this is, it

must be noted that this is what allows them to stay together
as a family. More, this family is built on the mindless
worship of tradition and ancestry (and this is years before
Reaganism and its attendant stress on the mythical family unit
at all costs). The family revolves around "Grandpa,” the
ultimate sledge-hammer wielding slaughterhouse champ of his
day. His day, however, is so past (the man is supposed to be
over 100 and looks it) that he cannot even hold the hammer,
much less swing it. Yet the family idolizes this drooling,
senile idiot and refuses to see either his insanity or
ineptitude, numbly insisting that the old man is "the best."
Most of these implications were lost on critics of the

film at the time of its release. What they remembered— what
everyone remembered because it was unheard of at the time— was
the film's nastiness. Characters hung on meathooks, cut up
like sides of beef, disemboweled with powertools, etc., were
just not coin of the realm even at the drive-in. True, the
H.G. Lewis gore epics of the early 60s had been similarly
ghastly— and considerably more graphic— but the films were so
ineptly made and atrociously acted and scripted that no one
gave them much thought. Hooper's film was different because it
wasn’t inept. It genuinely disturbed the viewer— and much of
that undoubtedly stemmed unconsciously from the deeper
implications. And there lay the seeds of the controversy that
has yet to die down.
Thirteen years later, following a decidedly checkered

career as a horror film specialist (sublimated to the heavy
hand of Steven Spielberg with Poltergeist, critically maligned
for the overly cerebral Lifeforce, and lambasted by fans— who
didn't recognize homage when they saw it— for daring to remake
William Cameron Menzies' Invaders From Mars), Hooper returned
to form with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2_, a longer, better
made, more elaborate, better acted film that actually bested
its predecessor in both nastiness and pointed sick humor. Of
course, by 1986 the myth of the Family Unit was in full swing
and it afforded Hooper and screenwriter L.M. "Kit" Carson
almost bottomless material for truly vicious satire.
Realism is hardly at the core of Chainsaw 2^ as is almost

immediately evident when our cannibalistic clan take after a
pair of obnoxious raving yuppies who have irritated them. At
once very creepy and curiously satisfying (we can't but
applaud the demise of these cretinous specimens and their
Mercedes Benz), the scene is wonderfully orchestrated to the
Oingo Boingo song "No One Lives Forever," and is wholly

unbelievable. Anyone who has ever nearly dislocated a shoulder
trying to start a chainsaw must marvel at the ease with which
our heroes fire up these obviously improved models, to say
nothing of the saw's ability to slice through a
Mercedes' door with no trouble at all. Finally, the sequence
is staged on a bridge with the chainsaw wielding maniacs
keeping pace in their pick-up truck with the yuppies' sports
model while driving in reverse, no less. Realism is not,
however, directly related to effectiveness, and before
objection can be raised we are properly silenced by Hooper's
handling of the scene and the truly gross-out Tom Savini
make-up effects.
Plotwise the film is a continuation of the original story

with a few new characters— and none of the dated 1970s "types"
that mar the first film— headed by a splendidly wigged-out
Dennis Hopper as an ex-Texas Ranger and revenge-bent relative
of the first film’s victims, ably aided by newcomer Caroline
Williams as a would-be broadcast journalist working as a
nighttime DJ at a bottom of the barrel radio station. Jim
Siedow is back as the oldest— and most clearly human— of the
cannibals, though Leatherface has been transformed from the
first film's Gunnar Hansen into Bill Johnson, while the other
brother (last seen being flattened by a truck) has been
replaced by "Chrome-Top" (Bill Moseley), an horrific parody of
the ultimate 'round-the-bend Vietnam veteran. Also notable is
Lou Perry's L.G., a very unusual— and satisfying— romantic
interest for Williams' character. For once, we have an over-
the-top modern horror epic in which all the characters are
more than a collection of types--and nary a copulating couple
of teens in sight!
The satirical elements of the film as a nightmare vision

of the 1980s are very pointed and very uncomfortable. When
Hopper informs Williams that he alone can defeat the killers
because he hasn't any fear left and "They live off fear," it
is impossible not to recognize something of our society being
manipulated by playing on fears like racial prejudice,
xenophobia, and homophobia— all of which the moulders of the
decade milked as threatening to the Family Unit. Then too, the
killers are no longer lurking in the backwoods eking out a
bare existence. Now, Jim Siedow has become the very successful
entrepreneur of The Last Round-Up Rolling Grill, a thriving
concern that boasts a prize-winning chili! The end result is a
bit like Sweeney Todd combined with the Wienie King from
Preston Sturges' The Palm Beach Story (1942)— in fact, Siedow
even echoes the Wienie King’s claim (with queasy significance)

that the secret is in the meat! Moreover, they see nothing
amiss in their actions, since those actions once again hold
the all-important family together, despite the obvious
insanity of it all and the decay that so evidently surrounds
them in their hellish domain (a series of subterranean
chambers in a defunct amusement park). One can easily imagine
the Chainsaw family asking themselves the conservative
catch-all question of the 1988 election, "Are you better off
now than you were eight years ago," and enthusiastically
agreeing that they are indeed! As a blistering indictment of
Reaganism and the "Me" generation Chainsaw 2_ is even more to
the point than David Lynch's more famous portrait of the
nastiness beneath the delusion, Blue Velvet, made the same
year.
On the minus side, the film's high-powered opening is

followed by a little too much slowly paced development, though
even here the film has its moments, notably the chili cook-off
and a screwy scene in which Hopper selects the proper chainsaw
weapons. Once the film reaches the point where the family
invades Williams' radio station in response to her hourly
playing of a tape of the murder of the yuppies, it attains a
level of frequently hilarious and horrifying intensity that
doesn’t let up for the rest of its length. Encountering Chrome
Top in the lobby of the supposedly deserted station, Williams
finds herself confronted with the singularly unsettling sight
of this none too pretty subject heating a coat hanger with
which he picks bits of skin from around the metal plate in his
head. "I wanna buy some radio air time," he stammers. "Are you
fucking crazy? We are closed," she responds nervously, earning
her a 1960s oriented dissertation on radio. "So this is Radio
land, huh? The infinite turtle, the waves from the ether fuzz
roll on forever! Roar! I know what you're thinking— this is a
weirdo, but I can handle it. You know, y o u ’re my fave! Me and
Bubba, my little brother, we listen to you every night. Music
is my life," he tells her, forming a peace sign with his
fingers. "You're my fave, but I get too embarrassed to phone
in my request. It's too disembodied, you know. But now that
we're here in flesh and blood, maybe I could make a request
and it'd still count, huh? Well, how about Iron Butterfly— you
know, like 'In a Vidda da Gadda, Baby?' It's heavy!" he
enthuses, forcing the terrified Williams into giving him a
tour of the station. "Eh, what's in here?" he finally asks,
indicating the darkened doorway next to Williams. "Record
vault," she mutters. "Oh, where you keep the Golden Oldies—
and maybe the new music's in here, too," he remarks as the
lights flash on and Leatherface, chainsaw at the ready, rushes

out. It is a solid shock, but one that Hooper decides to
undercut by stressing the basic ineptitude of his evil brood.
Instead of attacking Williams, Leatherface clumsily collides
with Chrome Top's metallic skull, sending a shower of sparks
and affording Williams a chance to get away. Pointing
Leatherface after her, Chrome Top stays behind to examine the
damage done to him by his brother— "Ow! He's dented my plate!
My brain is burning! 'Nam flashback! 'Nam flashback!" Spying
the smoking remnants of his ratty wig on the floor, he becomes
seriously angry announcing, "Leatherface, you bitch hog! Look
what you did to my Sonny Bono wig, you. . .Oh, goddam, I can't
believe it! You got to buy me a new plate cover! Oh, he's
gonna send me back to the VA hospital with this dent in my
plate!" Then looking on the bright side, he decides, "Well, at
least he didn't mess me up." The question naturally
arises— can sick humor go any further? The answer is a
resounding "yes."
Undercut the horror may be, but the sense of menace is

always very real. The pursuit of Williams— although
interspersed with Chrome Top's curious antics such as throwing
records on the floor ("Humble Pie!" he proclaims with delight,
seemingly having found a personal favorite, while trashing the
record library)— is played in an horrifyingly straight manner.
Williams, finally cornered by the brute, takes Hopper's lesson
to heart and refuses to be afraid of her assailant, reasoning
with him instead and earning his admiration— and, worse, his
romantic attention, as is made evident when he pantomimes
sexual intercourse with the saw as a surrogate penis. (Again
we have a conservative viewpoint— sex as an unwholesome, even
violent, act— taken to a disturbingly logical extreme.)
Similarly, Chrome Top's attack on L.G. is uncommonly brutal,
as much because of the large doses of sick— even vile— humor
("Lick my plate, you dog dick!" he cries when L.G. first spots
him, while each blow of the hammer on his victim's head is
accompanied by the inapt Vietnam cry of "Incoming mail!"). So
vicious is this and a few later scenes that one wonders how
the film (which did play in many areas on an adults only
basis) was granted an "R" rating by the MPAA.
The bulk of the film centers around Williams' ordeal in

the subterranean world of the family. Individual moments such
as the macabre waltz she is forced into with Leatherface are
striking enough, but the real horror and the film's greatest
strength stems from the interactions of the family itself.
Much of this is at once hysterically funny and bone-chilling
270 A Critcal Guide to Horror Film Series
simply because a great deal of these interactions are nothing

more than extensions of extremely commonplace cliched family
bickering turned horrific by their use in this context.
Hooper*s original film touches on this, but it is as an
overture to the opera before us here.
By far the most unnerving character is Jim Siedow as the

eldest brother. Easily the most rational of the trio, it is
obvious that he holds the clan together, viewing himself as a
much put-upon ("I wouldn't wish this life on a one-eyed ferret
with the mange!"), but admirably responsible, big brother and
entrepreneurial small businessman in pursuit of the American
Dream and the preservation of a way of life that would
scarcely be worth preserving had it ever actually existed
outside of chauvinistic political rhetoric, Norman Rockwell,
and bad television sitcoms. Reality has ceased to exist in
favor of that which the character chooses to believe. Fired up
at the prospect of the profits to be made on a big upcoming
football game, Siedow orders his siblings into action, barking
commands on the order of, "Get working on that eyeball pate,"
without the first clue that this is in any way out of the
ordinary. Actually, within the confines of this world— where
one brother is a mere homicidal idiot and the other a raving
lunatic whose great dream is an amusement park called 'Nam
Land ("It's what the public wants!")— Siedow's character has
adapted admirably to insanity as a norm.
The film's weakest point is probably the slightly cliched

"romance" between Leatherface and Williams. Leatherface is
such a non-character in himself that it's hard to accept his
emotional attachment to her, though his approach to it
all— hiding her as if she were an illicit pet— is consistent
with his intellectual shortcomings. Weak as it may be,
Siedow's reaction to the revelation of this development is
pricelessly off-the-wall. "So that's it, is it? The old cock
and cup swindle. Sex," he sneers, pointing up that it comes
down to a choice between sex and "the saw." "The saw," he
rhapsodizes, "is family, and sex is— well, nobody knows." Not
that he has the slightest intention of allowing his brother to
make any sort of choice, of course, since this would threaten
the family unit, as well as stand in the way of Williams'
ritual slaughter by the family's 100+ year old patriarch, who,
not surprisingly, has become no more adept at handling a
sledgehammer in the intervening years, while the family's
blind worship of Grandpa ("He's the best!") has not diminished
in the least.
Williams is spared her impending doom by the timely

arrival of Hopper, who has become completely unhinged by this
point in the proceedings, singing "Bringing in the Sheaves,"
while blissfully sawing through the supporting timbers of the
cannibals' lair to "bring it all down." His attitude is so
bizarre that even Siedow is caught off his murderous guard
when confronted with this chainsaw wielding, hymn singing
Texas Ranger. "Is that any way tocome into a man's home?
Singing?" he explodes. "I am the Lord of the Harvest!"
proclaims Hopper. "What’s that? Some kind of health food
bunch?" inquires the properly baffled Siedow, who then
proceeds to try to buy off Hopper, not realizing that his
attacker is insane in quite a different fashion from himself.
For his pains Siedow merely receives a murderous thrust from
Hopper's chainsaw in the nether regions, prompting the classic
cliche (here given new meaning), "The small businessman
always, always, always gets it in the ass!" (There is a bright
side to this, too, one guesses since he subsequently decides
that this maneuver "sure took care of my hems!") While
Williams flees Chrome Top and Hopper and Leatherface engage in
a chainsaw swordfight, Siedow decides that it's "time to pull
the pin on this operation." This he does by retrieving a
surplus hand grenade from Chrome Top's companion stuffed
corpse, Nubbins, but not before Grandpa, finally roused to
action, throws the sledgehammer at Hopper, braining
Leatherface instead and allowing his grandson to be run
through by Hopper's saw. Ultimately, Williams manages to best
Chrome Top (by usurping the family's enshrined, mummified
matriarch's chainsaw and descending to their level) and is
last seen adopting Leatherface's stance from the end of the
first film.
Oddly, since the explosion that claims Hopper and Siedow

is offscreen, Chrome Top's end is somewhat inconclusive, and
Williams' new won status as "queen of the chainsaw" made a
sequel to this chillingly nasty masterpiece seem natural. The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 5_ decided to pretend that the
middle— and best— entry never happened, resulting in one of
the worst horror films of all time. Hooper wisely chose to sit
this one out and the film bears the signature of one Jeff
Burr, who, along with screenwriter David J. Schow, should
probably go into hiding. This is pure bottom-of-the-barrel
slice-and-dice drivel, and apart from the usually solid
performance of Ken Foree and a game try from Kate Hodge, has
nothing to recommend it. Even the mayhem is muted to the point
of non-existence, so that the film doesn't work on any level
at all, though its failure as a gore epic may be due to the
ever-tightening conversative nature of the MPAA, who gave the

original cut the dreaded "X" rating. As far as that goes, the
sanitized version is touted as having an 87 minute running
time, when in fact the film doesn't make the 80 minute mark.
If it had been simply revolting and repulsive it would still
have more value than it does now. Quite the best thing about
the film was its early ad campaign that parodied John
Boorman’s depiction of the Lady in the Lake from Excalibur
with a chainsaw rising from the lake. It is by far a better
choice to think of the series in terms of its original two
films— weirdly disturbing unique works with something to say.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 1974• Bryanston. Producer: Tobe

Hooper. Screenplay: Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper. Photography:
Daniel Pearl. Editor: Sallye Richardson, Larry Carroll. Music:
Tobe Hooper, Wayne Bell. Director: Tobe Hooper.
Players: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim

Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, William Vail, Terri McMinn, Allen
Danziger, John Dugan. 86 minutes.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2_. 1986. Cannon Films. Producers:

Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus. Screenplay: L.M. "Kit" Carson.
Photographer: Richard Kooris. Editor: Alain Jakubowicz.
Production Design: Cary White. Music: Tobe Hooper, Jerry
Lambert. Director: Tobe Hooper.
Players: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Jim Siedow, Bill

Johnson, Bill Moseley, Ken Evert, Lou Perry, Kirk Sisco. 101
minutes.
Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. 1989* New Line

Cinema. Producer: Robert Engelman. Screenplay: David J. Schow.
Photography: James L. Carter. Editor: Brent Schoenfield.
Production Design: Mick Strawn. Music: Jim Manzie, Patrick
Regan. Director: Jeff Burr.
Players: Kate Hodge, Viggo Mortensen, William Butler, Ken

Foree, Joe Unger, Tom Everett, Toni Hudson, Miriam Byrd-
Nethery, R.A. Mihailoff. 87 (82, 78) minutes.
THE OMEN FILMS
The Omen (1976)

Damien: Omen II (1978)
The Final Conflict (1981)
Inexcusable bloated budget bilge is perhaps the kindest

assessment possible of this obnoxious, silly, and pretentious
series of films. That the first of the series Is inevitably
praised by critics who would not normally even attend a horror
film is in itself indicative of the series' grotesque pander
ing to an establishment sensibility that is at odds with the
genre on the whole. Loading the film with big name actors and
affording it David Lean-sized production values (and running
time) only serves to emphasize the emptiness of the whole
enterprise, which is marked by a curious— if understandable—
lack of sincerity on the part of everyone involved.
A great deal of the problem with The Omen (and its

successors) lies in its basic concept. Despite a heavy dose of
Exorcist rip-off cinematic Catholicism, the silly Son o' Satan
storyline is more the sort of apocalyptic folderol one would
expect from some of the more colorfully unscrupulous televan
gelists ("The world will end at noon sharp on Tuesday, so send
$19*95 for my full color book on the 'Rapture'— allow four to
six weeks for delivery"). The irony here is simply that the
viewers most likely to swallow the film's clumsy allegorical
Revelation revisionism are not strong candidates for ticket
buyers to "R" rated horror shows!
The box-office success of The Omen must certainly be laid

not to any sense of conviction or atmosphere, but rather to
the film's development of what film historian John McCarty has
called the "creative death" approach, which means simply that
the viewer is being entertained (if that is indeed the word)
by the variety and cleverness with which characters are sent
to their rewards. There is no denying that this approach works
275
with an audience— up to a point— but it is a sad substitute

for the feelings and thoughts of which the genre has been
capable. A nanny who spectacularly hangs herself starts this
catalogue of carnage. Soon we are treated to a skewered priest
(Patrick Troughton in an amusingly ripe performance), followed
by Damien’s surrogate mother’s (Lee Remick) slow motion fall
over a bannister, etc. The ultimate in this is surely the
beheading of a photographer (David Warner) with a sheet of
glass, wherein editor Stuart Baird, who had pioneered the
repeat-action cutting technique in Ken Russell's Tommy the
previous year, shows the action over and over from a variety
of angles. This had worked well enough with Keith Moon kicking
over his drum set in Tommy where it added to an already
frenetic and exciting sequence (and where it was more tightly
edited), but here it is merely foolish to the extent that it
is as apt to evoke laughs as screams.
The film's total lack of (intentional) humor works very

much against it. Everything about The Omen is played out as if
director Richard Donner had taken his players aside and given
them a talk about the extreme seriousness of the project (This
is the end of the world we're talking about, after all). While
it is difficult to believe that such a group of supposedly in
telligent human beings could be taking this nonsense with any
degree of seriousness, that is what everyone appears to be do
ing. But seriousness isn't conviction and the result is that
they merely seem like the most amazing collection of humorless
creatures ever gathered together for one film.
The plot following the events surrounding the birth of the

anti-Christ is both simplistic and simple-minded, while being
at once absurdly complicated. In essence, Peck and Remick lose
their child at birth and Peck accepts another child, Damien,
in its place. This strange changeling (in reality the product
of a tryst between Satan and a jackal [don't ask]) quickly
develops some very unsettling habits, such as causing his
nanny to commit suicide, nearly killing his mother when she
becomes pregnant, and driving her to suicide after the fact.
While all this is going on, Peck slowly becomes convinced that
his son is indeed the spawn of hell, and finally attempts to
save the world by ritualistically slaughtering the horrific
tot. Unfortunately, he hesitates at the last minute allowing
the police to arrive on the scene and shoot him, thereby
paving the way for the end of the world and two sequels.
Overall, this is such a shabby, overblown affair that it

hardly seems worth criticizing. The solid production values
The Omen Films 275
are wasted, and the whole thing (especially with an anti-

Christ named Damien) is so obviously an Exorcist cash-in that
it is nearly offensive in its contempt for the audience. The
plot's over-complicated string of events make it difficult to
accept even if we grant the basic premise. Surely, the Prince
of Darkness could pull this thing off without so many
elaborate (and too obviously suspicion-making) twists and
turns.
The best thing about the film is the overripe performance

of oddly unbilled (in both this and its sequel) Leo McKern as
the theological nut case who reveals the truth to Peck and
presents him with the set of seven sacrificial knives neces
sary to put an end to Damien. "It must be done on hallowed
ground— a church. His blood must spilled on the altar of God.
This first knife is most important. It extinguishes physical
life, and forms the center of the cross. The subsequent
placings extinguish spiritual life and should radiate out
ward like this," he hisses, as if Peck is going to remember
this elaborate dart-game-like grouping on such brief instruc
tion. "This is not a human child— make no mistake," he assures
the understandably reluctant Peck. Unfortunately, this is but
an isolated performance and scene.
So pleased were 20th Century Fox with the resulting box-

office and critical success (astoundingly, the often annoying
Jerry Goldsmith score gave birth to the Academy Award nomina
ted song, "Ave Satani!") that no less than four sequels were
immediately announced. This group of films were going to take
the story right up to Armageddon, tracing every phase of the
basically predictable life of Damien. However, the second
installment, Damien: Omen II, changed the program a bit.
The budget for Damien was just as bloated as before with

such luminaries as William Holden, Lee Grant (did someone have
a thing for women named Lee?), Robert Foxworth, Lew Ayres, and
Sylvia Sidney on hand to add a touch of gloss and professional
ability. And again, the entire exercise was one long excuse
for an array of creative deaths. In its favor, the sequel
moved faster than the original. The opening with the overblown
Leo McKern making a return visit was nicely hysterical, but
the film kills him off just after the credits and the tone
changes for the worse. The contempt evidenced for the audience
in the first film has here crossed over into contempt for the
material as well.
Structurally, Damien is an unqualified mess. The script

cannot even manage to be consistent within itself. The first

deaths in the film, for example, are preceded by the appear
ance of a markedly anti-social raven. However, this harbinger
of death inexplicably vanishes from the scene after the first
four killings. Similarly, the film forgets that toddler Damien
was apparently willfully, consciously evil, and has him here
quite unaware of his powers. When he is apprised of who and
what he is, the film briefly turns thoughtful, having him run
out onto a dock, screaming, "Why me?” in a fit of conscience
over his loathsome destiny. This, though, is extremely short
lived. By the next scene he is perfectly reconciled to his lot
in life. If this tiny moment was meant to afford the character
some measure of sympathy, it fails. One feels far greater sym
pathy for Peter Cook's Lucifer in the comedic Bedazzled (1967)
than this little preppy brat.
Damien's basic incoherence and sloppiness to one side, the

film ultimately fails to convince because of the casting of
Jonathan Scott-Taylor in the title role. Presumably, the anti-
Christ would be a personable and even likable fellow (how else
could he accomplish his goals?), two qualities not possessed
by the young actor. The immediate response to the character as
portrayed here is so negative (one immediately wants to slap
this obnoxious upper class monster) that it isn’t possible to
believe that even the most doting parents— let alone foster
parents— are going to be taken in by him.
Matters of plot and character, however, may have seemed

totally irrelevant to the creators of this film, since the
whole affair is really about killing off anyone who gets in
the young man's path. A few of the deaths are genuinely dis
concerting (particularly that of Lew Ayres, who is trapped in
the waters of an iced-over stream), but most are either hokey
(an obvious dummy flattened by a truck, Lee Grant's stunt
double burning alive in a clearly discernible asbestos suit),
or tediously grotesque (a doctor sliced in two by an elevator
cable). The box-office response to the second entry suggests
that this kind of contemptuous filmmaking did not entirely
fail to register with ticket buyers, whose patronage was not
on par with that shown by the first film's freakish success.
The tepid response to Damien caused a quick re-thinking in

the original plan, and the five Omen films were suddenly cut
down to three with The Final Conflict doing service for the
rest of the story. The lack of faith in the project was clear
ly indicated by Fox's decision to downplay its connection to
the first films by dropping all reference to The Omen from its
The Omen Films 277
title. This is further evidenced by the comparatively unim

pressive cast. Sam Neill (cast more for looking like the Zeppo
of the Kennedy clan than for any acting ability) and Rossano
Brazzi are hardly in the same league with Peck, Holden, Grant,
Remick, etc. Also, the production values are slipping a bit
with this one obviously knocked off as quickly and cheaply as
possible. Actually, all of this could have worked for the film
rather than against it. The reduced budget and expectations
might easily have allowed for creative freedom, but neither
the script, nor the direction take advantage of this. Instead,
we are given nothing but a cut-rate variation on its previous
installments that is occasionally quite amusing in its silly
plotting and pretentious aims.
Whittling the concept down to three films necessitated an

awkward jump in time. Despite the fact that only three years
have lapsed since the last adventure, Damien (Neill) is now 32
years old and the head of the all-powerful Thorn business
dynasty. In some very small, unimpressive way, he has turned
into a kind of mini-saviour of mankind through this corpora
tion. (The screenwriters simply cannot persuasively paint a
picture of the anti-Christ's abilities. He boasts a sizable
army of followers, but falls short of having even a decent
percentage of mankind inhis power.) His time on earth (seven
years) is about to run out with the advent of the Second
Coming, an event Damien is determined to stop.How? First, by
engineering his appointment as ambassador to Great Britain
(where the Child is to be born). Second, by taking a page from
the Old Testament and killing off all male children born
during a certain time, apparently mindless of the fact that
times have changed and the proposition is ludicrous in the
modern world. As usual, there are those out to stop his evil
scheme. This round it's a group of amazingly inept Italian
monks (headed by Brazzi) who have gathered up the seven
daggers from the wreckage of the museum of the last film and
are hell-bent on skewering Damien with them.
The majority of the slow-moving film concerns the various

ways in which the bungling brothers get done in while attempt
ing to dispatch the son of Satan (they even manage to kill one
of their own number!). Overall, it's a pretty ho-hum affair.
Attempts to enliven the film with a few glimpses of Damien's
personal life are downright disastrous, since the best the
writers can come up with is to grant him a taste for brutal
sex and a penchant for talking nasty to a backwards crucifix
while masochistically impaling himself on its crown of thorns.
Again, the portrait of the Prince of Darkness is shallow and
unconvincing.
All of these elaborate shenanigans are ultimately for

nothing, since Damien has mis-read the situation and ends up
collapsing at the feet of a double-exposure hundred foot tall
Jesus (complete with heavenly choir), looking like nothing so
much as a left-over from one of Mary Pickford's more treacly
essays in piety. It's quite as silly and embarrassing as it
sounds, but does need to be seen to be believed. If nothing
else, it put an end to this tiresome series.
As with the second entry, the casting of the central

character is a problem. Sam Neill's portrayal of Damien is not
believable because the actor exudes neither the necessary
charm, nor intelligence to suggest such a fantastic creature
as the anti-Christ. His Kennedy looks do not compensate for a
basic surliness and it quickly becomes impossible to accept
that anybody would follow him in his transparent villainy. Not
that anyone could have pulled this role off with much success,
but a more persuasive portrait was certainly possible.
The Omen. 1976. 20th Century Fox. Producer: Harvey Bernhard.

Screenplay: David Seltzer. Photography: Gilbert Taylor.
Editor: Stuart Baird. Art Direction: Carmen Dillon. Music:
Jerry Goldsmith. Director: Richard Donner.
Players: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Billie

Whitelaw, Patrick Troughton, Martin Benson, Leo McKern, Harvey
Stephens. 111 minutes.
Damien: Omen II. 1978. 20th Century Fox. Producer: Harvey

Bernhard. Screenplay: Stanley Mann, Michael Hodges.
Photography: Bill Butler, Gil Taylor, Stanley Cortez. Editor:
Robert Brown, Jr. Production Design: Philip M. Jeffries, Fred
Harpman. Music: Jerry Goldsmith. Director: Don Taylor.
Players: William Holden, Lee Grant, Jonathan Scott-Taylor,

Robert Foxworth, Lew Ayres, Sylvia Sidney, Nicholas Pryor,
Lucas Donat, Leo McKern. 109 minutes.
The Final Conflict. 1981. 20th Century Fox. Producer: Harvey

Bernhard. Screenplay: Andrew Birkin. Photography: Robert
Paynter, Phil Meheux. Editor: Alan Strachan. Production
Design: Herbert Westbrook. Music: Jerry Goldsmith. Director:
Graham Baker.
Players: Sam Neill, Rossano Brazzi, Don Gordon, Lisa Harrow,

The Omen Films 279
Barnaby Holm, Mason Adams, Robert Arden, Leueen Willoughby,

Marc Boyle, Milos Kirek, Tommy Duggan. 108 minutes.
THE HALLOWEEN FILMS
Halloween (1978)
Halloween II (1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1983)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Halloween 3: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
In many respects the first Halloween film is something

like the source of the Nile as concerns the faceless slasher
sub-sub-genre of the splatter sub-genre of horror films. For
reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, the
original film— a basically adequate piece of fright film
making with an admittedly catchy title and ad campaign ("The
night he came home")— caught the fancy of more than a few
important film critics. Very probably the critical praise was
nothing more than a late 70s variation on that which happened
in the 1940s with the Val Lewton films— that is overstated
critical cheers from people with little or no knowledge of the
genre. What seemed so fresh and creative to them was largely a
reshuffling of a very old bag of tricks to most horror fans,
who quickly put the film into perspective as an okay low-
budget blood-letter and little else. It certainly came as no
great shock to the more savvy fan when writer-director John
Carpenter's absurdly pretentious plan not to issue the film on
video, but to reissue it every Halloween (a gore-monger's
Wizard of Oz?) came to nothing.
Generally speaking, the entire series— save for the

oddball Halloween III— is not terribly different than the
Friday the 13th pictures. The ridiculous aspect here is that
the original film, so praised by those bastions of the
mid-cult, Messrs. Siskel and Ebert, is the only movie in their
entire anti-splatter film campaigning that actually fits the
pattern into which they lamely attempt to force all other
splatter efforts! While it is true that Friday the 13th's
Jason has skewered more than his fair share of fornicating
281
teenagers (this in itself is little more than the cinematic

embodiment of all those tired-and-true maniac at lover's lane
stories that teenagers have scared each other with for years),
he is not particularly predisposed toward offing the sexually
permissive. Put bluntly, Jason will kill anyone and chastity
is no safeguard against his antics. Halloween's Michael Myers
is another story. In the first film, all of his killing is
motivated by a severe puritanical streak. Moreover, it is only
Jamie Lee Curtis' plucky virgin who is spared his wrath. This
may be accidental. After all, Carpenter's subsequent work
doesn’t suggest a particularly conservative bent, and Curtis
definitely doesn’t "just say 'no'" to a few tokes on a joint
early in the film (though she is clearly portrayed as a
novice). Whatever the case, the film itself has a nasty streak
of cautionary puritanism running through it that is impossible
to deny, however much Siskel and Ebert may be mysteriously
dazzled by its technical panache.
Frankly, the first film is not all that well made, even
for a low-budget effort. Much of the set-up is unbearably
tedious with acting and dialogue that is not too far removed
from that one expects to find in bad porno films. Carpenter's
remarkable tendency to overuse the then new Panaglide system
is no help. Rather than limiting its use to a handful of
effective scenes, the system is called into use for every
tracking shot in the entire film. (One occasionally wonders if
the budget extended to a simple camera tripod!) The upshot of
this is that the viewer subject to motion sickness is likely
in for a slight bout of mal-de-mer. Carpenter also tends to
overplay his self-composed musical score. Its central "Michael
Myers Theme" i£ clever and effective (even if it does all too
often telegraph the film's punches), but it ultimately becomes
almost comic (one can remove the "almost" in the sequel films)
by sheer repetition. Not that it concerns anyone involved— as
either viewer or filmmaker— but the film is without the
slightest regard for logic or even vague reality, as is easily
demonstrated by the prologue in which the six year old Michael
dons a mask and gleefully takes a Mother Bates special to his
sister. Without a thought for the workings of normal binary
vision, the point-of-view camera shows the proceedings through
the two eyeholes in the mask, and then tops this absurdity by
having the killer apparently turn his head away from the
action to watch the knife in his hand raise and lower as he
strikes!
The force that actually holds the film together— apart

from an undeniable air of sleazy local legend— can be summed
up in two words: Donald Pleasance. This magnificently ripe

British actor's Dr. Sam Loomis (an obvious nod to Psycho
there) is one of the few truly sound characterizations found
in this sort of film. Gamey and hammy to an overstated "t,"
Pleasance's performance is of the old blood-and-thunder school
of rich melodrama, and the films are all the better for it,
especially as the series progresses, losing its horrific edge
through increased censorship and our own growing attitude of
"I've seen it." More, the films do have the wit to make one
wonder if kindly Dr. Loomis isn't just as crazy as his knife-
wielding patient. Given only a handful of genuinely over-the-
top moments in the first film (mostly in his pronouncements
concerning Michael Myers as the living embodiment of evil, and
his dead-pan answer, "As a matter of fact, it was," to Curtis'
query as to whether or not her attacker was the "boogey man"),
Pleasance comes into his marvelously purple own in Halloween
II, which is also a better film in many departments.
Picking up where the first film left off, Rick Rosen

thal's Halloween II is a compact, assured thriller without the
deadly set-up of the first film. Unfortunately, it is also
somewhat marred by Carpenter's post-production tampering. The
film Rosenthal delivered was simply too reticent for Car
penter's taste, so the writer-producer opted to graft on a
number of amazingly tangential bits of uncalled for nastiness.
Wholly arbitrary close-ups of a child with a razor blade
embedded in his mouth, a hypodermic drawing blood, etc., were
inserted into the film, transforming it into one of the more
pointlessly graphic exercises ever tocome from a major
studio. Ironically, one can get a better picture of Rosen
thal's original by viewing the censored television print, even
though this version offers some of the most hysterically inept
overdubbing to clean up the language for those sensitive TV
viewer ears. This craziness reaches a highpoint of imbecility
in a scene where the word "sugar" is substituted for "shit,"
followed by the now-mystifying complaint, "You don't have to
swear." "Fuck up" becomes "foul up" and a rude variation on
"Amazing Grace" changes from "come and sit on my face" to
"come and show me your face." The incomprehensibility of this
lies in the disgusted reactions of the prissy participants who
now take umbrage at these utterly innocent remarks.
Interestingly, Carpenter's concept of Michael Myers as a

puritanical wrath of God here goes out the window. The
character is still motivated by the pure "evil" of Loomis'
designs, but his murderous proclivities now extend to any

living human being who happens to cross his path. The legend
aspect of the story becomes considerably more convoluted when
it transpires that Jamie Lee Curtis is Myers* heretofore
unheard-of other sister, the idea being that she is his
particular target. Despite the inclusion of an excess of
dubious chatter from Pleasance concerning Druids and the
festival of Samhain (for an unresponsive lunatic locked up
since the age of five Michael Myers shows an astonishing range
of esoteric knowledge), the film is little more than a
surprisingly effective suspense opus centering on Michael's
efforts to polish off Jamie Lee Curtis in a rather unbeliev
ably empty hospital in the dead of night. Plausibility to one
side, much of this works quite well with an occasionally
memorable black humored touch (e.g., a skewered nurse
suspended in the air by Michael with her shoes clattering to
the floor as she expires). Other bits— notably one in which
Curtis eludes her assailant in an elevator simply because, as
we all know, knife-wielding maniacs move somewhat more slowly
than octogenarian tortoises— are less successful.
Overall, Curtis gives a game performance (far less awkward

than in the first film) in what is certainly an unglamourous—
and probably physically uncomfortable— role, but the film
belongs to Pleasance hissing his unabashedly melodramatic
pronouncements on his anti-social patient. Speaking of his
obsession with the case, he concludes that he ultimately
realized "there was nothing in him— either conscience or
reason— that was even remotely human." The penalty for this
sort of behavior finds the good doctor being hauled off by a
state marshall. Apprised of the news of Michael’s relation to
Curtis, though, Pleasance pulls a gun on the marshall ("What
do you fellows usually do? Fire a warning shot, right?" he
remarks as he blows a hole in the passenger window) and forces
the man to take him to the hospital for a showdown with the
killer. Encountering Michael, Pleasance empties yet another
gun into the maniac for yet another false death. "Why won't he
die?" asks Curtis, not without justification. Playing possum,
Michael manages to do in the marshall and take up his pursuit,
cornering Pleasance and Curtis in an operating room. Wounding
Pleasance, he heads for Curtis who does the one thing no one
ever seems to think of in these films— she shoots his eyes out
(a fact conveniently forgotten by subsequent screenwriters),
leaving him a relatively ineffectual slasher. By turning on
various oxygen and ether tanks the pair confuse him and Curtis
makes her escape, only to have Pleasance pull out a cigarette
lighter (carefully planted on him in an earlier scene) and
blow himself and his patient to seeming oblivion. Michael does

manage to shamble into the corridor before collapsing, but
there seems little question that both doctor and patient have
had their day.
The very odd third entry, Halloween III: Season of the

Witch, works on the premise that the second film saw the end
of the story. Halloween III seems to take its cue from the
Druidic claptrap dragged into the second film, but the
film is more like a cockeyed homage to Invasion of the Body
Snatchers crossed with a homicidal rethinking of Willy Wonka
and the Chocolate Factory. The theory behind Halloween III
seems clearly that the title alone would be sufficient to
sustain public interest. It was not. In some ways the film is
actually better— certainly it is more complex in an addle
headed manner— than the genuine item. However, the Halloween
hook was not enough and the public simply weren't all that
inclined toward this fanciful tale of a demented Druid
toymaker with a line of lethal masks rigged to go off on
Halloween. Even the fact that the film boasts some typical
splatter effects— a head literally pulled from its body, a
drill through an ear, the reduction of an obnoxious child to a
pile of snakes and various forms of insect life— did nothing
to bolster its popularity with audiences, and the entire
affair was a complete misfire as far as the box-office was
concerned.
Odd— even downright weird— Halloween III may be, but good
it isn't. In its favor is a likable hero in Tom Atkins and a
splendidly hammy villain in Dan O'Herlihy— all silver hair and
gleaming dentures, just oozing patently bogus fatherly good
will. As with Pleasance in the more accepted series entries,
Herlihy is a delightful throwback to the Lionel Atwill or
George Zucco school of horror film player. His entire
rationale for this oversized Halloween prank is supposedly a
mass human sacrifice to the Druid gods of old, but he makes it
clear that the whole scheme is just as much a practical joke
that would warm the heart of a psychotic W.C. Fields.
Logic is not central to the film, which boasts one classic

moment of non-writing in the scene where O'Herlihy explains
the scheme to Atkins. The elaborate triggering system in the
masks consists of some unexplained high-tech circuitry and a
chip of Stonehenge, which just happens to have been pilferred
by O'Herlihy and reassembled in his toy factory. The
explanation for this unlikely bit of larceny is glossed over
by 0 ’Herlihy's undoubtable assertion, "You've no idea the time
we had getting it here. You wouldn't believe me if I told you

how we did it." Other lapses in the narrative are less
charming, not the least of which is the wholly unfathomable
reason for the factory to be at work still turning out the
deadly masks a few minutes before the signal to detonate them
is sent out in an excessively irritating TV commercial over
all three networks!
Halloween III seemed to mark the end of the series. The

monumental success of the Friday the 13th films and the
Nightmare on Elm Street series, however, proved to producer
Moustapha Akkad that there was most assuredly gold in them
thar mad slashers. Moreover, the Friday the 13th pictures had
proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that splatter fans frankly
didn't give a damn about any kind of logic, so reviving both
Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis posed no major problem. Thus,
five years after Halloween III, Halloween 4: The Return of
Michael Myers was born. The distance between this opus and a
Friday the 13th outing was evidenced only in Pleasance, some
plummy writing, and a very little flair from director Dwight
V. Little, whose greatest failing lay in his inability to
shoot a film that would look good both on the screen and in
its inevitable tape incarnation. (The film, which is very
dark, is rather moody on the big screen, but is reduced to so
much muddy darkness on tape.)
As undeniably silly and pointless as Halloween A_ is, it

also boasts an undeniable atmosphere at least in its earlier
scenes. With only the most casual non-explanation, the film
informs us that both Loomis and Michael survived the fire at
the end of Halloween II, whereupon we find that a heavily
bandaged Michael has been shut away in one of those very
secret and very nasty facilities for the absolute worst of the
insane that seem to exist only in popular fiction (a la Dario
Argento's loony thriller, Creepers [1983]), and from which he
is now being transferred. "Jesus!" exclaims one of the
transfer attendants. "Jesus ain't got nothin' to do with this
place," corrects a guard in a colloquial variation on a
classic exchange in Don Sharpe's Kiss of the Vampire (1964)*
"This is where society dumps its worst nightmares," the guard
explains with some understatement. With little concern over
the possible ramifications, Michael is neatly bundled off in
the ambulance with Carpenter’s "Halloween Theme" telling us
all we need to know, about the next occurrence. Alas, the
attending medicos prove too talkative prior to the anticipated
revival, cluing Michael in on the fact that he has a young
niece in his home town. Fired up with this knowledge, he
quickly dispatches his keepers and sets off for Haddonfield

for his usual mayhem.
After much set-up— and a very effective fantasy scene—

about this niece, Jamie (named in honor, one assumes, of
Michael’s old leading lady, and played with some assurance by
Danielle Harris), who has been taken in by friends of her late
parents (Jamie Lee Curtis having been priced out of the
exploitation league in the intervening years), the film
finally gets down to cases with the introduction of Pleasance.
When striving for anything approaching realism when casting
such a magnificent ham as Pleasance, there are some things one
just does not do. One does not, for example, provide the
character with a limp, nor does one afford him such a tempt
ingly theatrical prop as a walking stick. Since Little awards
Pleasance both these items one can only assume that realism
was not his goal— and a good thing. Pleasance milks the limp
for all it’s worth (and on whichever leg suits him at the
moment) and brandishes his stick with old-fashioned scene-
stealing bravura. A preposterous treat, the man shambles into
the film only to immediately upbraid his superior (Michael
Pataki) for letting Michael go. This he does with the gamiest
lines the series has offered him. "Why wasn't I notified?" he
asks. "About what?" asks the outclassed superior. "You know
damn well about what! You let them take ijk out of here!"
hisses Pleasance. "For Christ's sake, spare me the speech,"
insists the helpless victim of Pleasance's theatricalism, who
the compounds the error by trying to reason with him on a
point of law. "We're not talking about any ordinary prisoner,
Hoffman. We are talking about evil on two legs," counters
Pleasance with a line of classic proportions causing one to
wonder about the possibilities of such alternatives as "evil
on a pogo stick," "evil on roller skates" (and the potential
Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that might spawn!), "evil on a
uni-cycle," and a myriad of other novel variations on the mad
slasher. No sooner has Pleasance pointed out that it is—
yes— Halloween than word comes of an "accident" with the
transfer ambulance. Conveniently, the bodies are so mangled
that no one— save, of course, Pleasance— can tell how many
bodies are in the wrecked vehicle. "You won't find him! He's
done all this. Now he's escaped," decides Pleasance, who will
have none of the rational arguments about atrophied muscles.
"You're talking about him as if he were a human being. That
part of him died years ago," Pleasance remarks as he limps off
in lukewarm pursuit.
From this opening, the film becomes progressively

predictable and ordinary in less and less endearing ways.

’’Evil on two legs’’ soon becomes ’’evil in a filling station
wrecker" (the man is remarkable— locked up at the age of five,
he isn't only an expert on Druidic ritual, but he can drive
any vehicle around, regardless of size, gears, etc.) on his
way to Haddonfield, deftly stranding his pursuer by blowing
up Pleasance's car on the way out! Back in Haddonfield it is
once again set-up time with a far too early telegraphing of
the ending with little Jamie picking out a Halloween costume
that just happens to be a dead ringer for— surprise!— the one
young Michael wore when he started his life of slashing. The
only point of interest in all this is the nicely recurring
question of truth or illusion as concerns Michael's presence
on the scene.
In the meantime, Pleasance hitches a ride with a

boozed-out hot gospel lunatic (Carmen Filipi), who recognizes
in his passenger a comrade-in-arms. "You're huntin' it, ain't
you?" inquires the evangelical lush, adding, "Yeah, you're
huntin' it all right— just like me." "What are you hunting,
Mr. Sayer?" asks Pleasance with the petulance born of a scene
stealer having to hold his own with an equally ripe actor.
"Apocalypse, end of the world, Armageddon— it's always got a
face and a name," insists the man, taking a healthy swig
before explaining, "I been huntin' the bastard for 30
years— give or take— come close a time or two. Too damn close!
You can't kill damnation, mister. It don't die like a man
dies." "I know that, Mr. Sayer," assures Pleasance. "Oh,
you're a pilgrim all right. I saw it on your face back there
in the dust. I saw it as clear as breasts and blue suede
shoes," the fellow enthuses, giving Pleasance a drink and
launching into a lively, if crack-throated, rendition of
"Shall We Gather at the River." Unfortunately, this auspicious
teaming is of the short term variety and much of the film
meanders off on the usual stalk and slice mechanics of the
form with more than a few "borrowings" from other films
ranging from previous entries to such dubious sources as
Daniel Attias' Stephen King's Silver Bullet (1985)•
Despite the occasional suspenseful bit, the bulk of the

film is notable mostly for such casual absurdities as Michael
tossing Pleasance through a French door— and having the man
survive this treatment more or less intact! Michael's ultimate
(this round) come-uppance in a hail of police bullets (shades
of Terence Fisher's The Mummy [1959]) and apparent disappear
ance down a convenient bottomless pit ("Michael Myers is in
hell— buried where he belongs," opines Pleasance) is a little
perfunctory, as is the tacky ending we've been awaiting for

reels and reels where Jamie dons the mask and inherits her
presumably late uncle's taste for mayhem, though Pleasance's
overacting at this development is a decided help.
Following altogether too soon for good box-office effect,

Dominique Othenin-Girard’s Halloween 3 seems to be the last
word on the Michael Myers saga. Picking up where Halloween
left off (complete with Halloween II-styled recap), the film
at first seems like a cockeyed salute to Whale's Frankenstein
films with Michael escaping his fate in cheating cliffhanger
fashion only to find his way to the encampment of a hermit,
who, for no very good reason, takes the killer in and cares
for him for a year (i.e., till next Halloween, of course).
Sure enough, next year Michael gets up and rather ungraciously
kills his benefactor as he heads out to continue his assault
on Jamie. Not surprisingly, Jamie has been been institution
alized following her attack (which looked like a murder last
time) on her step-mother. More, she has retreated into silence
and retains a mental bond with the once again ambulatory
Michael Myers— a fact not lost for a moment on Pleasance.
Whenever in Michael's power (mostly when he's in the midst of
some dirty deed), the little girl launches into fits of
automatic writing and silent hysteria. Being a veteran of this
type of movie, Pleasance homes in on this valuable tool and
uses it to head off Michael's first attack, which begins to
look like a false alarm to everyone but Pleasance. "I prayed
that he would burn in hell, but in my heart I knew that hell
would not have him," decides Pleasance with his best line in
the film. Of course, he's quite right about the murders
starting up at least, though in a downright strange allegor
ical move the film introduces what appears to be an emissary
from hell (arriving in Haddonfield on a Greyhound bus and
kicking a dog, no less) come to reclaim its own!
All in all, the film is something of a throw-back to the

phony moralising of the original outing, while the action is
only marginally better than the average Friday the 13th
picture, which large portions of the film frankly resemble.
The movie doesn't even have a very strong sense of its own
series— or else the Myers house from the first two films has
enlarged in size and grandeur over the years (though this may
be dramatic license in order to obtain a suitable old dark
house for the proceedings). Nor does the film offer Pleasance
the same scope for overacting that the previous entry had
done. There are some amusing bits of wigged-out analysis on
his part about how Michael's rage will ultimately destroy
Michael himself, and a few scenes let him go completely over

the top, but the lines lack the outrageously purple tone of
those in Halloween 4_. Once again Pleasance suffers a false
death only to resurface a few minutes later to engage in an
improbably energetic battle with Michael. The film badly errs
at this point by apparenly having Pleasance actually expire
from the exertion, thereby cancelling any marginal enthusiasm
for the story’s continuation. And the climax clearly does
indicate that the tale was slated to continue (this was, of
course, before the disappointing box-office returns) since the
mysterious dark man arrives to trash the police department and
release Michael Myers. Without Pleasance, though, Michael is
just another faceless killing machine and the entire raison
d*etre for the series goes out the window.
Halloween. 1978. Compass International-Moustapha Akkad.

Producer: Debra Hill. Screenplay: John Carpenter, Debra Hill.
Music: John Carpenter. Photography: Dean Cundey. Director:
John Carpenter.
Players: Donald Pleasance, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis,

P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews,
John Michael Graham, Nancy Stephens, Arthur Malet, Mickey
Yablans, Tony Moran, Will Sandin, Sandy Johnson, David Kyle,
Peter Griffith, Nick Castle, Jim Windburn. 85 minutes.
Halloween II. 1981. Universal-Moustapha Akkad Producers: John

Carpenter, Debra Hill. Screenplay: John Carpenter, Debra Hill.
Music: John Carpenter, Alan Howarth. Photography: Dean Cundey.
Director: Rick Rosenthal.
Players: Donald Pleasance, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charles Cyphers,

Jeffrey Kramer, Lance Guest, Pamela Susan Shoop, Hunter von
Leer, Dick Warlock, Leo Rossi, Gloria Gifford, Tawny Moyer,
Ana Alicia, Ford Rainey, Cliff Emmich, Nancy Stephens, John
Zenda, Catherine Bergstrom, Alan Haufrecht, Lucille Benson,
Howard Culver, Dana Carvey, Bill Warlock, Jonathan Prince,
Leigh French, Ty Mitchell, Nancy Loomis. 92 minutes.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch. 1983* Universal-Moustapha

Akkad. Producers: Debra Hill, John Carpenter. Screenplay:
Tommy Lee Wallace. Music: John Carpenter, Alan Howarth.
Photography: Dean Cundey. Director: Tommy Lee Wallace.
Players: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O ’Herlihy, Michael

Currie, Ralph Strait, Jadeen Barbor, Bradley Schachter, Garn
Stephens, Nancy Kyes, Jon Terry, A1 Berry, Wendy Wessberg,
Essex Smith, Maidie Norman, John MacBride, Loyd Catlett, Paddi

Edwards, Norman Merrill, Patricia Pankurst, Dick Warlock. 98
minutes.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. 1988. Francas

International-Moustapha Akkad. Producer: Paul Freeman. Story:
Dhani Lipsius, Larry Rattner, Benjamin Ruffner, Alan B.
McElroy. Screenplay: Alan B. McElroy. Music: Alan Howarth,
John Carpenter. Photography: Peter Lyons Collister. Director:
Dwight H. Little.
Players: Donald Pleasance, Ellie Cornell, Danielle Harris,

George P. Wilbur, Michael Pataki, Beau Starr, Kathleen
Knimont, Sasha Jenson, Gene Ross, Carmen Filpi, Raymond
O ’Connor, Jeff Olsen, Karen Alston, Nancy Borgenicht, David
Jensen, Rand Kennedy, Don Glover, Robert Conder, Richard
Jewkes. 88 minutes.
Halloween 5j_ The Revenge of Michael Myers. 1989* Magnum

Pictures— Moustapha Akkad. Producer: Ramsey Thomas.
Screenplay: Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othenin-Girard, Shem
Bitterman. Music: Alan Howarth, John Carpenter. Photography:
Robert Draper. Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard.
Players: Donald Pleasance, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell,

Beau Starr, Harper Roisman, Karen Alston, Betty Carvalho, Max
Robinson, Wendy Kaplan, Jeffrey Landman, Frank Como, David
Ursini, Tamara Glynn, Stanton Davis, Patrick White, Donald L.
Shanks. 96 minutes.
THE FRIDAY THE 13TH FILMS
Friday the 13th (1980)

Friday the 13th Part II (1981)
Friday the 13th 3-D~Tl 982)
Friday the 13th Part IV— The Final Chapter (1984)
Friday the 13th Part V— A New Beginning (1985)
Friday the 13th Part VI— Jason Lives~Tl 986)
Friday the 13th Part VII— The New Blood (1988)
Friday the 13th Part VIII— Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
More an extremely clever ad campaign than a series, the

Friday the 13th films are a cheeky example of the best of
American marketing techniques combined with the worst of
American pop culture. That said, it should be noted that the
films, bad though they are, are hardly the spawn of the devil
they are so often painted to be. Truth to tell, only the first
two are all that overtly gruesome by today's standards (even
the second one was pruned to avoid an "X" rating)--and neither
of them have much connection to the next (so far) six, since
the non-character of Jason Voorhees is not truly defined until
the third outing. Moreover, there is an admirably tacky
chutzpah hovering over any series of films that can go for
eight entries on virtually no plot and even less point. By
this time Jason has become a singularly bizarre American folk
hero that no amount of outraged criticism is going to
stop— more a symptom of the times than part of the cause of
those times. Despite decreasing box-office returns for the
last few entries, there is no denying that all the faceless
slasher needs is a Roman numeral, a tongue-in-cheek subtitle,
and an endless parade of dimwitted, fornicating American youth
to pull down several million at the movie house.
Generally speaking, criticism of the Friday the 13th

pictures borders on the absurd, but we might do well to at
least attempt to understand the films' history, give a nod to
occasional high points, and explore their popularity before
293
simply dismissing the entire run out of hand. Eight popular

horror films in a row are not so easily disposed of,
regardless of the fact that almost no one dares say anything
remotely positive about them— other than audiences that
is— owing to the hellfire and brimstone rantings of Gene
Siskel and Roger Ebert in their unclearly motivated (and
thought out) crusade against such films in general and this
series in particular.
For the uninitiated it should be noted that the original

Friday the 15th— which succeeded commercially almost solely on
the strength of the catch-phrase, "The body count continues"—
wasn't a Jason epic of any kind. Rather the film was built as
a whodunit complete with a mystery killer who wasn’t all that
mysterious. No matter. The very whodunit structure puts much
of the Siskel-Ebert "theory" out to pasture. (Of course, most
persons subscribing to that theory wouldn’t be caught dead
screening the object of their objection in the first place, so
it has largely gone unchallenged.) The claim that the film and
its offspring is morally suspect because of the overly
generous use of point of view camerawork placing the viewer in
the killer's position fails to take several operative and
salient points into consideration. In the first place, the use
of subjective camera is a time-honored method of concealing
the identity of the killer from the viewer as it does it here.
In the second place, it is a very economical method of cutting
down on the budget of a film in which the major "star" (Betsy
Palmer) turns out to be the murderer. Palmer's actual
involvement in the project likely lasted a scant two or three
days' shooting, but her star status is more or less justified
by her presence being suggested by the murderously roving
cinematographer. Moreover, the Siskel-Ebert theory rests very
shakily on a bit of film theory that is itself none too
stable. Back in 1931 Rouben Mamoulian shot an extended point
of view opening for his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with the
stated intent of pulling the viewer "into" Jekyll's psyche. It
didn’t work then except as a bit of flashy cinema, and it
doesn't work now on any other than a showy level— unless, of
course, the viewer happens to be a theory-struck film critic,
which is very unlikely in the case of most of the audience at
whom this sort of picture is aimed. Rubbish the film certainly
is. And it is pretty inept rubbish at that (one tires quickly
of the dimwitted heroine leaving Palmer for dead on half a
dozen occasions toward the climax only to have her revive for
more mayhem). However, the notion that the film is spawning a
generation of Jasons is harder to digest than Ebert's sweater
collection.
The premise of the original film has the decidedly

1round-the-bend Palmer polishing off a variety of fornicating
teenagers at a summer camp in a kind of cockeyed revenge for
her own son's (jason) death years earlier due to the
inattention of sex-crazed camp counsellors. That's really all
there is to it. The rest is simply a variable display of
splatter gore effects designed to make the viewer jump or
cringe or become queasy. As a character Jason appears not at
all until he emerges from the depths of his watery grave in
Lake Crystal in a tacked-on fantasy sequence at the film's
end. It is from this tiny stretch of film that the series was
born as a continuing concept with the Jason character taking
over the mayhem honors in the subsequent adventures
(considering that Palmer meets her fate in a slow-motion
repeat action beheading finale it would be unreasonable to
expect further antics from her).
While Jason does take center stage in the second film,

this is not quite the Jason we have come to know, if only
because the trademark hockey mask has yet to make its
appearance. Rather, our hero wears what appears to be an old
flour sack on his head. Absurd as this seems on the surface,
it is a blessing in disguise since the film is very dark and
often the only thing thatcan be discerned is the flour sack
bobbing up and down in the murky woods around Camp Crystal.
Moreover, Jason is here presented as considerably less clever
than in subsequent productions. Toward the end, the plucky
heroine (far more resourceful than her predecessor) manages to
bamboozle the machete wielding horror into believing she is
his mother come back to life by simply donning Palmer's old
shawl and pulling her hair back! All works well until Jason
spots the jolly mummified rubber Betsy Palmer head on his
home-made shrine behind the girl, cluing him in on the fact
that things are perhaps not what they seem. Even so, this is
quite the most creative thing in the film. The bulk of the
proceedings are a grab bag of genre cliches (including the
ever-popular False Scare by Cat routine, which surfaces in
nearly every entry in various ridiculous guises) degenerating
into an ending where reality and fantasy are so blurred as to
render the whole thing virtually incomprehensible. Without
recourse to the screenwriter's innermost thoughts, it is
impossible to separate the live teens from the dead ones (not
that there was that much difference to start with) at the
final fade-out— a situation not satisfactorily explained by
post-production cutting to achieve an "R" rating.
With Friday the 13th 3-D Jason came into his own. It is
within the confines of this more camped-up entry that the

character adopts his now familiar hockey mask. Frankly, the
film is not so much an improvement over its predecessors as it
is simply the fact that the tackiness of the whole thing here
starts being played at for its own sake as if the filmmakers
accepting the truth that the end product is junk have decided
to revel in the idea of junk as junk. As a result, this and
several of the subsequent entries possess an air of grisly fun
that was lacking in the first two films, except on an
unconscious level. No doubt the decision to shoot the film in
3-D helped. Overall, the stereoscopic effects— apart from the
now famous flying eyeball— are not better than might be
expected. Indeed, there is a 3-D effect with a flying harpoon
that is about on par with the less convincing string-propelled
hurtling objects in the Three Stooges 3-D outings. Other
effects are more silly than frightening— a snake being thrust
at the camera by a wily derelict, popcorn popping into the
lens, etc.— but it all adds to an agreeably non-serious
atmosphere that makes this entry (dare I say it?) a cut above
most of the series.
The fourth installment— rather too hopefully subtitled,

The Final Chapter— relies too much on the meat-on-the-hoof
formula of the second film, and, in fact, uses a variation on
the tricking Jason routine of that entry as well. This round
Jason must confront future teen heart-throb Corey Feldman made
up to resemble Jason as a child. Much of the humor of 3-D went
out the window this round in favor of an unusually graphic
series of killings, none of which are terribly involving or
original, though death by corkscrew offered at least one new
twist. In the film’s bonus column is the factthat many ofthe
characters are better drawn than previously— a logical move
since the series was sharing the spotlight with the more
thoughtful Nightmare on Elm Street films and that series*
often appealingly human teenagers. No mistake, the body count
was definitely continuing, but we were beginning to care just
a little bit about the fate of those bodies to be even if we
knew from the onset that all but one or two were destined to
meet sticky ends.
The ending of The Final Chapter— a particularly vicious

and explicit killing of Jason by Feldman— paved the way for
the fifth installment, A New Beginning. This entry worked on
the interesting notion that Jason was himself interchangeable
with any hockey masked madman. In fact, Jason himself appears
only in flashbacks and in the visions that plague the Feldman
character, now grown into young manhood despite the fact that
only a year had passed since the fourth go-round. Most of the
mayhem this time was in the hands of a Jason impersonator,
returning the film to something of the whodunit status of the
original opus, except that we are supposed to believe Jason’s
killer has inherited his personality for most of the film
until we arrive at a "surprise" revelation. The replacement of
Jason with an impersonator seems reasonable enough since the
character has no personality— apart from a pathological
puritanism that makes him come across a bit like Jerry Falwell
with a meat axe. However, the move also demonstrates a certain
amount of audience contempt on the filmmakers’ part. Even so,
the film is something of an improvement over The Final
Chapter, since it tries to blend the characterizational level
of that film with the nasty humor of It never quite
succeeds, but the effort is itself noteworthy.
What A_ New Beginning attempted the sixth film, Jason

Lives, nearly pulls off. Once again, the characters are
largely appealing, but here the humor is brought to the
forefront. More, the film brings Jason back to the fore, only
this time he crosses the line from merely being harder to kill
than a Tenth Avenue cockroach into the realm of the genuinely
supernatural, thereby neatly alleviating future problems of
resurrection. The hero is still little Tommy from The Final
Chapter in young adulthood. This time out he and a friend from
the home for the bewildered where he has been incarcerated
owing to his various and sundry traumatizing experiences a la
Jason make the mistake of unearthing Jason to be certain that
he's dead. He is, but an enraged Tommy proceeds to bludgeon
the corpse with an iron rod in the middle of a thunderstorm.
It scarcely takes a Nobel Prize winner to figure out what
happens next. Yes, lightning strikes the rod and up pops
Jason— a smile, a song, and a hockey mask, dripping maggots
and ready for mayhem. In no time, our revived hero has rather
drastically ripped the heart from Tommy's friend's chest and
is off after Tommy, who sets out to inform the police of this
unseemly situation. Adults being the brain-damaged imbeciles
they are in these films, no one believes his story for a
minute, though they are quite ready to buy Tommy as a Jason
disciple once the body count begins to be too obvious to
ignore. None of this is terribly creative in and of itself,
but there are numerous touches throughout that definitely
enliven the proceedings. Upon discovering that someone has
disinterred Jason, the boozy cemetery caretaker deftly sums up
the entire series' appeal by grousing, "Some people have a
strange idea of entertainment." When a victim-to-be's male
companion attempts to reasonably ask Jason to step from in
front of their car and let them pass, the lady in question
shows uncommon horror genre savvy by remarking, "I've seen
enough horror films to know that anyone wearing a hockey mask
in the woods in the middle of the night isn't friendly.”
Having set up the implied threat of wholesale slaughter on a
group of pre-pubescent campers (we all know the film simply
isn't going to go that far), one of the youngsters hiding
under a bed conversationally asks his friend, "So what did you
want to be when you grew up?" The whole affair is neatly
underlined by the inclusion of a number of apt Alice Cooper
rock songs, including the anthemic "He's Back (The Man Behind
the Mask)" played under the closing credits. This clever bit
of Jasoniana offered a bonus to fans in its incarnation as a
rock video, since it explained the source of composer Harry
Manfredini's Jason suspense theme (a series of noises sounding
not unlike what Groucho Marx tells Margaret Dumont are
asthmatic cockroaches in Animal Crackers) as part of Alice's
quirky vocalizing!
While there is no room for claims of artistic significance

for Jason Lives, the film is undoubtedly the best of the
series and sick fun for a broader cross-section of genre fans
than the other entries— not a claim that can be made for the
next chapter, The New Blood, which might better have been
called Jason Meets Carrie or even The Iron Poor Tired Blood.
Having milked the Tommy character dry with his disposal of
Jason by chaining him to the bottom of Crystal Lake in Jason
Lives, the series here introduces a disturbed telekinetic
girl, whose inner rage causes her to unleash the horror once
again. The concept isn't bad and the characters are even
better delineated than in the earlier films, but the whole
thing just doesn't come together. The sight of Jason being
bested by a girl who tends to drop houses on him is slightly
diverting, but it all adds up to very little.
The last installment to date takes the prize for best

title, Friday the 13th Part VIII— Jason Takes Manhattan, if
not the best film. One happily envisioned the prospect of
filmmakers who had finally realized that Jason's endless
trompings through the jungly tendrils of Camp Crystal Lake had
worn thin, but, alas, the bulk of the film entails more of the
same while Jason makes his way to the Big Apple. Once there,
the film misses opportunity after opportunity for
tongue-in-cheek bull's eyes, except for the engaging image of
Jason "joining" the war on drugs by dispatching some drug
users in an alley like a supernatural Nancy Reagan with a
machete. There is also a lovely moment when our hockey-masked
hero spots a billboard emblazoned with a genuine hockey

player, causing him no little confusion.
Most of the film takes place aboard a cruise ship (aptly

named the Lazarus) with Jason— revived by an anchor and a
power cable (don't ask)— happily hacking up a variety of teens
on their way to Manhattan as part of a graduation trip. As
with Part VII the film comes equipped with a human villain— an
authority figure as slimy as Jason is homicidal— in the person
of the heroine's wicked guardian. From the moment this man
walks onscreen the viewer is ready for his demise, and the
film cleverly keeps this at bay for most of its length,
finally rewarding his nefarious and just plain unpleasant
behavior with a death aimed straight for the audience's
gag-reflexes. All this is fine, but the film derives too much
mileage from that which has gone before. That the heroine in
round eight had previously escaped from Jason at some
indistinct earlier time is clearly cribbed from Part III where
the heroine had been— implicitly— raped by Jason
(uncharacteristic behavior to say the least) in the distant
past. Moreover, the forced intrusion of a Voice of
Doom halfwit is also lifted from III (and, to some extent,
from V_' 3 hillbilly clan and Vi's gravedigger). Even so, the
film is a marked improvement over VII. The overall production
is slick and many of the shock effects actually work, which
they had not really done since _II. The most bizarre— and least
comprehensible— aspect of the film is its climax in which
Jason, following a bath in toxic waste, is magically
transformed into the unblemished youthful state of his
original drowning. Whether or not either his transformation or
his latest death can be viewed as final is a question best
left to the accounting department at Paramount.
The popularity of the Friday the 13 th series will

undoubtedly continue to nettle critics (though these critics
might do well to consider the sociological implications that
this popularity stems from the very kind of proto-puritanical
fascism of the 1980s as does their own distaste for the
films). The blanket refusal to see that such acceptable
rubbish as Adrian Lynne's Fatal Attraction is nothing but a
higher priced Friday the 13th picture for people who wouldn't
be caught dead seeing a Friday the 13th picture is a measure
of the extreme myopia of popular critical approach. At least,
the Friday the 13th film— and its audience— is honest about
what it is, and, after all, to date the series has gotten
twice as much mileage out of a character with no personality
than Richard Wagner managed with The Ring of the Nibelung— an
impressive and sobering thought.
Friday the 13th. 1980. Paramount. Producer: Sean Cunningham.

Screenplay: Victor Miller. Photography: Barry Abrams. Music:
Harry Manfredini. Director: Sean Cunningham.
Players: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Kevin Bacon, Robbi

Morgan, Jeannine Taylor, Mark Nelson, Laurie Bartram, Harry
Crosby. 95 minutes.
Friday the 13th Part II. 1981. Paramount. Producer: Steve

Miner. Screenplay: Ron Kurz. Photography: Peter Stein. Music:
Harry Manfredini. Director: Steve Miner.
Players: Amy Steel, John Furey, Adrienne King, Kirsten Baker,

Stu Charno, Warrington Gillette, Walt Gorney, Tom McBride. 87
minutes.
Friday the 13th 3-D» 1982. Paramount. Producer: Frank Mancuso,

Jr. Screenplay: Martin Kitrosser, Carol Watson. Photography:
Gereld Feld. Music: Harry Manfredini. Director: Steve Miner.
Players: Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Traacie Savage, Jeffrey

Rogers, Catherine Paris, Larry Zerner, Rachel Howard, David
Katims, Richard Brooker.
Friday the 13th Part IV— The Final Chapter. 1984* Paramount.
Producer: Frank Mancuso, Jr. Screenplay: Barney Cohen. Music:
Harry Manfredini, Joao Fernandes. Director: Joseph Zito.
Players: Kimberly Beck, Peter Barton, Corey Feldman, E. Enrich

Anderson, Crispin Glover, Alan Hayes, Barbara Howard, Lawrence
Monson. 91 minutes.
Friday the 13th Part V— A New Beginning. 1985* Paramount.

Producers: Timothy Silver, Danny Steinmann. Screenplay: Martin
Kitrosser, David Cohen, Danny Steinmann. Photography: Stephen
L. Posey. Music: Harry Manfredini. Director: Danny Steinmann.
Players: Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Richard

Young, Marco St. John, Juliette Cummins, Carol Locatell,
Vernon Washington, Corey Feldman. 102 minutes.
Friday the 13th Part VI— Jason Lives!. 1986. Paramount.

Producer: Don Behrns. Screenplay: Tom McLoughlin. Photography:
Jon Kranhouse. Music: Harry Manfredini, Alice Cooper.
Director: Tom McLoughlin.
Players: Thom Matthews, Jennifer Cooke, David Kagen, Renee

Jones, Kerry Noonan, Darcy Demoss, Tom Fridley, Ron Palillo.
87 minutes.
Friday the 13th Part VII— The New Blood. 1988. Paramount.
Producer: Iain Patterson. Screenplay: Daryl Haney, Manuel
Fidello. Photography: Paul Elliott. Music: Harry Manfredini,
Fred Mollin. Director: John Carl Buechler.
Players: Lar Park Lincoln, Kevin Blair, Susan Blu, Terry

Kiser, Susan Jennifer Sullivan, Elizabeth Kaitan, Jon
Renfield, Jeff Bennett, Kane Hodder. 88 minutes.
Friday the 13th Part VIII— Jason Takes Manhattan. 1989•

Paramount. Producer: Randolph Cheveldave. Screenplay: Rob
Hedden. Photography: Bryan England. Music: Fred Mollin.
Director: Rob Hedden.
Players: Jensen Daggett, Scott Reeves, Barbara Bingham, Peter

Mark Richman, Martin Cummins, Gordon Currie, Alex Diakun, Kane
Hodder. 89 minutes.
THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET FILMS
_A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

A. Nightmare on Elm Street II— Freddy*s Revenge (1985)
A. Nightmare on Elm Street III— Dream Warriors (1987)
A. Nightmare on Elm Street IV— The Dream Master (1988)
A. Nightmare on Elm Street V— The Dream Child (1989)
"Standard teen slaughter movie that inexplicably caught on

with dropouts, leading to Nightmare on Elm Street 2_ and
Even Craven has done better than this," claims the faceless
reviewer in Leonard Maltin's ubiquitous TV Movies and Video
Guide (1989 edition). Before taking this assessment too
seriously we might realize that genre fans do not appear to be
included on Maltin's list of preferred reviewers so that a
basic antipathy toward horror films— especially, modern horror
films--is prevalent in the writings, which are hardly what one
might consider serious criticism on the best day. (What, after
all, can one say about this endlessly reprinted "guide" that
has included the same utterly— and painfully obvious— bogus
entry in every edition— the detection of which I leave to the
reader or Maltin, whoever comes first.) Presumably, all
admirers of Craven's original film must come under the heading
of "dropouts." There are worse things. Even so, the criticism
seems peculiarly fatuous, since Craven's film, despite an
unnecessarily convoluted ending and the requisite amount of
often off-putting (but in this case extremely stylized) gore,
is one of the most original and fascinating of all modern
horror films.
Nearly everything about the first Nightmare on Elm Street

works for most of its length. Perhaps the most accomplished
aspect of the film is its ability to walk a perilously thin
line between the dream world and the waking one. Many films
have tried to do this— usually for a quick jolt (the tag
scenes in Brian De Palma's Carrie and Dressed to Kill, for
example) or to make an allegorical point (the fantasy/dream
305
sequences in Ken Russell's Mahler and Lisztomania)— with

varying degrees of success, but Craven's film makes the
startling leap of basing its entire structure and plot on this
concept— and does so with an essentially exploitation product,
not an "art" film. A. Nightmare on Elm Street starts with a
nightmare (not in itself a terrifically original thing), and a
very unsettling nightmare it is. There is an almost tangible
dream logic— which is to say lack of traditional logic— to the
events. The creation of the now-famous Freddy Krueger
razor-fingered glove, the girl being pursued by something
indefinable and horrible through the cavernous workings of a
geographically improbable schoolhouse and boiler room, the
sudden startling introduction of a sheep into the action, all
serve to create a genuine sense of nightmare entrapment. What
is particularly refreshing and effective about this is the
soon apparent fact that the dream is not simply a quick
thrill, but an integral part of the film. No sooner does the
girl awake from this than she discovers that her nightgown
torn in the dream is torn in reality. The eeriness of the
experience is neatly underlined by the girl's mother and her
naive matter of fact assessment of the ripped garment as the
product of her daughter's own long fingernails (the adults in
the film are nothing if not dense).
Craven's shrewdness extends well into the next sequence—

no small feat considering that the exposition following this
type of grabber opening is where many horror films fall down.
Make no mistake, it ±s_ expository material, but of a better
than average variety. The following morning's dialogue inter
actions between the high school students at the center of the
film's story delivers a message— that this is a collective
nightmare they are all sharing in one form or another— as
unnerving as it is simply a plot point. More, if we are to
attempt to make any sense at all out of the film's not
entirely satisfying shock-effect tag scene, it is important
that the opening of this part of the film be considered
carefully since one of Craven's visuals here is cross-
referenced at the film's climax. The camera's passing a group
of children playing jump rope while reciting a rather morbid
rhyme about the perils of Freddy "coming for you" is done in
very deliberate soft-focus with the filters used being removed
only as we pass a tree and land on the action of the scene
proper. This is repeated in reverse at the conclusion of the
film and while it is aesthetically dubious— being more clever
than good— it does further smear the boundary between reality
and illusion so that the bulk of the film can be taken as
nothing more than a continuation of the opening dream with the
climax being the start of the "real" nightmare come to life.
As is so often the case with series characters who

accidentally catch on with the public, the character of Freddy
Krueger (Robert Englund) in the first film is not fully
formed— and this is one of _A Nightmare on Elm Street1s
greatest advantages over its successors. Freddy, as envisioned
by Craven, is considerably removed from the stand-up comic
maniac fashioned and refined by subsequent writers. In this
first outing Freddy talks very little. Indeed, the character
speaks just enough to subtly set him apart from the
Jason-styled faceless slasher of the Friday the 15th pictures.
True, his limited lines of dialogue are delightfully black
humored, but Freddy's later incarnations tend to go too far,
threatening to turn the character into a kind of homicidal
Groucho Marx, chattering away incessantly. Craven's version
may have his humorous side (how many villains even having been
bombed and bludgeoned by the heroine would utter the immortal
threat, "I'm gonna kill you— slow?"), but there is never any
question that he is not only lethal, but particularly nasty
about it.
Moreover, Craven's Freddy is not the slave to special

effects later versions are, yet for all that he is somehow all
the more terrifying and nightmarishly magical. The original
Freddy has the offhand ability to mutilate himself, expand the
length of his arms, and to pop about with the perfect lack of
geographical logic central to a dream state. This is perhaps
not as showy as such later developments as the image of
Freddy's body being made up of the images of his victims
(whose souls he has somehow assimilated), but it never
distances the viewer from the terror by being too obviously an
effect. Craven's character is quite simply one of the most
frightening in modern horror cinema. He seems rational enough
that one ought to be able to discuss this sociopathic activity
with him, yet he is so obviously homicidally insane that any
such attempt is clearly doomed to failure. Making a mad killer
vaguely personable in this case has only made him that much
more unsettling in much the same way that the insane religious
prattling of Saul in James Whale's film of The Old Dark House
is more disturbing than the dumb brute presented in J.B.
Priestley's source novel.
Craven's storyline about the evil spirit of a murdered

child-molester/murderer revenging himself on the children of
his murderers through their dreams is a strong one, though its
immediate popularity with the public is a little hard to grasp
in light of the general audience acceptance, even endorsement,

of films glorifying vigilante "justice." In fact, one of the
most unsettling moments in the film occurs when the heroine’s
(Heather Langenkamp) lush of a mother (Ronee Blakely) finally
confesses the neighborhood'sx collective crime to her daughter.
The woman's lame rationalizations about the abuse of the
technicalities of due process ("The lawyers got rich and the
judge got famous") in freeing such people as Freddy Krueger
become chillingly empty when we are faced with the enormity of
her own participation in the crime of burning Krueger alive,
to say nothing of the outright sickness of her keeping his
murderous glove tucked away in the furnace as a grisly
souvenir of the event. (The fact that the girl's father [john
Saxon] is now the stupefyingly slow-witted police chief is in
itself disconcerting when one considers the post to which his
own inhuman actions have led him.) None of this excuses (nor
does it attempt to excuse) Krueger's own crimes— or even his
current supernatural activities— but it does raise questions
about the nature of guilt, regardless of the motives behind
the action, and who suffers because of those actions. In its
own small way Craven's film simply puts forth a fantasticated
vision of the results of the self-righteous erosion of basic
legal proceedings and human rights not on those responsible,
but on those who inherit the fruits of their labor.
The original Nightmare also deserves high marks for the

unusually fine characterizations of its teenage leads, none of
whom are any nearer the Friday the 13th-Halloween victims than
Freddy is near the largely interchangeable Jason and Michael
Myers. Particularly fine are Johnny Depp (in his screen debut)
as the genuinely sweet Glenn and Heather Langenkamp. Depp is
handed a number of the film's best— and most on target— teen
lines, as when he questions his own higher-minded values of
not sleeping with Langenkamp upon hearing two other teens in
the throes of passion. "Morality sucks," he decides, but turns
over to go to sleep on his celibate sofa all the same. "I see
your mom went ape at the security store," he remarks casually
when he sees the miniature Alcatraz Blakely has made of her
home in a futile attempt at safety, (it might also be noted
that he is given the film's most gruesomely creative murder.)
Langenkamp is even better in a more difficult role, and to her
goes the film's absolute best line when she glimpses her hag
gard visage in a mirror, prompting her to comment, "God, I
look twenty," with all the off-hand callousness of youth she
can muster. In addition, she is pleasantly intelligent through
the entire film. What a treat it is to find a heroine who can
manage not to merely stun the killer and wander off so that he
can recover and pursue her again!
All of its other virtues to one side, the impact of the

film hinges on its nightmares and grotesqueries, all of which
manage to be as dynamic as its off-centered opening. The slips
in and out of dreams are seamlessly achieved. Especially good
is the sequence where Langenkamp nods off during a class at
school with the tone suddenly shifting to the abnormal. Since
this is fairly early in the film, we are not at first certain
whether this is a genuine supernatural occurrence or a dream,
even when Freddy's first victim (Amanda Wyss) appears in her
body-bag and is invisibly dragged off down the corridor leav
ing a bloody trail like some giant, obscene slug. Further, the
carefully paced revelation of the fact that the boundary be
tween dream and reality is vague is very effective, building
from the discovery that a burn suffered by Langenkamp in a
dream is still on her arm when she awakes, until she realizes
that she has the ability to bring objects out of her dreams.
The touches are subtle at first— the burn, a feather from a
ripped pillow— presented almost as dream hang-overs, becoming
more concrete (Freddy's hat) as the film progresses, culmi
nating in Langenkamp pulling Freddy into the real world.
Of course, the careful structure of the first film with

its slow build-up was impossible in A. Nightmare on Elm Street
II; Freddy's Revenge because we already knew the premise from
the outset. Even admitting this forced shortcoming, the second
film was an utter travesty of Craven's original and is still
quite the worst film in the series. Nightmare II starts off
with a genuinely powerful first scene in which Freddy takes
over a school bus. The splendidly achieved special effects of
the runaway bus trapped in a weird landscape that falls away
leaving the vehicle tottering on a single pinnacle is equal to
any of the first film's nightmare imagery, but the film goes
downhill from there with alarming rapidity. It took the Friday
the 13th pictures seven entries before opting to rip off
Carrie— something the Nightmare series accomplished in two by
having Freddy operate through a much put-upon youth. The evil
Freddy enters the proceedings by possessing the introverted
young man who moves into Langenkamp1s old house. Not only is
this not very persuasive, it completely perverts the first
film. There is no theme here, merely an excuse for an array of
special effects and a good deal of often unpleasant displays
of blood-letting. Freddy no longer has any motivation for his
actions beyond being simply anti-social, and the whole enter
prise is best forgotten.
Perhaps because Craven was back on hand as one of the

contributing screenwriters for A. Nightmare on Elm Street III:
Dream Warriors, the third installment, while not on par with
the original film, was a more worthwhile endeavour. The film
boasts a story that is more in keeping with the first film
(the victims are at least the "last of the Elm Street
children"), incorporates numerous clever touches, brings back
both Langenkamp and Saxon, and is blessed with an often quite
captivating ditsy quality. Make no mistake, Nightmare III is
an effects film. This is its reason for being, but it uses its
elaborate effects, rather than allowing itself to be used by
them.
The plot of the third film is much more coherent than that
of the second, finding the now adult Langenkamp as a still
disturbed and haunted psychologist working in dream research.
When she learns that deaths are occurring in a group of high
school kids with sleep disorders, she manages to wrangle a job
at the center that houses them. There she discovers the truth
about the situation and urges the troubled teenagers to fight
back through the collective use of their "dream powers" (hence
the film's sub-title).
Not all of this works. Nightmare III tends toward overkill

in trying to out-do its predecessors, while the revelation of
Freddy's background as the product of a nun raped by a roomful
of violent madmen ("The bastard son of a hundred maniacs") is
a colorful addition, but tends to take the edge off the first
film's darker implications about vigilante tactics. Moreover,
the additional black magic mumbo-jumbo involving the necessary
disposal of Freddy's earthly remains in a proper ceremony with
holy water bogs the concept down in a good deal of meaningless
overcomplication that only minimizes its otherwise intriguing
"Dream Warrior" plot device (though it does provide the film
with a charming Ray Harryhausen-styled fight with a skeleton).
What works best about the film, apart from the return of
the Langenkamp character and the generally superior character
izations (even if the teens are a bit too much of a perfect
racial and socio-economic balance to be believable as the
products of the same neighborhood), are its flourishes and
nightmare images. (The very fact that almost no one notices
that the bar in which Saxon souses himself nightly is called
"Little Nemo's" combined with the necessity of a frame of
reference that includes the knowledge that Little Nemo in
Slumberland is an old comic strip about a boy's dream world
adventures makes the film appear to have paid extremely close
attention to detail.)
The climax of the adventure with a redeemed— albeit dead—

Saxon making a screwy appearance before his daughter prior to
being whisked off into eternity is so wigged-out that it is
hard to resist. Similarly, the Cocteau-like hall of mirrors is
an effective and appropriately weird setting, while the
piercing scream (as a a heretofore mute character discovers
her dream power) that (briefly) saves the day by shattering
these mirrors is a bravura moment. Unfortunately, the decision
to kill off Langenkamp is a bad one, mostly because we know
the series is going to sorely miss her.
The things that had worked well in Nightmare III are just
about all missing from the fourth installment, The Dream
Master. The problem here is two-fold— Freddy is becoming too
cozy and the films are becoming pure effects material. Com
pounding the problem is the inescapable feeling that the
entire project is a thing of bits and pieces with the key
effects sequences farmed out to various specialized companies,
while the rest of the film is merely filler used to limply
connect the uneven set-pieces. The plot has become totally
inconsequential, while the writers concentrate on "snappy"
one-liners for Freddy as he goes about his dastardly deeds
until the film achieves the required running time for the Big
Effect that will climax it. In this entry, that moment is
reached when the souls of Freddy's previous victims are given
the freedom to turn on their host and literally rip him apart.
A. Nightmare on Elm Street V— The Dream Child was a very

slight improvement on Nightmare IV. The storyline is stronger
and almost as nutty as that for Nightmare III, but the charm
of the third entry gets lost in the effects show. Worse, the
feeling that the film is the work of some peculiarly over-the-
edge anti-abortion group leaves a curious taste in the mouth.
The plot that Freddy is committing his new atrocities through
the unborn baby of the heroine (Lisa Wilcox) in an effort to
get himself born again (the exact nature of this is
conveniently vague) might not be bad in itself, but the fact
that this unwed teen mother absolutely insists on following
the moral imperative of having this child despite the fact
that this self-righteous obsession causes the deaths of most
of the rest of the cast is at best questionable, if not
downright offensive.
Nightmare does have a handful of genuinely good effects

and the film obviously is meant to be judged on this level. A
very clever (if "borrowed" from an a-Ha rock video) sequence

has Freddy off one of his victims by entering the young man's
comic strip. Even more creative is the Big Effect at the end
with Freddy vying with the heroine for control of her baby.
The Escher-like use of strange perspectives is clever and
effectively unnerving. Unfortunately, this is followed by a
generally incomprehensible series of events where Freddy's
mother prevents his "second coming" with a barrage of little
more than slamming doors.. And, of course, the entire affair is
seemingly for nought since the tag scene makes it apparent
that horrordom's "man of your dreams" is slated to re-appear.
The altogether too soon appearance of Nightmare V after

Nightmare IV caused the film to suffer at the box-office with
filmgoers who had plainly overdosed on Freddy. As a result, it
seemed for a time as if the series had finally come to a
close, but just as this book goes to press comes the announce
ment that Nightmare VI (touted as the last chapter in the
story) is in production. In an attempt to breathe new life in
to the series (a debatable move for our acceptance of this as
the last film) this entry is scheduled to feature guest stars
like Roseanne Barr and Alice Cooper. Whether this will make
any significant difference (Nightmare III had cameos from Dick
Cavett and Zsa Zsa Gabor) remains to be seen, but Craven's
creation has undeniably left a mark on the horror film— and
one bonafide modern classic.
A Nightmare on Elm Street. 1984. New Line Cinema/Smart Egg.

Producers: Robert Shaye, Sara Risher. Screenplay: Wes Craven.
Photography: Jacques Haitkin. Music: Charles Bernstein.
Director: Wes Craven.
Players: Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakely, John Saxon, Robert

Englund, Amanda Wyss, Johnny Depp, Nick Corri. 92 minutes.
A Nightmare on Elm Street II— Freddy's Revenge. 1985* New Line

Cinema/Smart Egg. Producer: Robert Shaye. Screenplay: David
Chaskin. Photography: Jacques Haitkin. Music: Christopher
Young. Director: Jack Sholder.
Players: Mark Patton, Kim Meyers, Robert Englund, Robert

Rusler, Clu Gulagher, Hope Lange, Marshall Bell, Melinda 0.
Fee. 84 minutes.
A Nightmare on Elm Street III— Dream Warriors. 1987• New Line

Cinema/Smart Egg. Producer: Robert Shaye. Screenplay: Wes
Craven, Bruce Wagner, Chuck Russell, Frank Darabont.
Photography: Roy H. Wagner. Music: Angelo Badalamenti.

Director: Chuck Russell.
Players: Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, Patricia

Arquette, Larry Fishburne, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson,
Brooke Bundy, John Saxon, Dick Cavett, Zsa Zsa Gabor. 97
minutes.
A. Nightmare on Elm Street IV— The Dream Master. 1988. New Line
Cinema/Smart Egg. Producer: Robert Shaye, Rachel Talalay.
Screenplay: Brian Helgeland, Scott Pierce, Michael Knue, Chuck
Weiss. Photography: Steven Fierberg. Music: Craig Safon.
Director: Renny Harlin.
Players: Robert Englund, Rodney Eastman, Danny Nassel, Andras

Jones, Tuesday Knight, Ken Sagoes, Lisa Wilcox, Brooke Bundy.
93 minutes.
A Nightmare on Elm Street V— The Dream Child. 1989* New Line

Cinema/Smart Egg. Producers: Robert Shaye, Rupert Harvey.
Screenplay: Leslie Bowera. Photography: Peter Levy. Music: Jay
Ferguson. Director: Stephen Hopkins.
Players: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Kelly Jo Minter, Danny

Hassel, Erika Anderson, Nick Mele, Joe Seely, Valorie
Armstrong. 95 minutes.
THE STUART GORDON-LOVECRAFT FILMS
Re-Animator (1985)
From Beyond (1986)
Despite the fact that only two films (not counting

producer Brian Yuzna's directorial effort, Bride of
Re-Animator [1991]) in the proposed series of Lovecraft
adaptations have so far been made, the erratic Stuart Gordon
and his quirky work have already carved an important niche in
the modern horror genre, and clearly are worthy of serious
consideration in any study of series films. Cheeky, rude, out
right vulgar, Gordon’s films are the closest modern horror has
come to recapturing something of the sense of style of the
great Universal films of the 1930s in our more liberated age.
Perhaps the best description of Gordon's style is to call him
the James Whale of splatter, though he lacks Whale’s precise
sense of purpose, thematic consistency, and theatre at the
present.
Re-Animator is both the more outrageous and the better of

the two films. Working from Lovecraft’s obscure Herbert West:
Re-Animator stories, afforded Gordon the freedom to make a
film that could charm the Lovecraft purist with its in-joke
savvy (even if it would have certainly appalled the repressed,
puritanical Lovecraft), while appealing to a far broader type
of audience. The more casual viewer could revel in the film’s
countless excesses and off-the-wall humor. The scholarly were
treated to references to Miskatonic University and the
Lovecraftian town of Arkham, Massachusetts, along with such
creative variations as translating Lovecraft's description of
the walking deads' wax-like heads into a villain with an ana
tomical dummy head plopped on his re-animated shoulders (his
real head is in the gym bag he carries) as a somewhat lame
method of passing unnoticed among the living. The sickly
humorous approach worked with viewers, but it was too much for
the MPAA, who, not surprisingly, denied a rating for Gordon's
313
cut of the film, thereby neatly killing the film's chances for
any decent distribution on the theatrical circuits. Happily,
the age of the videocassette rescued Re-Animator from the
oblivion these censorship tactics used to guarantee, and
Gordon's film quickly became a well-deserved cult success
paving the way for the more elaborate second film.
The brilliance of Gordon's approach is at once apparent in

the film's opening sequence. The scene is the typical grabber
opening— with a vengeance and a difference. We are, of course,
prepared for an exciting, bloody opening. We are not prepared
for the over-the-top presentation of one of Herbert West's un
fortunate attempts at reanimation's eyeballs exploding right
in our faces (and all over Gordon stock supporting player
Bunny Summers). Better— and the true key to Gordon's style— is
his presentation of what will become the quintessential Gordon
character (and actor) in the introduction of West himself. No
sooner has West (Jeffrey Combs) been accused of murdering his
experiment than he proclaims, "No, I did not," turns directly
to address the camera, bombastically explaining, "I gave him
life!" This stylistic flourish is Gordon at his best and the
sort of thing that makes him more clearly a filmmaker than any
other director consistently working within the confines of the
horror genre at the present time.
On the debit side, the next 20 minutes of the film are

given over to not very involving plot exposition. This is not
unusual in the genre, of course. The inability of a horror
film to live up to a blood and thunder opening has been with
us since the earliest days of film (though the grabber opening
as such is spawned by television). There is nothing exactly
wrong with Re-Animator's expository section, and it is clearly
necessary to the proper development of the film. However, it
is disappointing that the best Gordon can do in this stretch
of film is to attemptto enliven the proceedings by telegraph
ing his punches with a portent of things to come Talking Heads
poster in the background of one scene, and rely on the witty
playing of Combs and David Gale as the film's real villain,
the smarmy Dr. Carl Hill. The playing of the film's romantic
leads is no help. Though both Bruce Abbott and Barbara Cramp-
ton are attractive, pleasant performers, neither is capable of
holding our interest outside the confines of the overall plot.
When Gordon regains his footing with the reanimating of

Abbott1s cat, he does so with even more panache than evidenced
in his opening sequence. The sequence in question lands some
where on the vague border that separates Paul Morrissey's off-
handed grotesqueries and the Monty Python school of overkill

in a patently phony manner (the killer rabbit in Monty Python
and the Holy Grail, for example) as a source of humor. If we
examine the scene in any detail we find that it actually
consists of little more than two men flailing about in a dark
cellar (the only light is a Psycho homage swinging lamp) in
pursuit of an obviously non-existent, murderous zombified cat.
When we do finally see the ferocious feline, it is a lovably
hokey mechanical device that fools no one other than the
admirably straight-faced players. (Regardless of this patent
unreality, the film carefully documents the fact that no
animals were in any way abused in its making!) It is at this
point that Gordon fully seizes control of his film and never
lets go. From here on in Re-Animator goes from weird strength
to weirder strength as its catalogue of ever growing oddities
consistently increases in terms of creativity and downright
outrageousness.
Having intrigued Abbott with his glow-in-the-dark life-

giving serum, Combs manages to bamboozle the none-too-bright
hero into assisting him in his pursuit of reviving the dead by
utilising Abbottfs access to the medical school's morgue as a
convenient source for experimentation. Unfortunately, the dim-
witted Abbott insists on apprising the dean (Robert Sampson)
of this great scientific breakthrough, prompting the rather
conservative academician (described by daughter Crampton as
"the world's last living puritan," the dean is the perfect
embodiment of a non-thinking authority figure in the age of
Reaganism) to inconveniently toss the pair of them out of the
school. When they instead paya call on the morgue, the dean
has the bad luck to attempt to take them to task for this
infraction ("You're in a lot of trouble, both of you") just as
their decidedly ungrateful reanimated corpse totally loses
control, crushing the dean under a door, chomping off a few
fingers, and beating him to death. Sensing failure with
candidate number one, West stops the rampaging zombie by
boring a large hole through him with a bone saw, and opts to
try again on the nearest cadaver— the dean. "He interrupted an
important experiment in progress. Granted, it was an accident,
but this is the freshest body we could come across, save
killing one ourselves," he rationalizes as he pumps the man
full of day-glo reanimating fluid. No more delighted by being
brought back than his predecessor, the dean tries to throttle
the pair of them and ends up incarceratedin a padded cell
under the care of Dr. Hill, who quickly grasps the situation
and comes up with a plan of his own.
West may be stupidly zealous, but Hill is a seriously de

ranged megalomaniac. His idea is to steal West's formula and
take credit for the discovery, but this is short-lived when
Herbert decapitates his tormentor with a shovel— and then i n
advisedly reanimates both body and head ("West, you bastard,”
hisses Hill upon awakening), producing an even crazier and
more dangerous adversary. No longer content with such mundane
rewards as fame and wealth, Hill, despite the obvious drawback
of a sightless body that constantly bumps into walls, plots to
take over the world with an army of mind-controlled loboto-
mized zombies. His downfall comes in the guise of his sick
infatuation for Crampton, whom he kidnaps and attempts to
romance (the disembodied head performing cunnilingus on the
bound heroine had much to do with the denial of a rating),
taking her protesting screams for excitement. "That's it, my
dear Meg— more passion!" he cries as she attempts to rebuff
his advances. This tangent allows West the chance to break in
on him ("I must say, Dr. Hill, I'm very disappointed in you.
You steal the secret of life and death and here you are
trysting with a bubble headed co-ed— you're not even a second-
rate scientist!") and attempt to put the man in his place.
"You'll never get credit for my discovery," West assures him,
posing the reasonable question, "Who's going to listen to a
talking head? Get a job in a sideshow." Unfortunately, Hill
has made significant inroads into creating his zombie horde
and calls these ghastly (and apparently often odiferous) co
horts into play, giving him the upper hand until the zombie
dean has an attack of conscience at the sight of his daughter
imperiled by the rest of Hill's army. While the dean crushes
Hill's head, West injects the body with an overdose of serum,
producing not only the desired burn-out, but an unexpectedly
lively large intestine that does in West in boa constrictor
fashion. Somewhat unnecessarily— but not unenjoyably— the film
opts to go beyond this full-blown climax by having Crampton
strangled by a zombie so that Abbott can reanimate her corpse
for an open-ended ending.
Apart from the obvious excesses and outrages of the plot-

line itself, Re-Animator scores high on nearly every leve].
Though used in a grotesquely humorous fashion, the gore
effects are invariably outstanding and go far beyond the ex
pected. Just when it seems impossible that the film can go
further into the realm of cheerfully explosive bad taste,
Gordon proves that it can, it will, and he will unflinchingly
show it to us in graphic detail. Beyond this, the script and
the playing are of an unusually high calibre. The amazingly
deadpan Combs is perfect throughout. ("You mean he's dead?"
asks Abbott when Combs confesses the killing of Hill. "Uh, not
anymore," admits West in perfect imitation of a willfully
naughty schoolboy caught at nothing worse than cutting a
class, while Abbott plays Burns to his Allen, demanding,
"Herbert, this has got to stop!") In addition, David Gale is a
sleazy mad doctor from the old school— one might say a summa
cum laude graduate of the Lionel Atwill school of pop-eyed
lechery and delusions of grandeur. Not every actor could pull
off a role that calls for playing a disembodied head during a
large chunk of his screen time, but Gale manages this with
assurance and a now uncommon sense of delighting in the most
outrageous villainy for its own sake.
Marginally less successful (and not spawning much of a

cult) is From Beyond, a more ambitious and very slightly more
serious attempt. Shooting in Italy this time afforded the film
a more elaborate look, though it is unlikely that it cost sig
nificantly more than its predecessor. In view of the complex
ature of many of From Beyond1s effects, this was virtually a
necessity, but the Italian evocation of Arkham, Massachusetts
results in the film being largely limited to one major set and
a slight sense of claustrophobia. But perhaps the major draw
back to the film lies in the fact that it was adapted from a
well-known and popular Lovecraft story, requiring a greater
degree of adherence to the source material. Despite the
obvious need to flesh out the short story from which the film
comes, the script manages to faithfully adhere to both the
structure and spirit of its literary parent. The upshot of
this is an intelligent adaptation (which would still have set
its author's teeth on edge) that misses the full-blown out
rageousness of Re-Animator in the process. From Beyond isn't
compromised Gordon (save for pandering to the MPAA— a some
what empty gesture in light of Empire Pictures' pathetic
distribution facilities), but it is a bit constrained by a
certain reverence for its source.
The basic concept of the film is a strong one— that we are

surrounded by a world of hostile creatures that, under normal
circumstances, cannot be seen, nor can they see us. Genially
neurotic scientist Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) and
sadistically warped scientist Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel)
have, however, come up with a machine called the resonator,
which corrects this condition by stimulating the pineal gland
and thereby producing the requisite sixth sense for seeing
this other world. Unfortunately, it also allows the other
world to see its users and attack them. Worse, it has some
very nasty side-effects, such as producing a third eye,
encouraging sexual degeneracy (with Pretorius and his home

version of the Marquis de Sade's basement it has a head
start), and giving its users a taste for human brains. Before
the film is many minutes old, this definitely non-OSHA
approved contraption results in Pretorius* death and Tilling-
hast's incarceration in the local sanitarium. Pretorius'
murder (not to mention his missing head) prompts the police to
turn the affair over to psychiatrist Katherine McMichaels
(Barbara Crampton), who returns Tillinghast to the house to
recreate the experiment. What even the very unwilling Tilling
hast does not realize is that Pretorius has become a part of
the creature that twisted his head off and is now even more
demented and powerful than before. It isn't long before the
Pretorius monster can turn the machine on by himself and
prevent others from turning it off or destroying it. The
experiments go sufficiently awry that McMichaels turns into a
leatherclad S and M dominatrix, her policeman protector (Ken
Foree) is killed, and Tillinghast becomes a brain-sucking
horror controlled by the evil Pretorius. These antics get bot
McMichaels and Tillinghast locked up, but they manage <,0
escape back to the house where McMichaels plans on destroying
the resonator, not reckoning on Tillinghast's interference.
She manages to bring him back to himself by simply biting off
his snake-like third eye, resulting in an effective and
elaborate special-effects showdown between Tillinghast and
Pretorius, wherein Tillinghast is absorbed into the growing
monster Pretorius. In a delightfully unexpected move, Tilling
hast rebels from inside his nemesis, breaking through his
flesh in a life or death struggle that allows McMichaels to
get away just as the machine explodes.
What works best about From Beyond is the same thing that
had worked in Re-Animator— a singularly quirky sense of humor
that permeates every aspect of the film without undermining
its horrors. Even when the film is being hysterically funny
(which is somewhat less often than in Re-Animator) , it does
not stint on gore or excitement, and Gordon continues to
manage to top each successive effect with one just a little
more over the top than the last. Structurally, From Beyond
avoids the dullish patch of exposition found in the first
film, but it also never quite attains the full-tilt nuttiness
of its predecessor in the bargain.
Sticking pretty much to a kind of formula he established

with Re-Animator, Gordon manages to keep this more elaborate
entry under control, and in this he is certainly aided by the
reappearance of stock players Combs, Crampton, Carolyn Purdy-
Gordon, and Bunny Summers. If anything, Combs and Crampton are

even better here than they were in Re-Animator. This isn't too
surprising in Crampton's case since her role in this film is
considerably more interesting than her yeoman service as the
"bubble headed co-ed" in Re-Animator. On the other hand, it
seemed unlikely that Combs could do his Herbert West character
one better, yet he does. Instead of reprising his ultra-dead-
pan West, Combs gives us a performance that is pleasingly
similar to what one might expect from a young and diminutive
Anthony Perkins. His Tillinghast is a delightful catalogue of
neurotic gestures and speech patterns. Ken Foree is his usual
exploitation picture tower of strength (Foree can make the
most amazing balderdash seem plausible by his mere presence as
he did in the ghastly Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
III). And Ted Sorel may not be in quite the same league as
David Gale (on whom his performance is clearly patterned), but
he is an enjoyably personalized bad guy in an era when bad
guys are lucky to have any personality at all.
Unfortunately, Gordon's next film was the amusing Old Dark

House parody, Dolls, which did not continue the Lovecraft
series concept and did little to increase his reputation,
despite its many qualities. (There is no denying that it is a
far weaker film than his Lovecraft works, but it hardly
deserved the oblivion to which it was quickly consigned.)
Apart from having a hand in the gooey cute script for Honey, I_
Shrunk the Kids, Gordon's only release since Dolls has been
the much beleaguered and delayed (apparently, owing in no
small part to Gordon's personal problems) Robotjox, an
unqualified mess that may well have put an end to his career
as a film-maker and killed any chance for a continuation to
his worthy and unique Lovecraft series.
Re-Animator. 1985* Empire Pictures. Producer: Brian Yuzna.

Writers: Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, Stuart Gordon,
adapted from H.P. Lovecraft's Herbert West: Re-Animator
stories. Photography: Mac Ahlberg. Music: Richard Band.
Editor: Lee Percy. Art Director: Robert A. Burns. Director:
Stuart Gordon.
Players: Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs, David

Gale, Robert Sampson, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Peter Kent, Gerry
Black, Ian Patrick Williams, Barbara Pieters, Bunny Summers,
A1 Berry. 88 minutes.
From Beyond. 1986. Empire Pictures. Producer: Brian Yuzna.

Writers: Brian Yuzna, Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon, based on
H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond. Photography: Mac Ahlberg. Music:
Richard Band. Editor: Lee Percy. Production Designer: Giovanni
Navalucci. Director: Stuart Gordon.
Players: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, Ted

Sorel, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Bunny Summers, Bruce McGuire. 85
minutes.
Index
Abbott, Bruce 314, 315, 317

Abbott and Costello 46, 47, 75
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein 33, 46-47,49
Abbott and Costello Meet the InvisibleMan 71,75,77
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy 36,57, 58
Abominable Dr. Phibes, The 245-248, 250
Acquanetta 172, 173
Adams, Dorothy 109
Adams, Ernie 122
After Many a. Summer 1 29
Alberni, Luis 63
Albritton, Louise 30
Ames, Michael 135
Ames, Ramsay 56, 170
Andrews, Robert D. 108
Angel Heart xv
Ankers, Evelyn 30, 43, 171, 172, 173
Ape, The 137
Ape Man, The 119, 131-133, 134, 136, 138, 162
Argento, Dario 239, 286
Arkoff, Samuel Z. 245
Arnold, Edward 64, 172
Arsenic and Old Lace 110
Arthur, Jean 14, 18
Asher, Jack 186, 195, 207
Ashton, Roy 188, 210
Atkins, Tom 285
Attias, Daniel 288
Atwill, Lionel xv, 39, 42, 44, 59-69, 165, 179, 180
Avengers, The 245, 247
Ayres, Lew 275, 276
321
Baird, Stuart 274

Baker, Roy Ward 202
Balderston, John xiv, 24, 51, 52, 196
Balsam, Martin 226
Barclay, Joan 128
Barr, Roseanne 310
Barrett, Edith 145, 144
Barrymore, John 74
Barrymore, Lionel 7, 10
Bass, Saul 226
Batt, Brett 191
Baxter, Warner 10
Beaudine, William 132, 135, 154, 155, 162
Beaumont, Charles 217
Beaumont, Hugh 147
Bedazzled 276
Bedlam 141, 151-152, 155
Beebe, Ford 74, 141
Before I Hang 105, 107-108, 112
Behind the Mask 87
Belfrage, Cedric 75
Bellamy, Ralph 41, 42
Best, Willie 115, 116, 117, 118
Bey, Turhan 55
Big Broadcast of 1958, The 113
Big City, The 3
Billy the Kid Versus Dracula 132, 134
Bishop Murder Case, The 105
Black Cat, The (l954T~xi, 52, 79-82, 85, 87, 88, 119
Black Bird, The xiii, 3, 6-7, 11
Black Dragons 119, 127-128, 133, 154, 158
Black Friday 79, 87-88, 89, 120, 121, 149
Black Raven, The 155, 162-164, 166
Blair, Linda 255, 256, 257
Blakely, Ronee 306
Blatty, William Peter 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257-260
Blees, Robert 245, 248
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb 207, 211-213
Blue Velvet 268
Bluebeard (1944) 161
Body Snatcher, The 79> 141, 149-150, 151, 153
Boem, David 83
Boogie Man Will Get You, The 105, 110-111, 112
Boorman, John 254-257
Bowery at Midnight 6, 119, 128, 130-133, 138, 174
Boys in the Band, The 252
Index 325
Brazzi, Hossano 277

Bredell, Elwood 87
Brice, Monte 180
Bride of Frankenstein xi, xiv, 29, 33, 35-38, 39, 40, 42, 45,
48, 188
Bride of Re-Animator 313
Brides of Dracula 139, 160, 195, 198-199, 204
Brissac Virginia 87, 117
Bromberg, J. Edward 174, 175
Brook, Clive 13, 17
Brooks, Jean 147
Brown, Karl 107, 132
Brown, Wally 144, 177-181
Browning, Tod xiii, xiv, 3-12, 23-26, 51, 52, 185, 195
Bruce, David 170
Bruce, Virginia 74
Burke, Kathleen 65, 66
Burns, Marilyn 265
Burr, Jeff 271
Busch, Mae 4, 5, 6, 60, 158
Cabanne, Christy 53
Calling Dr. Death 169-171, 172, 174, 175
Carewe, Arthur Edmund 63
Carlisle, Mary 158, 160
Carlson, Richard 117
Carney, Alan 144, 177-181
Carpenter, John 281-284
Carradine, John 44, 45, 56, 134, 135, 136, 137, 198
Carreras, Michael 209, 211
Carrie (1976) 303, 307
Carson, L.M. "Kit" 266
Carter, Ann 148
Cat and the Canary, The (1939) 1 13-1 15, 1 16, 1 18
Cat People (1942) 141, 142-143, 145, 146, 152
Cater, John 248
Cavett, Dick 310
Chandler, Helen 26, 28, 52
Chaney, Lon xiii, 3-12
Chaney, Lon,Jr. 30, 40, 42, 44, 45, 47, 55, 156, 169-175, 198
Charles, Robert 134
Charlie Chan in London 73
Charters, Spencer 83
Chudnow, David 162
Churchill, Margurite 28
Cianelli, Eduardo 54
Citizen Kane 256
Clark, Fred 210
Clive, Colin 41
Cobb, Lee J. 254
Coe, Peter 44, 56
Collins, Wilkie 99
Cole, Lester 73
Colton, John 52, 84, 85
Columbia Pictures 67, 105-112, 131, 155, 198
Combs, Jeffrey 314, 315, 317, 318, 319
Comedy of Terrors, A 1 51 , 220
Compson, Betty 122
Conjure Wife 171
Conway, Jack 3, 6
Conway, Tom 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148, 149
Cook, Peter 276
Cooper, Alice 299, 310
Cooper, Violet Kemble 85
Cooper, Willis 39
Corman, Roger 215-224
Corpse Vanishes, The 119, 128-130, 131, 137, 138, 174
Corrigan, Lloyd 18, 20, 21
Cotten, Joseph 246, 247, 249
Court, Hazel 218, 219, 221
Cowan, William 10
Crampton, Barbara 314, 315, 316, 318, 319
Craven, Wes 303-307, 308, 310
Crawford, Joan 8
Creepers 286
''Crime Club" xiv, 64, 169, 172
Crimes at the Dark House 91 , 96, 99-104
Crimes of Passion 229, 231
Crimes of Stephen Hawke, The 91 , 94-96, 103, 104
Crosby, Floyd 216
Cruze, James 64
Currie, Louise 133
Curse of Frankenstein 181-185, 192, 193, 195
Curse of the Cat People 141,148-149, 152, 153
Curse of the Demon 152
Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb 207, 209-210, 212
Curse of the Wraydons 102
Curtiz, Michael 59, 61, 62, 63
Curzon, George 96
Cushing, Peter 182-194, 195-206, 207-209, 211
Index 325
D'Abaddie D ’Arrast 72
Dade, Frances 18
Damien: Omen II 273, 275-276, 278
Daniell, Henry 149, 150
Dark Eyes of London 1 30
Darling, ¥. Scott 171
Daughter of the Dragon 13, 18-20, 21
Dawn of the Dead xv, 237, 239-241, 242, 243
Day of the Dead 237, 241-242, 245
Dead M a n ’s Eyes 1 6 9 , 1 7 2 - 1 7 3 , 175
Dead Men Walk 1 5 5 , 158- 162, 166
Deane, Hamilton 24, 196
Deane, Julia 148
Dee, Frances 145, 144
DeLeon, Walter 115
Denberg, Susan 190
DePalma, Brian 305
Depp, Johnny 306
Devil Bat, The 155, 156, 157, 165, 166
Devil Commands, The 105, 108-110, 112
Diamond Jim 64
Dickey, Paul 115
Dieterle, William 72, 79
Dillon, John Francis 87
Dix, Richard 148
Dmytryk, Edward 109, 110
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) 42, 65, 293
Dr. Phibes Rises Again 245, 248-249, 250
Doctor X xv, 59-62, 63, 68
Dolls 319
Donnell, Jeff 110
Donner, Richard 274
Donovan *s Brain 87
Donovan *"3 Reef 145
Doran, Ann 106
Douglas, Melvyn 66, 67
Dourif, Brad 258, 259
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan 57
Dracula (1931) xiv, 9, 11, 23-27, 28, 30, 35, 51, 52, 53, 64,
120, 144, 158, 182, 185, 195, 207
Dracula A.D. 1972 195, 203, 205
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave 195, 200-201
Dracula, Prince of Darkness 195, 199-200, 204
Dracula's Daughter 23, 27-29, 31, 46

Drake, Frances 52
Dressed to Kill 303
Dugan, Tom 60
Dumbrille, Douglass 173, 174
Earles, Harry 3 , 4 , 5
Eaten Alive 265
Eatwell, Brian 245, 246
Ebert, Roger 281, 282, 293
Eburne, Maude 66, 110
Edge of Running Water, The 108
Elder, John 188, 190, 193, 199, 200, 201
Ellison, James 143
Emery, Gilbert 28, 32
Emery, Katherine 151
Emmett, Fern 159
Empire Pictures 317
Enemy from Space xiii
Englund, Robert 305
Erdody, Leo 161
Evil of Frankenstein 181, 188-190, 194
Ewing, Barbara 201
Excalibur 256
Exorcist, The 251-254, 255, 257, 260
Exorcist II: The Heretic xiii, 251, 254-257, 258, 261
Exorcist III, The xv, 249, 251, 254, 257-260, 261
Face at the Window, The xi, 91, 97-99, 101, 102, 103-104
Farrell, Glenda 62, 63
Fatal Attraction 299
Fearless Vampire Killers, The 198
Feldman, Corey 295
Fielding, Edward 173
Fields, W.C. 15, 132
Filipi, Carmen 288
Final Conflict, The 273, 276-279
Fisher, Terence 159, 183-188, 190-193, 195-200, 201, 207-
288
Flanders, Ed 258, 260
Fleming, Victor 25
Fletcher, Bramwell 18
Fletcher, Louise 256
Index 327
Florey, Robert xiv, 33, 34, 133

Fly, The xv
Flying Serpent, The 155, 157, 165-166, 167
Fog Island 155, 156, 164-165, 167
Foran, Dick 54, 55
Ford, John 143, 162
Ford, Wallace 54, 55, 121, 132, 133
Foree, Ken 277, 318, 319
Foreman, Carl 126
Fort, Garrett 29
Foulger, Byron 106, 163
Fox Pictures 83
Fox, Sidney 52
Fox, Wallace 6, 128, 130, 133, 174, 175
Foxworth, Robert 275
Fraker, William 256
Francis, Freddie 188, 200
Frankenstein xiv, 23, 33-35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 47, 56, 66, 71,
120, 158, 251
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell 181, 192-193, 194
Frankenstein Created Woman 181, 190-191, 194
Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman 33, 42-43, 44, 48, 122, 188
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed 181, 191-192
Frankenstein Unbound 221
Franklin, Richard 227, 228
Franz, Arthur 75
Frazer, Robert 256
Freaks 5
French Connection, The 252
Freund, Karl 51-153, 207, 211
Friday the 13th xv, 281, 286, 289, 293, 294-295, 300, 305, 307
Friday the 13thPart II 293, 295, 299, 300
Friday the 13thPart IV: The Final Chapter 293, 296, 300
Friday the 13th Part V; A New Beginning 293, 296-297, 300
Friday the 13thPart VI: Jason Lives! 293, 297-299, 300
Friday the 13thPart VII: The New Blood 293, 299, 301
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan 293, 299-300,
301
Friday the 13th 3-D 293, 295-296, 299, 300
Friedkin, William 251-254, 257, 258
Fritsch, Gunther 148
From Beyond 313, 317-320
Front Page, The 60
Frozen Ghost, The 169, 173-174, 175
Frye, Dwight 25, 26, 66, 67, 158
Fuest, Robert 245-250
Fulton, John P. 45, 73, 85
Gabor, Zsa Zsa 310

Gale, David 314, 517, 519
Gallow, Janet Ann 41
Galsworthy, John 71 , 72
Gates, Harvey 128
Gavin, John 228
Gendron, Pierre 164
Genius at Work 179-180
Ghost Breakers, The 113, 115-118
Ghost of Frankenstein 35, 40-42, 45, 45, 46, 48, 121, 141, 187
Ghost Ship, The 141, 148, 150, 155
Ghosts on the Loose 119, 122, 155-154, 158, 179
Ghoul, The 79
Gibson, Alan 205, 204
Gilling, John 210
Goddard, Charles W. 115
Goddard, Paulette 115, 116
Godfrey, Derek 246, 247, 248
Goldsmith, Jerry 275
Goldstein, William 245
Gomez, Thomas 172
Goodhart, William 254, 255
Goodwins, Leslie 56
Gorcey, Leo 125, 155
Gordon, Stuart 315-520
Gothic xv
Grant, Arthur 190, 211
Grant, Lawrence 18
Grant, Lee 275, 276, 277
Gray, Lorna 106
Greed of William Hart, The 102
Green Hell 55
Grey, Nan 75
Griffith, Hugh 247, 248
Grinde, Nick 105, 107
Grot, Anton 62
Gunzberg, Milton 108
Gwynne, Anne 44, 87, 171, 172
Hall, Charles D. 66, 80, 183

Hall, Henry 135, 156
Hall, Huntz 125, 155
Hall, Jon 74
Index 329
Halloween 281-183, 290

Halloween II 281 , 283-285, 289, 290
Halloween III: Season of the Vitch 281 , 285-286, 290
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers 281, 286-289, 290,
291
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers 281 , 289-290, 291
Halperin, Victor 65
Hamilton, Neil 14, 16, 18
Hammer Pictures 181-213, 215
Hardwicke, Sir Cedric 41, 73, 74
Harrigan, William 72
Harris, Danielle 287
Hay, Will 132
Hayakawa, Sessue 18, 19, 20
Hayward, Frederick 95
Hecht, Ben 60
Heggie, O.P. 13, 15, 16, 18
Heller, Otto 209
Henley, Hobart 87
Herbert, Holmes 18
Herrmann, Bernard 226
Heydt, Louis Jean 178
Hillbillies in the Haunted House 134
Hillyer, Lambert 29, 31, 46, 84, 85
Hinds, Anthony 188, 209
Hitchcock, Alfred 225-227, 229, 232
Hobson, Valerie 52
Hodge, Kate 271
Hoffman, David 169
Hoffman, Dustin 82
Hohl, Arthur 173
Hold That Ghost 46
Holden, Gloria 28
Holden, William 275, 279
Holland, Tom 227, 228
Holt, Seth 211
Honey, I_ Shrunk the Kids 319
Hooper, Tobe 263-271
Hope, Bob 113-118
Hopper, Dennis 267, 268, 271
Horne, Victoria 174
Horror of Dracula 195-198, 200, 204
House of Dracula 33, 45-46, 47, 49, 56, 188, 198
House of Frankenstein 33, 44-45, 47, 48, 56, 187, 196, 198
House of Usher 215-216, 223
House of Wax 61 , 247
Howatt, Nina 121
Hunter, Kim 147

Hussey, Olivia 234
Huxley, Aldous 129
I Am Legend 238
I Walked with a Zombie xi, 118, 134, 141, 143-145, 150, 152,
178
Ingram, Rex 146
Inner Sanctum 169-175
International House 65
Invaders from Mars (1987) 266
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) 285
Invisible Agent 71, 74, 76
Invisible Ghost 119, 121-125, 131, 137
Invisible Man, The xi, xiv, 36, 38, 71-73, 76
Invisible Man Returns, The 71 , 73-74,75,76
Invisible Man's Revenge, The 71, 74-75, 76
Invisible Woman, The 71, 74, 76
Island of Lost Souls 42, 65
Isle of the Dead 141, 150-151, 153, 215
It's Never Too Late to Mend 91 , 96, 103
Ivan, Rosalind 174
Janney, William 64
Jay, Griffin 53, 54
Jeffrey, Peter 246, 247, 248
Jeffreys, Anne 178, 179, 180
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter 132
Jewel of the Seven Stars 211
Jewell, Isabel 147
Johann, Zita 52, 53
Johnson, Bill 267
Johnson, Noble 117
Jolley, I. Stanford 163
Jones, Darby 177, 179
Joyce, Brenda 174
Judge, Arlene 121
Karloff, Boris xiv, 13, 35, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 51, 52, 53,
59, 67, 79-89, 105-112, 120, 121, 132, 137, 149, 150, 151,
152, 155, 183, 195, 218, 220, 221
Index 331
Katzman, Sam 119, 121, 133, 135

Keir, Andrew 199
Kellaway, Cecil 54, 55
Kelly, Lew 131
Kemp, Valli 249
Kent, Robert E. 180
Kent, Ted 73
Kenton, Erie C. 40, 41, 44, 65, 121
Kerry, Norman 8
Kesserling, Joseph 110
King, George xv, 91-104
Kingsford, Walter 86
Kiss of the Vampire 80, 286
Knightriders 239, 240
Knowles, Patric 42, 43
Knox, Elyse 55
Kongo 10
Kosleck, Martin 56, 173
Kruger, Otto 28
Laemmle, Carl xiv, 27, 29, 46, 51, 53, 79, 83, 86, 119, 120,
121
Lair of the White Worm, The xv, 196
Lamont, Charles 56
Lanchester, Elsa 36
Landers, Lew 44, 82, 105, 110, 119
Lang, Charles 114, 116
Langenkamp, Heather 306, 307, 308, 309
Last Flight, The 72, 81
Last Man on Earth, The 238
Laughter 72
Laughton, Charles 36, 227, 230
Lawton, Frank
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III 263, 319
Le Borg, Reginald 56
Lee, Christopher 182, 195-206, 207-209
Lee, Rowland V. 15, 17, 20, 39, 40, 120
Leiber, Fritz 171, 172
Leigh, Janet 225, 232, 234
Leni, Paul 114
Leon, Valerie 211
Leonard, Sheldon 177
Leopard Man, The 141, 145-146, 150, 152
Lewis, Fiona 248
Lewis, Joseph H. 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 131, 141

Lewton, Val 109, 110, 141-153, 161, 216, 281
Liberty, Richard 242
Lifeforce 266, 271, 272
Lisztomania 304
Little, Dwight H. 286
Lodge, John 65, 66
Loggia, Robert 229
London After Midnight 3, 7-8, 12
Lorre, Peter 74, 110, 111, 219, 220, 221
Lost in a Harem 46
Lovecraft, H. P. 313-320
Lowe, Edward T. 44
Lubin, Arthur 87, 120
Lucky Stiff 230
Lugosi, Bela xi, xiv, 6, 7, 23-27, 30, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 42,
43, 44, 46, 47, 59, 79-89, 91, 105, 110, 111, 119-134, 144,
149, 150, 155, 156, 157, 159, 165, 174, 177-180, 195, 196,
198, 242, 257
Lukas, Paul 64, 116
Lumet, Sidney 80
Lynch, David 268
Lynne, Adrian 299
MacArthur, Charles 60
McCarty, John 273
McDonald, David 96
MacDonald, Edmund 87
MacGowran, Jack 254
McGuire, John 122, 124, 125
McHugh, Frank 63
McKay, Wanda 163
McKern, Leo 275
McLaglen, Victor 3, 4
Macnee, Patrick 145
Mad Doctor of Market Street, The 141
Mad Genius, The 61, 63
Mad Love 53
Mad Monster, The 155, 156-158, 166
Madison, Noel 163
Magician, The (1926) 146
Mahler 304
Maltin, Leonard 303
Mamoulian, Rouben 42, 65, 293
Man They Could Not Hang, The 105-106, 108, 111
Index 333
Man Who Reclaimed His Head, The 174

Man with Nine Lives, The 105, 106-107, 108, 112
Mank, Gregory William 43
Man-Made Monster 1 58
Manners, David 25, 26, 28, 52, 81
March, Fredric 72
Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn 91 , 92-93, 94, 95,
9 9 , 102
Mark of the Vampire 7, 8, 9
Marshall, George 116, 117
Martin 239
Martin, Helen and A1 122
Masque of the Red Death, The 215, 221-222, 224
Massey, Ilona 43
Maxwell, Edwin 63
Mescall, John J. 81
Middlemass, Robert 163
Middleton, Charles 164
Miles, Vera 228
Milland, Ray 217, 218, 219
Miller, Jason 258
Miller, Seton I. 65
Miracle Woman, The 82
Missing Guest, The 64
Mississippi 65
Moesley, Bill 267
Monkey Shines 242
Monogram Pictures xi, 6, 67, 119-138, 161, 174, 246
Monster, The 134
Monty Python and the Holy Grail 315
Moore, Clayton 127
Moore, Matt 4
Moran, Frank 129, 130, 134, 136
Moran, Peggy 55
Morrissey, Paul 314
Morse, Terry 164
Mummy, The (1932) xi, 51-53, 56, 57, 64, 207, 208
Mummy, The (1959) 207-209, 212, 288
Mummy's Curse, The 51, 56, 57
Mummy's Ghost, The 51, 56-57, 209
Mummy's Hand, The 51, 53-55, 56, 57, 207, 208
Mummy *s Shroud, The 207, 210-211, 212
Mummy's Tomb, The 51, 55-56, 57, 207, 208
Murder by the Clock 60, 65
Murder in the Blue Room 64
Murders at the Zoo 59, 65-66, 68, 69
Murders in the Rue Morgue 32, 64, 133

Murnau, F.W. 24
Muse, Clarence 122, 123
Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, The 13-13, 20
Mysterious Mr. Wong, The 121, 128
Mystery of the Wax Museum xv, 59,60, 61, 62-63, 69
Myton, Fred 158, 162
Nagel, Anne 87, 158

Naish, J. Carroll 44, 45, 170
Neill, Roy William 43
Neill, Sam 277, 278
Neumann, Kurt 64
Neville, John T. 165
Newfield, Sam 156-167
Nicholson, Jack 221
Nicholson, James H. 245
Nigh, William 121, 127, 128
Night Has Eyes, The 172
Night Key 107
Night Monster 122, 141
Night of the Hunter 227
Night of the Living Dead 237-239, 240, 242
Night World 87
Nightmare on Elm Street, A xv, 286, 303-307, 310
Nightmare on ElmStreet II: Freddy's Revenge, A 303, 307, 310
Nightmare on ElmStreet III: Dream Warriors, A 303, 308-309,
310-311
Nightmare on ElmStreet IV: The Dream Master, A 303, 309, 311
Nightmare on ElmStreet V: The Dream Child, A 303, 309-310,
311
Nightmare on Elm Street VI, A 310
Ninth Configuration, The 254, 257, 258
North, Virginia 246
Nosferatu (1922) 24
Nugent, Elliott 113, 114, 116, 117
Oakie, Jack 179

O'Connor, Una 37
O'Driscoll, Martha 45, 46
Of Mice and Men 1 56
O'Herlihy, Dan 285
Oingo Boingo 267
Index 335
O'Keefe, Dennis 145, 149

Oland, Warner 13-21
Old Dark House, The (1932) 35, 36, 37, 71, 72, 113, 305
Old-Fashioned Way, The 132
Omen, The 275-275, 278
One More River 71
Othenin-Girard, Dominique 289
Ouspenskaya, Maria 42
Outside the Law (1921) 3, 7
Paige, Robert 30, 31

Pallette, Eugene 17
Palm Beach Story, The 267
Palmer, Betsy 293, 295
Paramount on Parade 13, 17, 20
Paramount Pictures 13, 17, 41, 65, 113, 115, 300
Parks, Larry 110
Pastell, George 208, 210
Pataki, Michael 287
Patrick 227
Patrick, Gail 65
Pearl of Death 171
Peck, Gregory 274, 275, 276
Peckinpah, Sam 82
Peel, David 199
Penny, Ralph 108
Perkins, Anthony 226-235
Perry, Lou 267
Phantom Creeps, The 86
Phantom of the Opera, The (1962) 188
Pichel, Irving 28, 29
Pierce, Jack 183
Pilato, Joseph 242
Pillow of Death 169, 174-175, 176
Pit and the Pendulum, The 215, 216-217, 223
Pleasance, Donald 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290
Poe, Edgar Allan 215-224
Pogany, Willy 52
Polanski, Roman 146, 198, 212
Poltergeist 266
Poppy 65
Pounder, C.C.H. 234
Powell, William 17
PRC Pictures 155-167
Premature Burial, The 215, 217-219, 223

Price, Vincent 75, 74, 215-224, 238, 239, 245-250
Priestley, J.B. 305
Probyn, Bryan 195
Prowse, David 195
Pryor, Roger 107
Psycho 225-227, 252, 255, 281
Psycho II 225, 227-229, 255
Psycho III 225, 229-255, 255
Psycho IV; The Beginning 225, 255-255
Purdy-Gordon, Carolyn 518
Putnam, Nina Wilcox 51
Quarry, Robert 248, 249

Quatermass 2_ xiii
Rains, Claude 42, 71 , 72, 174

Randall, Robert 165
Randolph, Jane 142, 145, 145, 148, 152
Rathbone, Basil 59, 40, 41
Raven, The (1935) 52, 79, 82-84, 85, 88, 105, 106
Raven, The (1963) 215, 220-221, 223
Reade, Charles 96
Re-Animator xv, 515-517, 518, 319
Regas, George 114
Reicher, Frank 56
Reizenstein, Franz 208
Remember Last Night? 64, 71
Remick, Lee 274
Rendezvous at Midnight 64
Renegades 25
Rennahan, Ray 61 , 62
Reported Missing 64
Republic Pictures 88
Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, The 13, 15-17
Return of the Ape Man 119, 156-137, 158, 191
Return of the Vampire 44, 198
Revenge of Frankenstein 181, 185-188, 191, 195, 1
Revere, Ann 109
Ridges, Stanley 87, 121
Rigg, Diana 245
Ring of Thoth, The 51
Index 337
RKO Pictures 141, 149, 177, 180

Road Back, The 120
Road to Mandalay, The 3, 7, 10, 11
Robinson, Bernard 208
Robinson, Edward G. 148
Robotjox 319
Robson, Mark 141, 146-148, 150, 216
Roemheld, Heinz 81
Rogers, Charles R. 120
Rogue1s Tavern, The 162
Romero, George A. 237-243
Rosemary*s Baby 148
Rosen, Phil 125, 136, 191
Rosenthal, Rick 283
Rosmer, Milton 92
Rossitto, Angelo 126, 130, 133
Ruggles, Charlie 65
Ruman, Sig 44, 45
Russell, Elizabeth 129, 147, 148, 171, 172
Russell, Ken 125, 196, 203, 227, 229, 231, 253, 274, 304
Saint's Double Trouble, The 88

Salter, Hans J. 30, 43, 44, 87
Salzedos, Leonard 186
Sampson, Robert 315
Sangster, Jimmy 117, 118, 186, 195, 207
Sasdy, Peter 201, 202
Satanic Rites of Dracula, The 195, 203, 205
Savini, Tom 267
Saxon, John 306, 308
Scars of Dracula 195, 202-203, 205
Scarwid, Diana 231, 233
Schayer, Richard 51
Schnitzer, Gerald 128
Schow, David J. 271
Scott, George C. 258, 259, 260
Scott, Sherman 165
Scott-Taylor, Jonathan 276
Searchers, The 162
Secret of the Blue Room 59, 63-64, 68
Secret of the Chateau 64
Seventh Victim, The 141, 146-148, 150, 153
Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror 91, 92, 96-97, 103
Shadows Over Chinatown 164
Shane, Maxwell 53, 54

Sharp, Don 80, 286
Shelley, Barbara 200
Sherlock Holmes and the Scarlet Claw 56
Sherriff, B.C. 71, 72
Showboat 72
Sidney, Sylvia 275
Siedow, Jim 265, 267, 270, 271
Simon, Simone 142, 145, 148
Siodmak, Curt(is) (Kurt) 42, 43, 44, 87
Siodmak, Robert 29, 30, 31
Sir Lancelot 144, 177, 178
Siskel, Gene 281, 282, 293
Skinner, Frank 40
Slaughter, Tod xv, 91-104
Sloane, William 108
SIoman, Edward 60, 65
Smith, Kent 142, 143, 145, 148, 151
Son of Dracula 29-30, 31, 170, 198
Son of Frankenstein 33, 38-40, 41, 45, 48, 53, 79, 120
Sorel, Ted 317, 319
S.O.S* Coastguard 88
Sparrows 132
Spooks Hun Wild 119, 125-127, 128, 129, 133, 137, 138
Spring-Heeled Jack, The Terror of London 102
Starling, Lynn 115
Steele, Barbara 217
Stephen King *s Silver Bullet 288
Stevens, Onslow 45, 46, 64
Stoker, Bram 29, 196
Stone, George E. 66
Stone, Milburn 173
Strange Confession 169, 174, 176
Strange, Glenn 44, 45, 156, 157, 162
Straw Dogs 82
Strayer, Frank 66, 67
Stuart, Gloria 64
Sturges, Preston 267
Summers, Bunny 314, 318
Super Sleuth 179
Supernatural 65
Sutherland, A. Edward 64, 65, 74
Sutter1s Gold 64
Sutton, John 73
Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street 91, 93-94, 96,
99, 102, 103
Index 359
Tales of Terror 215, 219-220, 223

Taste the Blood of Dracula 193, 201-202, 205
Taylor, Eric 87
Temple, Shirley 83
Tenant, The 21 2
Terry-Thomas 247, 248
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The 263-266, 272
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The xv, 263, 266-271, 272
Theater of Blood 245
Thesiger, Ernest 37
Thirteenth Chair, The 25
Thomas, Henry 234
Ticket-of-Leave Man, The 91 , 96, 103
Time of Their Lives, The 46
Tingwell, Charles 200
Toch, Ernst 115, 116
Tomb of Ligeia 215, 222-223, 224
Tommy 162, 227, 274
Tourneur, Jacques 118, 134, 142-146, 151, 152, 219
Towers, Richard 62
Tracy, Lee 60, 61, 62, 63
Trowbridge, Charles 54
TV Movies and Video Guide 303
Twentieth Century Fox Pictures 275
Tyler, Tom 54, 55
Ulmer, Edgar G. 79-82, 83, 119, 146, 161

Unholy Three, The (1925) xiii, 3-6, 7, 8, 11
Universal Pictures xiii, xiv, xv, 23, 26, 29, 30, 35, 41, 42,
44, 46, 51, 55, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71, 74, 79,
80, 83, 84, 85, 87, 91, 119, 120, 121, 141, 144, 149, 151,
156, 169, 174, 181, 182, 183, 186, 188, 189, 195, 198, 201,
207, 208, 209
Unknown, The 3, 8-10, 12
Urecal, Minerva 129, 130, 132, 135
Valentino (1977) 125

Vampire Bat, The 59* 66-68, 69, 158
Van Horn, Emil 132
Van Sloane, Edward 26, 27, 28, 51, 52, 107
Verdugo, Elena 44, 45, 47, 173
Vertigo 231
Vitale, Joseph 177, 178, 179
Voigt, Jon 255
Von Sydow, Max 254
Voodoo Man 119, 134-136, 138
Waggner, George 42, 121, 158

Walker, Stuart 84, 145
Walker, Terry 123
Walking Dead, The 61
Walters, Thorley 190
Warde, Shirley 108
Ware, Irene 84
Warner, David 274
Warner Bros. Pictures xv, 59, 60, 62, 63, 254, 255
Waterloo Bridge 34, 72
Waxman, Franz 40, 85
Webb, Roy 142
Weird Woman 169, 171-172, 175
Welles, Orson 256
Wells, H.G. 71, 75
Wells, Jacqueline 52
Werevolf of London xiv, 46, 52, 84, 145
West of Zanzibar 3, 7, 9-10, 12
West, Roland 134
Whale, James xiv, 23, 24, 33-38, 39, 55, 61, 64, 67, 71-73,
74, 75, 81, 113, 120, 170, 183, 190, 191, 218, 227, 251, 255,
289, 305
Where East Is East 3, 10-11, 12
White Zombie 118, 122, 129, 143, 242
Whiton, James 245
Wilcox, Lisa 309
Willard, John 113
William, Warren 42
Williams, Caroline 267, 268, 269, 270
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory 285
Windbag the Sailor 132
Wise, Robert 148, 149
Wolfe, Ian 177, 178
Wolfman, The 42, 121, 156
Woman in White, The 99
Women in Love 253
Wong, Anna May 18
Wray, Fay 66, 67
Wray, John 114
Index
Wynn, Kitty 256

Wyss, Amanda 507
X,Y,Z
You'll Find Out 79, 107, 111, 179

Young, Clara Kimball 162
Young, Harold 55, 141
Young, Nedrick 160
Young, Polly Ann 122
Zardoz 254
Zombies on Broadway 144, 177-179, 180
Zucco, George 44, 54, 55, 113, 134, 135, 136, 155-167

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:

A CRITICAL GUIDE TO HORROR

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be tradem arks or registered

ISBN: 978-0-415-83865-8 (Set)

GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC. • NEW YORK & LONDON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hanke, Ken, 1954-

Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper

First and foremost, I must acknowledge the great contribution

My sincere thanks also go to the usual crew of supporters and

The idea of doing a book on horror film series was both an

In writing this book, it was my aim to take a fresh look

The motion picture industry has always recognized a good

It can be argued that the fantastic short films of Georges

A horror series in the more accepted sense of a continuing

It now seems peculiarly apt that Universal should have

Curiously, the idea of continuing a story did not at once

Universal was not alone. Most of the studios tried to

The tendency to peer down one's nose at series films fails

Lobby Card for Voodoo Man (1944).

The Unholy Three (1925)

While it is debatable whether or not the bulk of the

The first significant Browning-Chaney work is 1925's The

first hatch their nefarious scheme, and even this is marred by

The storyline of the film is one that only an obsessive

to the non-existent menace) brought on for the simple purpose

Browning's preoccupation with characters whose main claim

con man like himself should be treated with greater respect.)

Despite its legendary status almost everything about

Somewhat better made but altogether less interesting is

If The Black Bird looks backwards to Outside the Law and

The long lost London After Midnight may well be the

that the whole affair had been an absurdly involved ruse to

The Browning-Chaney perversity reached its peak in The

In many ways, The Unknown is the best of the extant

Nearly as perverse as The Unknown, West of Zanzibar is a

point he has her brought to him in his newfound jungle kingdom

Strangely, for all its basically unwholesome atmosphere,

The final Browning-Chaney offering, Where East Is East, is

by the sheer mechanics of those obsessions. Chaney plays Tiger

Unique and fascinating as they are, the Browning-Chaney

The Unholy Three. 1925* MGM. Producer: Tod Browning. Screen­

Players: Lon Chaney, Mae Busch, Matt Moore, Victor McLaglen,

The Black Bird. 1926. MGM. Screenplay: Waldemar Young. Story:

Players: Lon Chaney, Renee Adoree, Doris Lloyd, Owen Moore,

The Road to Mandalay. 1926. MGM. Screenplay: Elliott Clawson.

Players: Lon Chaney, Lois Moran, Owen Moore, Henry B.

Walthall, Kamiyama Sojin, John George. 7 reels.

London After Midnight. 1927* MGM. Screenplay: Waldemar Young.

Players: Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall, Percy

The Unknown. 1927* MGM. Screenplay: Waldemar Young. Story: Tod

Players: Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Norman Kerry, Nick de

West of Zanzibar. 1928. MGM. Screenplay: Elliott Clawson,

Players: Lon Chaney, Lionel Barrymore, Mary Nolan, Warner

Where East Is East. 1929* MGM. Producer: Tod Browning. Screen­

Players: Lon Chaney, Lupe Velez, Estelle Taylor, Lloyd Hughes,

The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929)

Venerable bewhiskered grandfather of horror film series in

though marred by typical early talkie sound effects that sound

Jumping ahead to 1920s London (via explanatory title, of

A great deal of the action takes place at an old dark

It is in the last section that the film truly catches fire

Without being an especially good film, The Mysterious Dr.

The Unholy Three. 1925* MGM. Producer: Tod Browning. Screen

Where East Is East. 1929* MGM. Producer: Tod Browning. Screen

As an extension of the homosexuality allegory of Franken