October 4th - House of the Damned/The Vampire Bat/Scared To Death (30s/40s/50s covered)
When I watched The Hypnotic Eye (1960) a week ago, I thought up the idea of just a thread for films you might find for cheap in a bargain bin or in four or five packs. I do want to say I might have come across House of the Damned (1963) in a bargain bin on occasion while shuffling through DVDs on the hunt for small budget, forgotten little movies few would really be looking for. The 50s and 60s have plenty of these Saturday afternoon horror quickies that sort of come and go through your life as a film addict scavenging the celluloid Route 66. Barely past 60 minutes, "House of the Damned" does have a tiny connection to "The Hypnotic Eye"...both feature lovely blonde Merry Anders, one of many beauties that went in and out of Hollywood, through the B-movie detour and made full stop on television westerns or minor bit parts that caused them to decide marriage and/or a regular job instead of the rat race. She is the wife of an architect hired to do a survey of an eccentric carnival showman's mansion. Ron Foster ("Twilight Zone: The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms") is the architect, Richard Crane an attorney who really needs the mansion to make big for his firm, and Erika Peters as Crane's younger (and feisty) gal. I wish I could say there was something of real substance to this film, but it really has denizens hiding within a secret room that are connected to the mansion's "former" owner. There is also a crazed former occupant of the mansion now resident in an asylum. The big plus is Nickolaus, Jr's B&W photography, giving the mansion's night scenes some pop, though, I have never felt the film ever quite reaches its potential. The "carnival people" (including a young Richard Kiel) aren't really sinister at all; if anything, they are endearing. It is over before the film ever quite achieves anything. A miss.
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| Cast of "House of the Damned" |
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| One of Nickolaus' distant shots |
You will be able to find your share of 30's Poverty Row horror films if you go a mining for them. Sometimes, Turner Classic Movies will scatter them across October at different times. I'm always invested in finding them on TCM, particularly because you generally get the best possible print available for the films. That is no exception for the Archive remaster of The Vampire Bat (1933). In the print I watched tonight, the fire on the torches of villagers hunting for Dwight Frye were actually colorized while everything else was B&W. It was really striking and so unusual. Frye, bless his heart, rarely, if ever, walks away from a horror film alive. It is always nice seeing Lionel Atwill in the early 30's when he was at the height of his Hollywood star status before scandal sent him spiraling into supporting parts where he had to use his charisma to stand out. For a low budget company using borrowed Universal Studio sets, Majestic really nabbed some serious talent for their oft-forgotten film. Melvyn Douglas was the detective looking for a serial killer: a killer bleeding victims, it would seem, from a bite to the jugular. Douglas starred in this right after Whale's "The Old Dark House". Atwill had made "Doctor X" and "Mystery of the Wax Museum" right before this film, once again a doctor whose knowledge is of great interest to the police and village...but, no surprise, he is way too close to these murders. Fay Wray, who had just starred in "Doctor X", "Mystery of the Wax Museum" and "The Most Dangerous Game" -- a hell of a trifecta!!! -- is Douglas' love interest, a lady in peril (shocker, right?!) Atwill uses hypnosis to influence weaker-minded Robert Frazer to attack women, satisfying (as Douglas calls it) some sick, twisted urge inside him. This is the kind of film that I love to sprinkle throughout October, peppering my schedule with plenty of these madman Gothic films. Atwill cooks up quite a crazed face as he talks about creating life in his lab from the blood of victims, holding Wray captive while adding to a beating tissue growth in a water tank "life giving solution". Lionel Belmore (the burgomeister in Universal monster movie villages) leads a vampire hunt for Frye, erroneously pursuing the wrong man. Maude Eburne is the hypochondriac too often going to Atwill for medications to take care of illnesses she doesn't even have! Her scenes with Frye, playing a harmless, misunderstood savant, are some of my favorites in the film. God, Wray is a gorgeous woman.
In October of 2007, I wrote a scathing review of Scared to Death (1946), a film that today doesn't irritate me as much as amuse me. Today, I think it tries hard to deliver some chuckles, playfully unconcerned about any sort of serious narrative, even as Zucco clearly takes his role seriously, totally opposite of almost everyone else in the film. I rarely write a review this harsh anymore. It's just a movie. I think that is because there are far worse things in life that are much more miserable than a silly poverty row flick about a dead woman on a slab narrating details about why she wound up where she is...granted, I'm not sure how her story related to us could feature entire scenes she isn't a part of, but I guess you have to forgive such "creative license". And I love Lugosi when he is in the film. He looked very comfortable, as if he was just having a great time with the role and material. And Pendleton, the dopey hired "security", I seemed to find a pain in 2007 is just an outrageous comic foil for all the shenanigans around him. I read the film used a process called Cinecolor, and it does look very much like a lot of cheap westerns that take up time when I'm bored in January and February during "horror downtime". I will admit that when the film goes back and forth to Molly's body, the music piece is jarring and the fades rather rough. I want to say almost the entire film is inside the house. I read that Atwill was supposed to be in the film, with Zucco replacing him due to ill health...Atwill just seemed to leave the world too soon, though, what he seemed to have been burdened by might have been a scandal Hollywood has produced too many of. Lugosi is always suspicious, but I rather liked how he's the red herring this time. Joyce Compton, as the girl on the arm of a rude Douglas Fowley (seeming to imitate James Cagney), is one of those gem comic actresses who I just love in "Christmas in Connecticut". I read those user comments below and I see a different person. It was fourteen years ago. A lot has happened since then, that's for sure.
Laura Van Ee(Molly Lamont)tells us about why she is laying dead on the autopsy room table ready for examination. She's a real piece of work, Laura, as she creates ugly situations with her father-in-law Doc Josef(George Zucco, who gets hit behind the head quite a few times, pretty much his sole purpose in this film)and kind husband Ward(Roland Varno). In arrives estranged cousin hypnotist Leonide(Bela Lugosi)to Josef with a dwarf assistant(Angelo Rossitto)who is a deaf mute who reads lips carefully. What Leonide's main objective is in being at his cousin Josef's house will become clear later on. It seems something has Laura deeply troubled and it has a lot to do with a specific blindfold. Josef, God knows why, has a stupid house cop Bill Raymond(Nat Pendleton, more on this clown later)around to protect and serve. He would rather dose off on cat naps, drink coffee, and flirt with the VERY annoying maid Lilly Beth(Gladys Blake). Then arrives reporter Terry Lee(Douglas Fowley, more on this clown later)and his squeeze, numb-skull Jane(Joyce Compton), all nicely bubbly and idiotic. We spend about an hour or so with this cast of morons as they try to solve some kind of mystery concerning disappearances and hypnotized dames. It's all rather silly, uninteresting, and deadeningly dull.Truly terrible "thriller" with the type of dialogue that kills brain cells and atrocious acting the burns the eyes' retinas. The narrative device, from flashbacks of the dead woman, is used clumsily. The pounding music cues(particularly when we go in an out to Laura on the slab)are also embarrassing reminders of how incompetent the direction was. The attempts at using nincompoop Raymond, delivered by Pendleton who should've been embarrassed with having to announce such words, as comic relief fall completely flat. Not just Raymond, however, anytime the film tries to implement humor it falls flat to the point where you giggle at the attempts themselves. Lugosi himself is saddled with dialogue such as "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies." Oh, and Fowley as this third-rate Bogie wannabee has dialogue such as "Cut out the mulberry bush routine" & "gumming up the works.". The hammy overacting (especially the female leads, but no one in this cast goes unscathed)might earn this dreck cult status, but I felt that the pacing was so slow and the story itself(especially it's structure)so mind-numbing, the viewer might be rendered comatose far before this flick ends. You'll truly be dumber after the film is over. Even Lugosi and Zucco are overripe. Painful cinema;for masochists only.
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