Tweet

KARLOFF & LUGOSI HORROR CLASSICS
(Warner Bros Home Entertainment)

THE WALKING DEAD
(Warner Bros. Pictures) 1936. 65 mins. Supplement: Commentary by Greg Mank.

FRANKENSTEIN 1970
(Allied Artists) 1958. Says 79mins on box, but actually 82 mins. AR: 2.35:1. Supplement: Commentary by Historians Tom Weaver, Bob Burns, and actress Charlotte Austen.

YOU’LL FIND OUT
(RKO Radio Pictures) 1940. 97 mins.

ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY
(RKO Radio Pictures) 1945. 68 mins.

Warner Bros Entertainment has packaged four horror-related titles for Halloween. An uneven mix, but definitely worth a look.

THE WALKING DEAD is smoothly directed by Michael (CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM) Curtiz (there is a beautifully blocked-out scene in Act One where a passel of criminals play pool while planning their next move). Historian-and-former-FIR-contributor Greg Mank, sounding like he’s taken too much coffee prior to the commentary taping (I felt like I was starting to hyperventilate after a while), touts the film to the skies – It’s a horror film, it’s a gangster film, it’s a religious film…! All true, and unusual. But it’s also a subdued little exercise that does none of the above-mentioned genres adequate justice.

Karloff – as a former criminal framed for murder, executed, and then resurrected by a well-meaning doctor (Edmund Gwynn) – apparently had the most power on the set, and re-shaped the screenplay, steering his performance toward the moody, psychological studies he would finally achieve with Val Lewton’s unit several years later. He’s reticent, strikingly photographed, and quietly memorable here.

Mank labors mightily to give the film substance it doesn’t really contain. But his insights into censorship as regarded the horror film during this period, in particular this one, are fascinating.

Absolutely no time appears to have been put into a restoration or even a clean-up. There are speckles and lines a-plenty.

FRANKENSTEIN 1970 is too wordy, draggy, and stagey (though in fairness, there are elements about it – the opening sequence, a shot of a real [cow] heart being massaged – that were undoubtedly more powerful in their day), and censorship restraints further reduced its potential power, as is revealed in the commentary. But after commentators Tom Weaver, Bob Burns, and Charlotte Austen reveal that it was an eight-day shoot, the film suddenly looks absolutely miraculous. The CinemaScope image is wonderfully lit and framed, and the screenplay is indeed literate. Karloff excels in his verbose role, and the others aren’t bad. The print is in great shape.

Charlotte Austen, one of the film’s co-stars, is lively on the commentary track, and her memory for detail is rewarding as regards the production. Bob Burns comes off as a knowledgeable fan-boy, whereas in reality he is considerably more than that to the genre. Tom Weaver orchestrates the session and has, as always, done his homework. Apparently the film’s genesis comes from a live radio show, which made someone involved faint from fear. The show is accessible on the internet as “Frankenstein Castle Halloween 1952 Armed Forces Radio.”

Ms. Austen names THE UNINVITED as one of her favorite horror films. Wish someone would put it out on DVD…

Although THE WALKING DEAD has every reason to be the oddest entrée in the collection, it is outdone by ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY, an otherwise far less ambitious and more unsatisfying film. Made at RKO, where the Lewton films were shot, in particular I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE in 1943, this horror-comedy morsel regurgitates everything that the classic Lewton-Tourneur film created. The zombies that the protagonists are searching for reside on the island of San Sebastian (same), black actor Sir Lancelot is back, and sings the same Calypso song he sang in the Lewton film (with new lyrics appropriate to this narrative), Darby Jones, the gaunt, unearthly zombie from I WALKED…, crops up here (though he is neither as eerie nor as poetic…nor as gaunt), the same jungle is used and the same voodoo drums are heard, It’s deja vue on such a comprehensive scale that it had to have been done on purpose…but why? Who on the production team was a Lewton freak?

Lugosi (looking odd in a white rather than black suit) doesn’t appear for twenty minutes, rather late for a 68-minute feature. His henchman looks and talks like 80s gore film actor Joe Spinell. The two hapless leads, Wally Brown and Alan Carney, seem to be modeled after Abbott & Costello in A& C MEET FRANKENSTEIN (I know – that film was made three years later. I don’t know how they did it…). Don’t bother asking if they’re anywhere near as good. And Alan Carney could have been a stand-in for Walter Brennan. Also the film has some queasy black caricatured performances common for the period, although two qualifiers must be added – the white guys have the same stupid bug-eyed reactions, and the black actors are actually more tamed down and less offensive in their characterizations than the two foolish leads. Some of this may be due to the sensitivity of director Gordon (KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, THEM, LADY IN CEMENT) Douglas.

There are some timing problems with the print – shots that look too dark, followed by shots that looks too light. It is otherwise in good shape.

YOU’LL FIND OUT promised to be my least favorite of the batch. Could I really be looking forward to a narrative in which Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre would be second-string foils to a zany band-leader whose personality lay more in the Spike Jonz vein than in the Benny Goodman camp?

Well, fooled again. This film holds up really well, once you make peace with Kay Kyser’s troublesome persona. He and his band members were cartoony cut-ups in that tradition I would have found loathsome even had I lived back then (and I lived shortly after then, so I’m safe in making that assessment). Given that, he stepped up to the plate a bit by standing for education, calling his group the Kollege of Musical Knowledge, and even starting the film with a scene at a radio broadcast, conducting a quiz about musical facts. In promoting positive knowledge about music, and being recognizably human underneath the clowning, he struck me as the Harold Lloyd of the gimmick-band set. I could live with it.

More surprising, Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre, all subordinated to second bananas alongside Kyser (as I feared), nonetheless are treated respectfully, take their roles seriously, and acquit themselves really well. I believed in their menacing hidden agendas, and was genuinely excited by the two or three scenes in which all three of them appeared together in frame. Lorre, I learned from a recent biography – ‘The Lost One’ – had such severe tooth decay that it was pernicious even being in a room with him. The several glimpses we get into his mouth in YOU’LL FIND OUT suggest that his fellow cast-members may have had to endure this fate. (Eventually he had the problem fixed.)

The story concerns an old widow who is being bilked out of her fortune by an opportunistic spiritualist and his nefarious cohorts. Kyser is hired to perform at her daughter’s Birthday party, and quickly wishes he hadn’t, yet inadvertently saves the lives of both the daughter and the dowager. The art direction is slathered on over-zealously, but serves the tone of the film well. Some of the music still holds up nicely. And the acting of the non-horror members of the cast is more realistic than one could hope for, due to Director/Writer David (A CONNECTICUT YANKEE, JUST IMAGINE, THE LITTLE COLONEL, ROAD TO MOROCCO) Butler’s decisions about how to handle his material. He was at his best, in an uneven career, at fun fantasy stuff like this.

RECOMMENDED, WITH RESERVATIONS

THE TOHO COLLECTION
Released in a 3-disc set by Sony/Columbia
DVD Review by Glenn Andreiev

THE H-MAN – 1959
Written by Takeshi Kimura and Hideo Unagami. Special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka. Music by Masaru Sato. Directed by Inoshira Honda. Cast: Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, Ahikio Hirata, Koeya Senda

BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE – 1959
Written by Jojiro Okomi and Shinichi Sekizawa. Special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka. Music by Akira Ifukube. Directed by Inoshira Honda. Cast: Ryo Ikebe, Kyoko Anzai, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Harold Conway

MOTHRA – 1961
Written by Takehiko Fukunaga and Yoshie Hotta. Special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka. Music by Masaru Sato. Directed by Inoshira Honda. Cast: Frankie Sakai, Hiroshi Koizumi, Emi and Yumi Ito, Jerry Ito, Takeshi Shimura

Where else can you find very, very large moths, Yakuza hitmen melting like popsicles, and giant, flying Christmas decorations zapping the crap out of us? It’s all in Sony/Columbia’s Toho DVD Collection, a set of three Japanese science fiction classics Columbia originally released in the United States fifty years ago. These films, The H-Man, Mothra, and Battle In Outer Space are surely on every serious sci-fi fan’s A-list, and are released on DVD in the United States for the first time. Each film is on a disc that includes beautiful transfers of the original Japanese Language version, and their American dubbed counterparts. Insightful commentary tracks, original trailers, and more, further this worthwhile package.

Inoshira Honda is known mostly for directing Godzilla and a slew of other films featuring rampaging giant monsters loose in Tokyo. With a setting amongst gangsters and beautiful lounge singers, his 1959 The H-Man takes a more film noir rift. At times the film is rather sensual. Tokyo drug dealers are mysteriously vanishing. Detectives feel the bad guys have been bumped off, but a plucky young scientist, Masada (Kenji Sahara) believes the bad guys have been “dissolved by a liquid creature”. This bluish blob-like entity resembles living toothpaste run wild. It targets a seedy night-club, favored by the Yakuza, and featuring near-nude go-go dancers. The effects are mostly mechanical, achieved on the set. Effects man Eiji Tsuburaya placed the set – with an anchored camera – on rockers. Everything else on the set, the furniture, the lights, etc., were bolted down…except for the blob creature, which slithered around as the “room” rocked back and forth. The resulting (and very striking) effect features fast moving goo that seems to have a mind of it’s own. (And come on, our dear editor clearly had this film in mind when he made his urban goo classic, Street Trash!*)

Fans of the late Akira Ifukube will recognize many of his famous “monster marches” played for the first time in Battle in Outer Space, a leisurely-paced, beautiful 1959 outer space opera. Armies from the distant planet Natal are pulling terrorist-styled attacks on Earth. Japan organizes a trip to the moon to attack Natal’s base. Unlike most alien invasion films, this is the rare instance where Earth has to invade an enemy planet’s turf! My favorite scene is when the Natalians possess the brain of the Ambassador from Iran! His rampage is cartoon-ish fun. Some of the images are reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001- A Space Odyssey. While the film wraps up with an interplanetary High Noon styled ending, both H-Man and Battle In Outer Space do have their slow spots (especially in scenes when scientists explain the mayhem).

The best of the bunch is Mothra. Every monster movie cliché is turned upside down and shaken, which makes for great fun, and keeps the audience on the go. Generally movie monsters were ugly, and attacked at night, or in contrasty black and white. The hero was usually a handsome, strapping man’s man, and the monster was always violently killed with a downbeat warning about humanity futzing around with nature. Mothra is filmed in gorgeous Eastman story-book color. Mothra, especially in its giant moth form, is colorful and plush. Our hero is a chubby comical news reporter (imagine Jackie Gleason as the hero of Beast From 20,000 Fathoms for comparison). Mothra has a happy, upbeat ending where the protagonists are waving good-bye to the destructive monster. It’s not a perfect film, but Mothra has an exotic dream-like charm, a fast pace and an engaging film noir/fairy tale storyline.

Except for the American language version of Mothra, (which seems re-printed and grainy) the films look stunning. (Director Honda was a master at using both color and the Cinemascope screen!) Unlike Godzilla, which was altered to fit Raymond Burr in the American release version, the Japanese and American versions of these films are near identical. (The Japanese H-Man has a different, more bizarre title sequence and there is dancing-girl footage the American censors nixed.) If one version of the film had too much half-century old wear and tear, the people at Sony simply used the material in the corresponding scene from the other language version. The only great negative aspect of this otherwise worthwhile set is that all three discs are physically stacked on top of one another, which will probably result in eventual scratching.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Editor’s Note: Sometimes I can point to films that influenced me, and sometimes it’s an unconscious thing. I certainly loved THE H-MAN as a kid, so it may have crept in there when I was writing STREET TRASH. Bear in mind, the earlier, short version of the film, with which I was only peripherally involved, dealt with melting derelicts as well, and I don’t know if Jimmy Muro had seen THE H-MAN.

* To read Mark Gross’ review of the collection.

Continue to page: 1 2 3