The Marathon Begins!
The second October weekend is here, and I have quite a plethora of titles to get to in the next three days. Starting Friday evening, the kids wanted to watch House of Frankenstein and get their Monster. Of course House of Frankenstein doesn't give us much of the Monster, or the Werewolf for that matter. We get plenty of "homicidal hunchback" and mad scientist Dr. Niemann (a game cold-blooded turn by Karloff before he'd move on to Val Lewton to make some of the best films of his career). The triangle that forms between Chaney's sourpuss Talbot, awakened from an iceberg underneath the ruins of Frankenstein's castle (think of it as frozen winterland; its sole existence is ridiculous, created by the dynamited damn of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman) by Niemann and hunchback, Daniel (the great J Carrol Naish) accidentally while searching the ruins for Frankenstein's notes, a gypsy woman picked up while traveling through a village of camped gypsies (Elena Verdugo, who I couldn't stand), and the lovestruck Daniel who becomes jealous when she turns her affections (and smile...yuck) away from him. If Talbot helps Niemann find the notes he will be cured of his lycanthropy. Niemann also promises Daniel a new body, one that isn't malformed and ugly. But Niemann ultimately cares mostly about repairing the damaged tissue of the Monster...all these scientists and doctors do.
The film is a tale of two halves: Karloff's Niemann has a traveling showman (played by a wasted George Zucco in essentially a cameo), named Lampini, murdered by Daniel simply to take his identity and hide behind the facade of his name, using the jazzed-up carriages to move about the countryside unnoticed. Lampini had stolen the casket of Dracula (with skeleton intact, a stake still driven in the heart of the vampire), using it as his chief sideshow attraction. Niemann will use Dracula to kill the burgomaster responsible for his arrest, and Daniel later to capture and paralyze a former assistant and witness against him that helped to put him in an asylum due to his graverobbing and experiments, following Frankenstein's methods. The Monster primarily remains unable to move, laying on a platform as Niemann tries to restore its strength. Meanwhile Talbot turns into a werewolf and kills a villager, tormenting him into desiring death since Niemann seems too busy to help him, all consumed by the Monster. The gypsy, Ilonka, loves him and will help him.
I find the gypsy contemptible. She's rescued by Daniel from a horrible bull-whipping from a gypsy man who demands her profits from villagers in Frankenstein. He's gentle and sweet towards her, and when Talbot comes along, all her attentions are on him while the man who saved her and begged Niemann to give her refuge means almost nothing to her. All Daniel does is tell her to stay clear of Talbot when he turns because he'll harm her and she calls him mean and ugly, with repulsion, telling him she hates him! There's a ton of cruelty in this movie. It all cascades into disaster for all involved.
Dracula becomes attached to the burgomaster's grand daughter, using his signet ring to capture her under his spell, planning to have her as his new bride, soon betrayed by Niemann when the police chase after him. Dumping his casket and driving their horses out of the area, Niemann and Daniel escape but Dracula doesn't, the sunlight turning him back to a skeleton.
The second half features the wolf attacking the gypsy who shoots him with a pistol containing a silver bullet. The nearest Visaria villagers see Niemann's old castle lighting up thanks to his "shock therapy" for the Monster, believing this is the answer to a dead local and trio of missing men they know. Niemann's quest for revenge ultimately condemns him. Not giving Daniel a "normal body", he finally has had it, severely wounding the scientist. The Monster hurls him out a window to his death stories to the grounds. Everyone winds up goners because Niemann just couldn't help himself in regards to his need to strengthen the Monster. Glenn Strange as the Monster is a prop and nothing more. He does get to drag Niemann's crippled body into "the quicksands", where both are found by Onslow Stevens in House of Dracula (how Dracula is up and at 'em after his death here is confusing as is Talbot's visit to the "great physician".
----
Like last Friday, I watched a film version of Phantom of the Opera, this time the absolute silent masterpiece from Rupert Julian, starring Lon Chaney. The torture chambers and tunnels under the opera house, Chaney's hideous visage and demented persistence and insistence that his paramour, a stage actress named Christine, be all his, demanding that she perform for the Paris opera and no other diva, and that awesome Technicolor Red Masque ball dressed in a skull mask and colorful costume (something right out of the Three Musketeers, complete with a hat protruding a feather) and a skull-faced cane, eventually standing atop a large cherubic statue (anguished that his love is denied because Christine had designs only for her soldier beloved) will always give this film adaptation of the Leroux novel a tall order to eclipse...and many have tried since this film hit theaters in the 20s.
Chaney doing that to his face to achieve that horrified effect is rewarded still to this day...this is the stuff of nightmares. Being chased by Parisians throughout the streets of the city until he's surrounded, pummeled, and tossed into the water off a bridge lets us know that we are watching a Universal Studios production. The boat ride underneath the operahouse, his organ located in a personal home chamber where he often kidnaps and holds Christine much to her horror, and his use of a pipe to hide himself in the water from others that might intrude upon his refuge are also masterful highlights. The sets are incredible, like the opera house, but that red masque ball is a showstopper.
=======
I woke up Saturday with the plan to finish up the Frankenstein legacy series. Son of Frankenstein (1939) was the final film of the set I had yet to watch. Basil Rathbone is Wolf, the son of the recently-deceased Baron who has left the estate and its grounds to him and his family. A lovely wife and energetic son, along with butler and maidservant, in tow, Wolf is not welcomed by Frankenstein village due to the Monster that terrorized them thanks to his father's scientific handiwork. Enter a broke-neck hunchback named Ygor (Lugosi in a role that rivals Dracula) who has a horn that seems to command and enchant the weakened body of Frankenstein's Monster (Karloff, sadly given little of what made his Monster so well received in the previous two films) to do his bidding...kill the 8 men responsible for his hanging (supposedly stealing bodies from graves). In Wolf, Ygor convinces him (using Wolf's desire to restore his father's condemned name) to resurrect the Monster so that the strength of it can help rid the village of those that hurt and scarred him. Ygor might be hideous, with a front row of mangled teeth, but his mind is cunning and devious.
I think my favorite scene (besides anytime Lionel Atwill's mechanical-armed inspector, Krogh, shares the screen with Rathbone; the two have conversations about the Monster but how Wolf avoids telling the truth about his work, the experiments, in its resurrection, and their waffling back and forth between animosity and gentlemanly courtesy is a real treat!) has Ygor brought in to face the law in the village, and how he purposely antagonizes them, fully confident that they can do nothing to him is just as rich in its use of words and what is said and not said as the Wolf/Krogh scenes in the Frankenstein castle. Then you have those incredible sets, larger than life in their construction and presentation (even when I was a kid, this castle amazed me), with a secret passage behind a wall in the castle nursery which allows the Monster to visit Wolf's child (never seen which is rather a shame; this might have given the Monster sympathy), and the ruins of the laboratory (there's a great mat painting and a set of this building that really gives it a significance) has a wall opened by a chain or a circular door on a floor that can also be pulled by chain that lead to Frankenstein's mausoleum, containing a cavernous exit to the woods directly towards the village. While the Monster is no longer symbolic or compelling as it was in the previous films, Rathbone, Lugosi, and Atwill have juicy characters that are inspired in performance and dialogue. They are a lot of fun even if the Monster is sadly diminished, used as a weapon to kill, even a threat to toss Wolf's child in the "sulfur pit" (once used as a health "pool" designed by the Romans purportedly) when Ygor is put a stop to. For me, this is ultimately Lugosi's film, and I like that for once he shines over Karloff. However, the tables are turned in The Body Snatcher, for Val Lewton, when Lugosi is a minor character gotten rid of by Karloff easily. I enjoy Rathbone's intense anxiety and use of pointed harshness in terms of the townsfolk's view of his and his father's name and towards Krogh whose mere presence brings him guilt. Atwill knows what is going on, and knows Wolf knows he knows, so all that increasing tension between them is entertaining to me.
----
After Son of Frankenstein, I decided to watch the first of many Hammer Draculas certain to make my October lineup this year. Lee as the towering titular character, in long black cape, sometimes (at the very beginning) seemingly aristocratic and prominent and ultimately vengeful (using the first vampire hunter, Jonathan Harker who posed as a preeminent librarian so that he could get close to Dracula ironically by going after his fiance for planning to kill him) and animalistic (looking so bloodthirsty and feral when Cushing's Van Helsing disturbs his "resting place", the coffin in the cellar of Michael Gough's home so he can feed from wife Mina). Cushing as the scholarly, astute, brave, and fortunately capable of thinking on the spot (the use of candle holders to form a crucifix and understanding that the sunlight once the curtains are ripped away from the window would trap Dracula during their famed "first battle") scientist, Dr. Van Helsing, gets top billing...that is deserved.
I love that Cushing could go from such a determined but evil scientist of Frankenstein to the charismatic, trustworthy vampire hunter and draw out distinctive villains and heroes in every film he'd appear. Amazingly Cushing, to me, is even *better* in Brides of Dracula (one of my favorites of the Dracula series) where Lee isn't involved. The staking of Lucy, victim of Dracula, shows all the blood and agony before she receives peace that ushers in a new era of horror where explicit can be shown on screen. The implied sensuality of Lee and how his victims anticipate and yearn for his bite once the night falls also gave us something certainly revisited over and over as Hammer continued to deliver the monster movies Universal used to provide.
The film is a tale of two halves: Karloff's Niemann has a traveling showman (played by a wasted George Zucco in essentially a cameo), named Lampini, murdered by Daniel simply to take his identity and hide behind the facade of his name, using the jazzed-up carriages to move about the countryside unnoticed. Lampini had stolen the casket of Dracula (with skeleton intact, a stake still driven in the heart of the vampire), using it as his chief sideshow attraction. Niemann will use Dracula to kill the burgomaster responsible for his arrest, and Daniel later to capture and paralyze a former assistant and witness against him that helped to put him in an asylum due to his graverobbing and experiments, following Frankenstein's methods. The Monster primarily remains unable to move, laying on a platform as Niemann tries to restore its strength. Meanwhile Talbot turns into a werewolf and kills a villager, tormenting him into desiring death since Niemann seems too busy to help him, all consumed by the Monster. The gypsy, Ilonka, loves him and will help him.
I find the gypsy contemptible. She's rescued by Daniel from a horrible bull-whipping from a gypsy man who demands her profits from villagers in Frankenstein. He's gentle and sweet towards her, and when Talbot comes along, all her attentions are on him while the man who saved her and begged Niemann to give her refuge means almost nothing to her. All Daniel does is tell her to stay clear of Talbot when he turns because he'll harm her and she calls him mean and ugly, with repulsion, telling him she hates him! There's a ton of cruelty in this movie. It all cascades into disaster for all involved.
Dracula becomes attached to the burgomaster's grand daughter, using his signet ring to capture her under his spell, planning to have her as his new bride, soon betrayed by Niemann when the police chase after him. Dumping his casket and driving their horses out of the area, Niemann and Daniel escape but Dracula doesn't, the sunlight turning him back to a skeleton.
The second half features the wolf attacking the gypsy who shoots him with a pistol containing a silver bullet. The nearest Visaria villagers see Niemann's old castle lighting up thanks to his "shock therapy" for the Monster, believing this is the answer to a dead local and trio of missing men they know. Niemann's quest for revenge ultimately condemns him. Not giving Daniel a "normal body", he finally has had it, severely wounding the scientist. The Monster hurls him out a window to his death stories to the grounds. Everyone winds up goners because Niemann just couldn't help himself in regards to his need to strengthen the Monster. Glenn Strange as the Monster is a prop and nothing more. He does get to drag Niemann's crippled body into "the quicksands", where both are found by Onslow Stevens in House of Dracula (how Dracula is up and at 'em after his death here is confusing as is Talbot's visit to the "great physician".
----
Like last Friday, I watched a film version of Phantom of the Opera, this time the absolute silent masterpiece from Rupert Julian, starring Lon Chaney. The torture chambers and tunnels under the opera house, Chaney's hideous visage and demented persistence and insistence that his paramour, a stage actress named Christine, be all his, demanding that she perform for the Paris opera and no other diva, and that awesome Technicolor Red Masque ball dressed in a skull mask and colorful costume (something right out of the Three Musketeers, complete with a hat protruding a feather) and a skull-faced cane, eventually standing atop a large cherubic statue (anguished that his love is denied because Christine had designs only for her soldier beloved) will always give this film adaptation of the Leroux novel a tall order to eclipse...and many have tried since this film hit theaters in the 20s.
=======
I woke up Saturday with the plan to finish up the Frankenstein legacy series. Son of Frankenstein (1939) was the final film of the set I had yet to watch. Basil Rathbone is Wolf, the son of the recently-deceased Baron who has left the estate and its grounds to him and his family. A lovely wife and energetic son, along with butler and maidservant, in tow, Wolf is not welcomed by Frankenstein village due to the Monster that terrorized them thanks to his father's scientific handiwork. Enter a broke-neck hunchback named Ygor (Lugosi in a role that rivals Dracula) who has a horn that seems to command and enchant the weakened body of Frankenstein's Monster (Karloff, sadly given little of what made his Monster so well received in the previous two films) to do his bidding...kill the 8 men responsible for his hanging (supposedly stealing bodies from graves). In Wolf, Ygor convinces him (using Wolf's desire to restore his father's condemned name) to resurrect the Monster so that the strength of it can help rid the village of those that hurt and scarred him. Ygor might be hideous, with a front row of mangled teeth, but his mind is cunning and devious.
I think my favorite scene (besides anytime Lionel Atwill's mechanical-armed inspector, Krogh, shares the screen with Rathbone; the two have conversations about the Monster but how Wolf avoids telling the truth about his work, the experiments, in its resurrection, and their waffling back and forth between animosity and gentlemanly courtesy is a real treat!) has Ygor brought in to face the law in the village, and how he purposely antagonizes them, fully confident that they can do nothing to him is just as rich in its use of words and what is said and not said as the Wolf/Krogh scenes in the Frankenstein castle. Then you have those incredible sets, larger than life in their construction and presentation (even when I was a kid, this castle amazed me), with a secret passage behind a wall in the castle nursery which allows the Monster to visit Wolf's child (never seen which is rather a shame; this might have given the Monster sympathy), and the ruins of the laboratory (there's a great mat painting and a set of this building that really gives it a significance) has a wall opened by a chain or a circular door on a floor that can also be pulled by chain that lead to Frankenstein's mausoleum, containing a cavernous exit to the woods directly towards the village. While the Monster is no longer symbolic or compelling as it was in the previous films, Rathbone, Lugosi, and Atwill have juicy characters that are inspired in performance and dialogue. They are a lot of fun even if the Monster is sadly diminished, used as a weapon to kill, even a threat to toss Wolf's child in the "sulfur pit" (once used as a health "pool" designed by the Romans purportedly) when Ygor is put a stop to. For me, this is ultimately Lugosi's film, and I like that for once he shines over Karloff. However, the tables are turned in The Body Snatcher, for Val Lewton, when Lugosi is a minor character gotten rid of by Karloff easily. I enjoy Rathbone's intense anxiety and use of pointed harshness in terms of the townsfolk's view of his and his father's name and towards Krogh whose mere presence brings him guilt. Atwill knows what is going on, and knows Wolf knows he knows, so all that increasing tension between them is entertaining to me.
----
After Son of Frankenstein, I decided to watch the first of many Hammer Draculas certain to make my October lineup this year. Lee as the towering titular character, in long black cape, sometimes (at the very beginning) seemingly aristocratic and prominent and ultimately vengeful (using the first vampire hunter, Jonathan Harker who posed as a preeminent librarian so that he could get close to Dracula ironically by going after his fiance for planning to kill him) and animalistic (looking so bloodthirsty and feral when Cushing's Van Helsing disturbs his "resting place", the coffin in the cellar of Michael Gough's home so he can feed from wife Mina). Cushing as the scholarly, astute, brave, and fortunately capable of thinking on the spot (the use of candle holders to form a crucifix and understanding that the sunlight once the curtains are ripped away from the window would trap Dracula during their famed "first battle") scientist, Dr. Van Helsing, gets top billing...that is deserved.
Comments
Post a Comment