Karloff portrays his most evil character in 'Bedlam'

Bedlam (1947)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, Billy House, Richard Fraser, Ian Wolfe and Leyland Hodgson
Director: Mark Robson
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When Nell Bowen (Lee), an actress turned live-in companion and jester for one of London's leading citizens (House) makes it a personal crusade to improve conditions at the Bedlam institution for the insane, she makes a personal enemy of its Apothecary General, Master Sims. She soon discovers that those who Sims feels threatened by end up as inmates at Bedlam, whether they are insane or not.


In "Bedlam," we see Boris Karloff playing the most despicable and evil character he ever portrayed during his career. Master George Sims is a self-centered little man who has achieved some small degree of social standing through toadying and by abusing his position by turning the government-operated asylum and its inmates into a sideshow attraction, complete with admission fees. Although he talks about compassion, it is clear that he has has none, both from his attitude and deeds. Everything within the walls of his asylum are there to boost his fragile ego, and anyone who threatens it from the outside, he brings under his control by having them committed by a board of governors that he has under his sway.

If played by a lesser actor, Master Sims would probably have been a boring character consisting of pure evil covered by a thin veneer of hypocrisy and oily charm. However, Karloff manages to infuse humanity into this monstrous figure, giving Sims a dimension that makes him just sympathetic enough that viewers can appreciate where he's coming from even while recognizing that he is an absolute villain.

One of the key moments for Sims' is when he falls into the hands of the inmates and they put him on trial to determine if insanity drove him to commit all the cruel acts he is responsible for. Without ruining the film, I can say that Sims gives a speech that convinces the inmates that he is indeed sane, because his actions were driven by a hunger for recognition from his betters and a sad hope to be accepted as their equal. But, although Sims seems to be soul-searching and understanding that his behavior is misguided and wrong, it quickly becomes apparent that he will fall back into his old ways, because the only way for him to overcome what is ultimately an unsurmountable degree of self-loathing is for Sims to feel himself bathed in what he considers the reflected light from his "betters."

And it is this reflected light that starts the conflict between Master Sims and Nell Bowen. She not only shows Sims up in front of one of the nobles whose approval he so desperately wants, but she shows herself to be more favored than he when she isn't punished for displaying repeated and open contempt for him. Worse, Bowen doesn't need the approval that Sims devotes his entire life to gaining, so he has no real weapons to weild against her except his ability to force her into his charge and break her spirit and mind.

It is plain to viewers early on that Nell will ultimately end up at Sims mercy, because she refuses to back down, and as the film unfolds, much of the suspense comes from the fact that there seems to be no way out for Nell and that her strong spirit will get her killed. The confrontations between Sims and Nell, which never rise above verbal sparring, are really the heart of the film... and they are scenes that would not work half as well if it wasn't because the lines are being delivered by two great actors whose performances are bringing dimensions to the characters far beyond what would usually be expected from a low-budget drama.

These great performances also lift the film to the point where you're not quite sure what's going to happen... and not just because Val Lewton has delivered films with genuinely suprising endings before (is there anyone who can honestly say they saw the ending of "Cat People" or "I Walked With a Zombie" coming before it hit?), but because the characters have a degree of life to them that doesn't let us assume that the script will follow the pat ending where the heroine is rescued and the dastardly villain gets his just rewards. (And, to some degree, Lewton once again delivers a powerful and unexpected ending, perhaps the creepiest of any of his RKO films.)

Of course, I also need to give some credit to Mark Robson, the film's director. He was an editor at RKO whom Lewton wanted to give a chance to direct, and for whom Lewton passed up the opportunity to work on films with bigger budgets. 

After his early hits, RKO execs wanted to give Lewton more money to work with, but it meant that Robson would not have a chance to direct. Lewton chose to stay with the smaller budgets and the B-pictures, showing personal character and a degree of loyalty to his fellow creators that one wishes more people possessed. 

And Lewton's faith in Robson was obviously well-placed. While most of Lewton's RKO pictures are lean efforts without a second of filler to be found, "Bedlam" is even tighter than the rest. There is not a single scene that doesn't start or end at just the right moment, and there is not a single shot that isn't perfectly timed or lit.

With the excellent performances from its stars, able assistance from a talented supporting cast, and great direction, camera-work and editing, "Bedlam" is a fine thriller that fans of classic movies should seek out. 

"Cat People" and "The 7th Victim" may get most of the commentaries when it comes to Lewton films, while "Frankenstein" and "Targets" get the accolades in the Karloff canon, but "Bedlam" is a film that deserves more attention from fans and reviewers alike.

'Second Chorus' is an obscure gem

Second Chorus (1940)
Starring: Fred Astaire, Burgess Meredith, Paulette Goddard, Charles Buttersworth, and Artie Shaw
Director: H.C. Potter
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When a pair of musicians, Danny and Hank (Astaire and Meredith), attempt to dodge Ellen (Goddard), a debt collector, by (literally) charming the pants off her, they end up on the fast track to fame with her as their booking agent. When she is later hired away by the famous band leader Artie Shaw (Shaw, playing himself), the two friends begin to sabotage each other in a bid to earn Ellen's romantic attention.

Fred Astaire described "Second Chorus" as his worst movie. He may not have liked it, but it's a lot of fast-paced fun, and chockful of great musical numbers and strong performances from the entire cast. Goddard is spectacular, as usual, and Meredith's comedic performance here really makes one wonder what sort of super-star he might have become if his career hadn't been detailed by McCarthyism during the 1950s.

The only complaint I have about the film is that the main protagonist, played by Astaire, is a king-sized jerk. I understand that the tricks he plays on his friend Hank to gain the upper-hand romantically and professionally are supposed to be viewed as comedic by the audience, but time and again, he resorts to an almost scorched earth sort of approach with an apparent desire to destroy his supposed best friend just so he can tell himself that we "won." In the process, he ends up sabotaging himself as well--and this karmic justice keeps the character from becoming completely unsympathetic--but his 11th-hour conversion to Nice Guy comes a little too late to win me over as a viewerm even if it does get him the girl. (That's not a spoiler... given that it's Fred Astaire vs. Burgess Meredith, it was a foregone conclusion who Paulette Goddard would end up with. Except, of course, in real life, where Meredith and Goddard ended up as a couple and eventually married.)

Hardcore Fred Astaire fans may be disappointed in the film for the same reason I suspect Astaire rates it as the worst of his efforts: He does very little dancing in it. There's really on one remarkable routine where he takes to the floor with Goddard at roughly the halfway point. But of those who enjoy big band swing music and 1940s comedies, "Second Chorus" is going to be time well spent.

'Outpost in Morocco' is a fast-moving war pic

Outpost in Morocco (1949)
Starring: George Raft, Akim Tamirof, Marie Windsor, and Eduard Franz
Director: Robert Florey
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A French Foreign Legion Officer reknowned for his way with the ladies, Capt. Paul Gerard (Raft) is assigned to escort and seduce Cara (Windsor) in order to discover if her father (Franz) is plotting with other Arab tribal leaders to stage an uprising against the French forces. His mission becomes complicated when he falls in love with her in earnest... and it becomes deadly when it turns out that her father is not only plotting an uprising but he is unleashing it.

"Outpost in Morocco" is a fast moving film that features a perfect blend of war, espionage, and romance elements. I often complain about how movies have "insta-romances" that make little or no sense in context of character and story just to keep the plot moving, but the love that develops between the Capt. Gerard and Cara feels realistic and firmly rooted in the characters.

The acting and dialog is also top-notch all around. Stars George Raft and Marie Windsor are evenly matched on screen, and Akim Tamirof (as a hard-bitten veteran Foreign Legion junior officer who becomes Gerard's go-to right-hand man) switches gears easily from dramatic to comedic depending on the scene.

'Up in the Air' has strong cast and weak script

Up in the Air (1940)
Starring: Frankie Darro, Mantan Moreland, Marjorie Reynolds, Tristram Coffin, Lorna Gray, and Dick Elliot
Director: Howard Bretherton
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When the obnoxious singer (Gray) headlining a radio station's anchor program is murdered, Frankie (Darro) gets his friend Jeff (Moreland) to help him find the killer. Along the way, he tries to fulfill his dreams of stardom while also helping a beautiful young singer (Reynolds) to become the program's new headliner.

Jeff (Moreland) and Frankie (Darro) prove themselves not ready for prime-time.

"Up in the Air" is a film where the cast is doing there very best with weak material. Darro and Moreland are great together--as they are in every teaming I've seen so far--and the other performers are also at the top of their game. If only more effort at been put into the script, as well as the set-piece musical performances by Lorna Gray and Marjorie Reynolds, this could have ranked among Monogram's best efforts. It's always a shame to see actors giving it their best but being undermined by weak material.

I think the film is still worth seeing if you are a fan of either Frankie Darro or Mantan Moreland, and a must-see if you like them when work together. One part of the film that I'm curious about is the "minstrel show" sequence where Frankie and Jeff are trying out for a spot on the radio show. Their routine is intentionally embarrassing--and even more so when viewed through 21st century eyes. Given that black-face was already falling out of favor by 1940, I wonder if that medium wasn't chosen to make Frankie and Jeff's comedy routine seem even more hackneyed and bad.

By-the-numbers mystery with a nice twist

The Lady Confesses (1945)
Starring: Mary Beth Hughes, Hugh Beaumont, Edmund MacDonald, Emmett Vogan, and Claudia Drake
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When her wedding plans are derailed by murder, Vicki (Hughes) sets out to discover why nightclub owner Lucky Brandon (MacDonald) lied to cast doubt on her fiance's (Beaumont) otherwise unshakable alibi.

"The Lady Confesses" is a standard murder mystery that is elevated by a nice third-act twist. As is the case with many of these B-movies, the short running time leaves viewers wanting for a little more background on some of the characters. It would have been nice to know why the eventual murder victim disappeared for seven years, and it would have helped the story if we'd been given more information about Lucky's relationship to Vicki's fiance, Larry. However, I feel inclined to forgive the filmmakers, because there's not a wasted moment anywhere in the film where they might have squeezed such exposition in -- even the obligatory musical number at the night club is truncated when compared to what is typical in a movie like this.

The cast is interesting in this film, especially if you're a big fan of these kinds of movies. Mary Beth Hughes plays a role very different from the bad girl ones she's usually cast in. Hugh Beaumont also gets to play a role that's a little meatier than what we usually expect from him. He doesn't quite rise to the challenge, but nice lighting and some decent dialogue helps prop up his performance.

All in all, this is not a bad little movie.

Classic Cinema: D.O.A.

D.O.A. (aka "Dead On Arrival")  (1949) 
Starring: Edmond O'Brien, Pamela Britton, Beverly Garland, Lynne Bagget, Luther Adler, William Ching, and Henry Hart
Director: Rudolph Mate
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

 Frank Bigalow (O'Brien) is a small town accountant on a spur-of-the-moment vacation in San Francisco when he is poisoned by a slow acting toxin with no hope of surviving. He spends his last few hours of life trying to solve his own murder.

"D.O.A." is one of the greatest murder mystery films ever made, as well as a stellar example of the film noir genre as it manifested in American movies. It turns a number of movie and mystery conventions on their heads, and even some six decades after it was made, it feels fresh and exciting as one watches it unfold. The pace grows more frantic as the literal deadline for our hero approaches while the mystery of why he was poisoned seems to grow more elusive with each supposed clue he uncovers. It's a movie that holds up to repeated viewings--it almost demands it, because once you know the answer to the mystery, it's great fun to see how certain scenes take on a different tenor. What this film does with snappy writing, moody lighting, and artful cinematography is amazing... and I wish there was some sign that modern filmmakers watched movies like this and studied them and took lessons away from them. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case.

As great as I think this movie is, it's not perfect. There are a couple of ham-fisted attempts at comedy early on, as Bigalow walks into the middle of a salesman's convention at his hotel; one of the film's villains is portrayed by a performance that goes just a bit too far over-the-top in this film which is otherwise marked by fairly low-key performances; and the overly sinister and melodramatic appearance of the poisoner in the jazz club when a close-in shot of a patron switching Bigalow's drinks wold have been far more effective and in keeping with the rest of the scene. Despite my sense that the director went too far with these three elements, they still make sense within the context of the film, and given the greatness of what surrounds them, they are easily forgiven.

If you're a lover of mystery films or the film noir genre, you absolutely must see "D.O.A.". This goes double if you fancy yourself a writer or a filmmaker; we need more work like this these days. I thought I had reviewed this film years ago, but since I can't seem to find any sign of a post, I must never have gotten around to it. So, although my intent was to just make an entry in the "Classic Cinema" series and give you the chance to watch this great film right here, I figured there was no time like the present.

And there's no time like the present for you to watch "D/O.A."/ I've embedded it below for your enjoyment.

Forgotten Comics: "Jill Trent" & "British Agent 99"

During the early years of the comic book industry, more series-leading characters came and went than possibly in all the decades that have followed since. The vast majority of titles in those days were anthologies, so for every issue of a comic book, there was a need for at least three or four different series, not counting one- and two-page filler items. Once reprinting newspaper strips fell out of vogue, a vast number of original series were needed.

Some of these characters remain at the forefront of popular comics today, such as Superman, Batman, The Spirit, and Wonder Woman. Others were popular enough that they continued to receive occassional revivals, at least through the 1990s, as creators and company executives fondly remembered the comic book heroes of their earliest childhoods, such as Plastic Man and the original Captain Marvel (and Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr.)

But for every Superman, there were dozens upon dozens of characters who either had a time in the spotlight (like Black Cat) or who disolved back into the aether of imagination from which they had sprung after just a small handful of stories. And then there were the moderately successful characters who kept popping up here and there, either because just enough readers liked them, or because some editor or publisher had a soft spot for them.

One character who was featured in four issues of Pocket Comics from Harvey, and who was never seen again once that title was cancelled, was Alan Douglas, British Agent 99. Douglas was a British national and celebrated Hollywood star who left acting behind to join the British Secret Service after the German victory at Dunkirk in 1940. A master of disguise, he could become anyone with just a little time to prepare.

Splash page from the "British Agent 99" tale
that appeared in Pocket Comics #3.

The first three "British Agent 99" stories were set against the backdrop of the Nazi expansion into eastern Europe and the Yugoslavian military coup and popular revolt that resulted when that nation's political leadership surrendered to the Nazis. Although Alan Douglas is fictional, many of the characters he interacts with are historical figures, and the story unfolds in a manner that stays true to the actual events. In the fourth and final tale, Alan Douglas is taken out of historical events and goes on assignment to Hollywood where he meets Black Cat and helps take down a Nazi spy ring.

Alan Douglas remained in the shadows for more than 70 years when, though complete coincidence, two different publishers decided to bring him back. 

In April of 2013, Broken Souls published "Tarnished," an anthology featuring grim takes on several Golden Age characters, including Alan Douglas and Black Cat. It's a full-color title with all new stories, and you can learn more about it by clicking here.

While the creatives at Broken Souls were slaving away, NUELOW Games--an outfit I call my own--was preparing its "Film Fun Comics" comics/fiction/gaming anthology series. We too tapped Alan Douglas to be featured, due to his back-story as a former actor and his team-up with Black Cat, the mascot of the NUELOW Games comics line, and a fixture of the "Film Fun Comics" series. As is the case with almost all NUELOW Games's comics releases, "Film Fun Comics: British Agent 99" is presented in black-and-white. We strip the color out of the scans, since the original sources are of varying quality and it's the best way we can bring uniformity to the presentation within our non-existing budget and limited resources. But... since it IS in black-and-white, I have an excuse to make a self-serving post! 

While Broken Souls may have beaten NUELOW Games to market with the first ever revival of Alan Douglas, "Film Fun Comics Vol. 3: British Agent 99" is still noteworthy, as its the first time someone has ever collected all four of Alan Douglas's adventures in one place. Click here to learn more about this important release from NUELOW Games (which also features original fiction by yours truly and a Black Cat story illustrated by Bob Powell).

While "British Agent 99" may be a bit too esoteric and crude in its execution art-wise for many modern readers, the same cannot be said about "Jill Trent, Science Sleuth," another 1940s series that has recently received the NUELOW Games treatment. "Jill Trent" is a series so full of action and Girl Power that it continues to appeal today. In fact, Jill has never completely been forgotten in the seven decades since she first appeared on the scene, as numerous little tributes to her all across the web demonstrate. 

A Jill Trent splash-page from "Science Sleuths" #1.

Jill Trent, along with her gal-pal Daisy Smythe, are independent business women who make their living selling Jill's inventions to companies and corporations. On the side, they use Jill's inventions to fight crime... and they usually beat the heck out of any bad guy unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Jill Trent, Science Sleuth" lasted some 14 episodes, debuting in Nedor's "Fighting Yank" #6, and eventually moving to "Wonder Comics" as a regular back-up feature. When "Wonder Comics" was cancelled with issue #20, so was "Jill Trent, Science Sleuth."  

This series was a lot of fun, and lead artist Al Camy had a style that still holds up nicely today. If you're one of those readers who bemoan the poor (and mostly undressed) state of comic book heroines, I think "Jill Trent, Science Sleuth" will cheer you up. (Heck, if you're an artist, get in touch. Maybe we can make NEW "Jill Trent" stories!)

Click here for more information about "Science Sleuths" #1. Jill will be headlining the first few issues of Science Sleuths, but will be sharing its pages with other science-minded (and far more obscure) characters. We will eventually run out of Jill Trent stories--around #5 if current plans hold--but we're certain readers will come to appreciate the other strips waiting in the wings.

In addition to three "Jill Trent" adventures, "Science Sleuths" #1 presents the origin story for Spider Queen. I touch on that series here.... and I will probably revisit it when "Science Sleuths" #2 comes out later this month.

Classic Cinema: Impact

Time for another one of my favorite old time movies. "Impact" is a "film'noir" crime drama with a basic set-up (an unfaithful wife and her lover plan to kill her rich husband, but things go wrong) that's followed by all manner of twists and turns. It's lots of fun to watch, and it sports a great cast of actors. Click here to read my review, or go straight to the movie.

Have a happy Friday!

'The Frozen Ghost' ventures forthfrrom the Inner Sanctum

The Frozen Ghost (1945)
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Evelyn Ankers, Milburn Stone, Elena Vergougo, Martin Kosleck, and Tala Birell
Director: Harold Young
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When a heckler dies during one of his performances, a celebrated stage mentalist (Chaney) becomes convinced that he has a genuine ability to kill people with his mind. He retreats from public life and into the refuge of a wax museum run by friend (Vergougo) while his agent (Stone) and fiance (Ankers) try to help him deal with guilt and delusions. But when strange events start occurring at the museum, including the disappearance of its owner, he grows ever more convinced of his supernatural powers... while the police become ever more convinced that he is a murderer.

"The Frozen Ghost" is the fourth entry in Universal's "Inner Sanctum" series starring Lon Chahey Jr. in a different role each time (with frequent co-star Evelyn Ankers similarly showing up in several of them). It's another quirky mystery that walks the line between thriller and horror while delivering a series of twists and turns, some of which will be not be surprising to most modern veiwers both others are as effective now as they were in 1945 when the film was first released.

Lon Chaney Jr. is in fine form as the tortured and perpetually confused Alex Gregor, as he basically spends the film as a sad-sack whose life keeps collapsing in the most nightmarish ways--be it on the professional, romantic, or completely mundane front. Gregor is a character who can't even go for a walk without some horrible development cropping up to make him even more miserable... and to make it even more certain that he is doomed.

On first glance, it might seen a little overkill that have a mentalist with apparently real psychic powers hiding in a creepy wax museum with an even creepier staff who may or may not have sinister motives, and who has friends who may or may not be trying to hide bad intentions behind their helpful smiles, but it works here. The film remains engaging and entertaining from beginning to end. Fans of Chaney and of classic Universal horror and mystery films should check it out.

Great adaptation of 'The Tell-Tale Heart'

The Tell-Tale Heart (1941)
Starring: Joseph Schildkraut and Roman Bohnen
Director: Jules Dassin
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A young man (Schildkraut) murders his abusive employer, but is then himself driven insane by his own guilty conscience.

This 1941 short film is a superb adaptation of the famous Poe short story. It is not only faithful to the mechanical elements of the plot, but the director manages to convey the psychological horror aspect of the original story more effectively than most others who have taken a stab at bringing the tale to film. The biggest change is that this adaptation alters the relationship between the characters from the story, but it results in Schildkraut's character being more sympathetic and results in a stronger movie.

Much of the film's success can be credited to the performances of Joseph Schildkraut, as the tormented protagonist of the story, and Roman Bohnen, as the abusive, eventual murder victim. However, an even bigger part of its success can be credited to the sound design. The sound of titular "tell-tale heart" ends up permeating every aspect of the film's final few minutes, even the soundtrack music. It's a great example of how close attention to sound can build suspense and horror as effectively as camera angles and lighting. (And this film benefits from excellent cinematography as well.)

The murder scene is perhaps the film's only real weakness. The killing basically happens off-screen, and, while artfully done, I think the director might be leaving just a little too much to our imagination. I think he was trying to avoid over-used B-movie cliches like shadows on the wall and such, but the murder just didn't seem to have the same intensity as the scenes that led up to it, nor those that followed. It is almost like a lull just past the film's halfway point.

This 1941 version of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is included as a bonus feature on the "Shadow of the Thin Man" DVD along with a vintage cartoon. The combination lets you stage an old-time movie experience, with two shorts before the main feature. (This is the case with most of the "Thin Man" DVDs... the extras on the discs are almost as fun as the main features. They are excellent added value if you pick up the Thin Man boxed set. Which I recommend that you do if you like classic comedies and mysteries.)

'Dead Man's Eyes' starts lame but gets better

Inner Sanctum: Dead Man's Eyes (1944)
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Paul Kelley, Acquanetta, Jean Parker, Edward Fielding, and Thomas Gomez
Director: Reginald Le Borg
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

David (Chaney) is blinded when he mistakenly puts acid in his eyes instead of eye-wash. When his elderly future father-in-law (Fielding) is murdered after willing David his eyes for transplant, he becomes a prime suspect with lots of motive and no alibi beyond being blind.



Successful crime dramas, thrillers, and horror films usually work because they foreshadow what's coming, be it the obnoxious rich uncle delcaring, "you'll get my fortune over my dead body!" or the weird gypsy woman warning the characters not to go into the woods after midnight. Lack of foreshadowing makes the mystery or horror film feel forced and slipshod, and the wrong kind of foreshadowing makes viewers roll their eyes.

Like the foreshadowing in "Dead Man's Eyes". The main character, David, lives and works in a small studio apartment. It is so small, in fact, that it has only one sink that serves as both kitchen, bathroom, and the place to his brushes. Above the sink is a shelf... where David keeps the eye-wash he uses daily right next to the acid he uses to clean his brushes. And he keeps these two liquids in identical bottles. Right next to each other.

I'm sure you can see the coming disaster that's invariable going to strike, especially given the title of the movie. And, sure enough, one day, David grabs the wrong bottle (maybe by accident, but most likely not, given his model is a South American psycho who is insanely jealous of David's fiancee and madly possessive of him) and pours acid in his eyes instead of eye-wash.

I almost shut the DVD off at that point, because I wasn't in the mood for wasting my time on fodder for Movies You Should [Die Before You] See but wanted to be entertained by something good. And this film was not looking promising.

I'm glad I stuck with it, though. because once it got past the monumentally stupid set-up, it turned into quite the thrilling little mystery, with a nice array of suspects and enough plot twists to keep suspicion on almost everyone up to the end--including the main character, David.

The film is also fun, because of the many strong performances. Acquanetta is great as David's crazy model, and she's also the easy suspect for all the nefarious going-ons in the film. And if the movie had stayed as weak as it began, she would have been the only suspect. But Lon Chaney Jr. also gives a fine performance, one that gives viewers the idea that there's something a little off with his character. The other actors are excellent in their parts too, and, supported by a clever script, they turn what started out as a disaster into a fun viewing experience.

"Dead Man's Eyes" is the third of six movies in the "Inner Sanctum" series. Like the two previous ones, Lon Chaney Jr. gives an excellent performance. It might well be that these films feature Chaney at his best. If you liked him as the reluctant wolfman in Universal Pictures' monster-mash films, you absolutely need to check him out in these pictures.

Happy 70th Anniversary, Casablanca!

I've been told that today, March 21, 2012, there are numerous theaters across the United States that are showing "Casablanca" on the big screen in celebration of the film's 70th anniversary.

I hope you're lucky enough to have it showing somewhere near where you live. If you've never seen this fine film--which stars Humphrey Bogart, Igrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains, and tells the tale of an American in Nazi-occupied Casablanca who is forced to choose between love and righteousness when he has the opportunity to regain his old flame by letting her resistance-fighter husband fall into the hands of the German-allied Vichy-French.

With its near-perfect balance between suspense, comedy, and romance, this film is a great example of the kind of films that once made Hollywood great.

'Weird Woman' has Lon Chaney Jr at his best

Inner Sanctum: Weird Woman (1944)
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Anne Gwynne, Evelyn Ankers, Elizabeth Risdon, and Lois Collier
Director: Reginald Le Borg
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

While studying native rituals and superstitions, an anthroplogy professor (Chaney) falls in love with marries the daughter of an old mentor (Gwynne). Upon his return to the United States, he discoversn that his wife is a fervent believer in the native gods and that she has been practing rituals that she believes will protect him from the evil intentions of one of his colleagues (Ankers). Appalled that his wife believes in such supersitious nonsense, he forces her to destroy all the charms and fetishes she owns... but as soon as he does this, his life and career start falling apart.

"Weird Woman" is a decent adaptation of one of Fritz Leiber's best novels, "Conjure Wife". It features a nice, tight script, great performances by the entire cast, and a surprise ending that at the same time manages to reinforce and cast doubt on the film's central premise--that the "powers of the supernatural" are nothing but supersition and fear causing believers to act in ways that create self-fulling prophecies.

Of particular note in this film is by Lon Chaney Jr., who is seen giving one of the best performances of his entire career. The character he is playing could easily have come across as a self-satisfied jerk in the hands of an lesser actor. His attitude toward his wife and her beliefs is obnoxious in the extreme, and some of his interactions with the staff and students of the college he teaches at borders on high-handed with a wiff of false humility. But Chaney infuses the character with an air of insecurity that makes the viewer accept and even forgive his behavior.

"Weird Woman" is one of the best entires in the "Inner Sanctum" movie series, and it's one of the best films to come out of the Universal Pictures' horror revival in the 1940s. Fans of classic mystery films, the Universal Pictures horror collection, and Lon Chaney Jr. will all find a lot to like in this one.

Death makes a house call....

Inner Sanctum: Calling Dr. Death (1943)
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Patricia Morison, J. Carrol Naish, Ramsay Ames, Fay Helm, and David Bruce
Director: Reginald LeBorg
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A brilliant hypnotherapist (Chaney) becomes the prime suspect in the murder of his shrewish, unfaithful wife (Ames) when he suffers an unexplained blackout during the weekend she was murdered.

"Calling Dr. Death" was the first of six films based on the popular radio drama anthology series "Inner Sanctum", each starring Lon Chaney Jr. in the lead role. It is a series that belongs both in style and quality with Universal's Wolf Man and Mummy pictures of the early 1940s--most of which also starred Chaney--in that these films a low-budget B-pictures that vary greatly in quality... and rarely manage to touch the heights of Universal's horror films from the early 1930s.

Like the radio series they draw from, the "Inner Sanctum" films are more mysteries than horror flicks, but it varies from installment to installment how far they lean toward which genre.

"Calling Dr. Death" is a straight mystery that, despite being rather slow-moving manages to generate quite a bit of tension as its multi-layered plot casts suspicion first on one character, then another... and ultimately seems to settle on a conspiracy between two characters. Eventually, the film relies on a surprise twist, which was well-executed and very dramatic, even if it pointed back to the character I had initially thought would be the killer. The method used was also similar to what I had figured, but the motivation was completely different, but it fit logically with the rest of the film's storyline. (The twist ending must be a lost art.)

Featuring a solid cast, with Chaney as the high-strung hypnotist and J. Carrol Naish as the relentless, hard-nosed police detective who is hellbent on proving "Dr. Death" guilty of killing his wife, leading the pack. Ramsay Ames was almost unrecognizable as the shrewish wife, and Patricia Morison.

This isn't the greatest of mystery films, but it's got a great cast and it pays off nicely if you're a little patient with it. If you're a fan of Lon Chaney Jr. and a classic B-movie mysteries, it's worth checking out.

The Adventures of Larry Talbot, Wolfman

In the 1940s, the Wolf Man was something of a poor stepchild among the Universal Monsters, sharing his sequels with Frankenstein, Dracula, and even Abbott & Costello. Even Universal Pictures' Legacy Collection DVD series gave him short shrift: His films weren't even included in the set bearing his name, but instead spread across three Legacy Collections. Only the original film and the first Wolf Man sequel ("Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man") are included in the set where they properly belong while the others are in "Dracula: The Legacy Collection" ("House of Dracula") and "Frankenstein: The Legacy Collection" ("House of Frankenstein").

This post reviews all the classic Wolf Man pictures--films that established the rules for cinematic werewolves that would be followed the world over for decades afterwards. They also started the "monster mash" tradition of pictures pairing werewolves, vampires, and other creatures that go bump in the night in the same picture. The films are a little uneven in quality at times, with at least one of them being butchered in post-production, but they are among the most solid of Universal's horror efforts during the 1940s, and they show Lon Chaney Jr. at his best.


The Wolf Man (1941)
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Maria Ouspenskaya, Warren William, and Bela Lugosi
Director: George Waggner
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Engineer Larry Talbot (Chaney) returns to his ancestral home and reconnects with his roots... only to be bitten by a werewolf and find himself cursed. Will he manage to find a cure for a malady that no one in the modern world believes in before he kills someone he loves?


"The Wolf Man" isn't the first werewolf movie--I think that was Universal's "Werewolf of London"--but it's the one that brought werewolves firmly into pop culture, and most every other film, novel, or comic book that's followed in the 65+ years since its release owes one thing or another to it. In fact, there are a numer of elements that are now taken as "fact" about werewolf legends that didn't exist until the writer of "The Wolf Man" made them up.

Interestingly, this really isn't that good a movie. It's sloppily edited--leading to characters entering through the same door twice within a few seconds and other glitches--and the script shows signs of only partially implimented rewrites that gives the flm a slightly schizophrenic quality and that causes characters to seemingly forget key plot elements as the story unfolds. (The biggest one; Larry's given an amulet that will supposedly suppress his transformation, an amulet he gives to a lady friend when he thinks the werewolf stuff is a bunch of hooey. Later, though, he seems to have totally forgotten the purpose of the amulet. And let's not even consider the bad script-induced callousness of our heroine, Gwen, who cheerfully goes on a date the night after a good friend is mysteriously murdered in the woods.)

However, what flaws this movie possesses are rendered insignificant thanks to an amazing performance by Lon Chaney Jr. as the tortured werewolf, Larry Talbot. "The Wolf Man" is one of those rare movies where a single actor manages to lift a weak film to the level of a classic. Although he's assisted by a supporting cast that is a veritable who's-who of 1930s and 1940s genre films, and the set designers and dressers went all out, this is truly it is Lon Chaney Jr's movie. It might even be the brightest moment of his entire career.

Chaney plays a decent man who becomes a monster through no fault of his own, and who is horrified by the acts he commits while he is the wolf man. This makes Larry Talbot unique among all the various monsters in the Universal horror picutres of the 1930s and 1940s, and Chaney makes the character even more remarkable by playing him as one of the most likeable (if a bit smarmy when it comes to the ladies) characters in any of the classic horror films. This likeability makes Chaney's performance even more powerful and causes the viewer to feel even more deeper for Larry when he experiences the grief, helplessness, and terror when he realizes that he is a murderer and the victim of a supernatural affliction that his modern, rational mind can't even begin to comprehend.

There are other good performances in the film, and they too help make up for the weak script. Most noteworthy among these is Maria Ouspenskaya who plays a gypsy wise-woman. Ouspenskaya delivers her magic incantations and werewolf lore with such conviction that it's easy to see why they've become the accepted "facts" of werewolves. (This may also be the first film where gypsies became firmly associated with werewolves.)

Although flawed, "The Wolf Man" is a cornerstone of modern popular horror, and it's well-deserving of its status as a classic. It should be seen by lovers of classic horror pictures (Lon Chaney Jr. deserves to be remembered for this film and it's required viewing for any self-respecting fan of werewolf films and literature.


Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
Steve's Rating: Six of Ten Stars
Starring: Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Patric Knowles, Ilona Massey, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lionel Atwill and Bela Lugosi
Director: Roy William Neill
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When grave robbers disturb Larry Talbot's tomb, the unwilling werewolf (Chaney) awakens to the discovery that not only is he cursed to become a beast under the full moon, but he is immortal. With the help of Maleva (Ouspenskaya), a gypsy wise-woman, he seeks out Dr. Frankenstein, the premiere expert on life, death, and immortality... because if anyone can find a way to bring death to an immortal, it's Dr. Frankenstein. Will Larry find peace, or will Frankenstein's experiments bring more horror and destruction to the world?


"Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" is a direct sequel to both "The Wolf Man" and "Ghost of Frankenstein". It's the first time two legendary horror creatures meet... and without this film, we'd probably never have been treated to "Freddy vs. Jason" or "Alien vs. Predator" or "Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Dracula".

Unlike most of Universal's movies during the 1940s, I appreciate the fact that the creatives and executives at Universal are paying some attention to the continuity of prior Frankenstein films and "The Wolf Man", but there's still plenty of sloppiness and bad storytelling to remind us that this is a Universal film from the 1940s. (Like the werewolf mysteriously changing from pajamas into his dark shirt and pants when transformed, and then changing back into his pajamas as be becomes Larry Talbot again. Or the bizarre forgetfulness of the townspeople who drive Larry and his gypsy friend away, but who don't bat an eye when Larry is later invited to the town's wiine festival and the mayor's guest and date for Baroness Frankenstein (Massey), the granddaugher of the original monster-maker. Maybe the fact that Larry's wearing a suit and tie when he returns fooled them!)

The movie starts out strong, however. The grave-robbing and the wolf man's ressurection scene are spine-chilling. Chaney once again effectively conveys Talbot's mental anguish during the scenes where he is confined to a hospital and recovering from the supposedly fatal headwounds he receieved at the end of "The Wolf Man" (apparently, a werewolf's wounds don't heal while he's supposedly dead and piled high with wolf's bane). It looks like we're in for a thrilling chiller that's going to be better than the original film...

But then the action moves to Switzerland and things start to go wrong.

Although a seemingly endless musical number at the village wine festival is the low point, the inexplicable transformation of a level-headed medical man (Knowles) hoping to help cure Talbot of what he perceives to be a homocidal mania to crazed Frankenstein-wannabe, the seemingly laughable arm-waving performance of the Frankenstein Monster by Bela Lugosi--because Larry simply can't just leave him sleeping in his ice cave--and an ending so abbrupt that it feels like something's missing, all drag the film down to a level of crapitude that almost manages to make the viewer forget about the very excellent first half.

I don't know what went wrong with this film, but I suspect that it was decided at an executive level at Universal that the monster movies were going to be targeted at kids. It's the only explanation that makes sense of the deterioation from mature, well-developed films like "Frankenstein" and "The Mummy" to the mostly slap-dash stuff found in the movies featuring Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy for the rest of the 1940s.

My guess is that someone, somewhere, made a decision to shorten this movie and make it more accessible for kids by simplifying it. According to several sources, this film suffered more than average from butchery in the editing room where all of Lugosi's lines were deleted from the soundtrack and key scenes were cut out, such as the one where it's revealed that the Monster is still blind from the partially botched brain transplant in "Ghost of Frankenstein". This detail explains why Lugosi is stumbling about with with his arms outstretched and is seen pawing strangely at items while Larry Talbot is searching for Dr. Frankenstein's records. Lugosi's performance goes from laughably stupid to perfectly decent when one understands what he was doing. (The original screen writer says that the editing was done was test audiences thought the monster was funny when speaking with Lugosi's accent and that this is why the second half of the film was so heavilly edited. That sounds reasonable, but only if one ignores the overall direction the Universal horror movies were heading in. And the shockingly badly handled, abrubt ending. And the dangling plot threads... where DOES Maleva vanish to?)

But, a film can only be judged by what's there on the screen. While the editing left the flim shorter and more straight-forward, it also resulted in very important plot-points and probably even mood-establishing scenes and elements being slashed out. We also have a movie where Frankenstein's Monster once again has very little to do (as was the case in "Son of Frankenstein"), And, ultimately, we're left with a movie that is both remarkable for its being the first meeting of two great cinematic monsters, but also for being a clear point at which to say that this is where the reign of Universal as king of horror films ended.

"Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" isn't a truly terrible movie. It's just rendered dissapointingly mediocre by its second half, and it just manages to earn a Six rating.


House of Frankenstein (1944)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr, J. Carroll Naish, John Carradine and George Zucco
Director: Erle C. Kenton
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

After escaping from prison, mad scientist Gustav Niemann (Karloff) sets out to gain revenge on those who helped imprison him, and to find the notes of the legendary Dr. Frankenstein so he can perfect his research. Along the way, he accidentially awakens Dracula (Carradine) and recruits him to his cause, as well as uncovers the frozen bodies of Frankenstein's Monster and Larry Talbot, the unfortunate wolfman (Chaney) and and revives them. Cue the torch-wielding peasant mob.


"House of Frankenstein" kinda-sorta picks up where "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" picked up, although the method of survival for the monsters is a bit dodgey, with Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf Man having both been frozen in a glacier so they could be revived for this film.

"House of Frankenstein" unfolds in a very episodic way, with the part of the film involving Dracula feeling very disconnected from what comes before and what comes after. The main storyline sees Karloff's mad doctor questing for revenge while preparing to prove himself a better master of brain-transplanting techniques than Frankenstein, and the growing threat to his cause by his repeated snubbing of his murderous assistant (Naish). The whole bit with Dracula could easily be left out, and the film may have been stronger for it.

This is a very silly movie that is basically a parade of gothic horror cliches--I thought maybe I was having some sort of hallucinatory flashback to my days writing for the "Ravenloft" line--but it moves at a quick pace, and it features a great collection of actors, has a nifty musical score, and features great sets once the story moves to the ruins of Castle Frankenstein.

"House of Dracula" is one of the lesser Universal Monster movies--it's not rock-bottom like the mummy films with Lon Chaney, but it's almost there. The film is, to a large degree, elevated by the top-notch performances from Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr, and they're almost too good for this film.


House of Dracula (aka "The Wolf Man's Cure")
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Onslow Stevens, John Carradine, Lionel Atwill, Martha O'Driscoll, Jane Adams, and Glenn Strange
Director: Erle C. Kenton
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Unwilling, immortal werewolf Larry Talbot (Chaney) seeks out Dr. Edelman (Stevens), hoping the doctor's cutting edge therapies will cure his affliction. Unfortunately, the doctor's other patient, Count Dracula (Carradine), endangers this hope when he out of pure malice afflicts Edelman with a condition that causes him to become a violent madman at night. It is during one of these fits that Edelman revives Frankenstein's Monster (Strange), which has been dormant in his lab since it was recovered from mud-floes under Edelman's castle.

"House of Dracula" was the third sequel to "The Wolf Man" and "Dracula" and the fifth sequel to "Frankenstein"... and it was the next-to-last stop for all three of the characters as Universal's decade-and-half long horror ride came to an end. nearly the last stop for Universal's original monsters, and it is something of a high note when compared to other Universal horror films from around the same time, even the one to which this is a sequel, "House of Frankenstein" with Boris Karloff.

The script in "House of Dracula" is stronger and more coherent than "House of Frankenstein". The effort at maintaining continuity with other films featuring the character of the Wolf Man are in evidence here, and they are greatly appreciated by this continuity geek. Also, all the various monster characters each get their moment to shine--unlike in "House of Frankenstein" where Dracula was completely superflous to the storyline and whose presense was little more than a marquee-grabbing cameo.

In this film, Dracula is the well-spring of evil from which the plot flows. Although he supposedly comes to Dr. Edelman seeking release from vampirism and his eternal life, he is either too evil or too stupid to control his desires for Edelman's beautfiful nurse (O'Driscoll). He gets his just desserts, but not before he guarentees that every brave and goodhearted character in the film is set on a path of destruction.

The climactic scenes of this film, as the insane Dr. Edelman and Frankenstein's Monster go on homicidal rampages, feature some very, sudden, casual, and matter-of-fact brutality. (I can't go into details without spoiling the plot, but two main characters are dispatched with such swift and surprisingly brutal fashion that modern-day horror filmmakers should take a look at the final minutes of "House of Dracula" and attempt to learn some lessons from them.)

And then there's Larry Talbot. The role of the wolf man in this story is the meatiest since the character's debut in "The Wolf Man". Although he still doesn't get to have the stage to himself, and he is once again a secondary character--the main character of "House of Dracula" is the unfortunate Dr. Edelman--he has some great moments... like his suicide attempt and his discovery of the dormant Frankenstein's Monster.

Acting-wise, this is also one of the better than many other Universal horror films of the period. This is partly due to a superior script that features a story that actually flows with some degree of logic and where the actors have some fairly decent lines to deliever.

Lon Chaney Jr. does his usual excellent job as Larry Talbot, but Onslow also shines as a scientific genius who's a little less mad than the standard in a movie like this (well, at least until Dracula is done with him).


John Carradine performs decently, but I simply can't buy him as Dracula. Even in his younger years, he had the look of a burned-out, alcoholic bum, and the lighting and make-up in this feature strengthen that look as far as I'm concerned. While miscast, he does a decent job.

Lionel Atwill is also on hand for another fine supporting role. The part is similar to the one he played in "Son of Frankenstein", but the role is even more interesting, as he's the voice of reason in a town that is otherwise inhabited by villagers whose favorite pastime seems to be grabbing torches and storming the castle.

When all things are taken into account, this is perhaps the best of Universal's original Wolf Man films, and it was a fitting send-off for poor Larry Talbot, as well as Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula.

But... there would be one last bow for Larry and his eternal foes.



Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Starring: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Lenore Aubert and Bela Lugosi
Director: Charles Barton
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

The reluctant Wolf Man, Larry Talbot (Chaney) learns that Dracula (Lugosi) intends to revive Frankenstein's Monster and use it as his personal super-soldier. He pursues the evil vampire lord to the United States where he finds his only allies to be Wilbur and Chick (Costello and Abbott), a couple of less-than-bright shipping clerks. Unfortunately, Dracula as an ally of his own--mad scientist femme fatale Dr. Sandra Mornay (Aubert), and she has Wilbur wrapped around her little finger. Little does Wilbur know that his girlfriend doesn't love him for his mind but rather his brain... she intends to do Dracula's bidding and transplant into the rejuvinated monster!


"Abott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" is a wild screwball comedy with the two master comedians doing their usual routines within the framework of a solid script and a story that's actually pretty logical in its own crazy way. I think it's the first fusion of comedy and monsters, and one reason it works so well is that the monsters are played straight. Even when they are involved in funny schtick (Dracula and the Wolf Man are both part of several routines), they remain as they were featured in the serious monster movies they were in. Of course, one shouldn't ask how or why Larry was once again cursed (given his cure at the end of "House of Dracula,") but otherwise the monsters are all consistent with previous films.

Too often, I hear this film written off as Universal's last and crassest attempt to wring some dollars out of their tired monster franchise. While that may be all the studio bosses had in mind, the creators involved with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" managed to make a great movie that is still worth watching today. It's even superior to many of Universal's "straight" movies with Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and the Wolf Man (or, for that matter, countless recent so-called horror films). Much of its strength grows from the fact that has a plot that with some tweaking could be a straight horror movie.

I recommend this underappreciated film to any lover of the classic monster films, as well as lovers of slapstick comedy.

The Complete Saga of Kharis the Mummy

While the 1932 film "The Mummy remains the best mummy picture ever made, it was the Universal low-budget quickies of the 1940s that actually solidified the idea of the shambling, bandage-wrapped mummy that dominates pop culture and Halloween spook houses today. This post covers those four genere-shaping films.

The Mummy's Hand (1940)
Starring: Dick Foran, Wallace Ford, Peggy Moran, George Zucco, and Tim Tyler
Director: Christy Cabanne
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A pair of hard-luck Egyptologists (Foran and Ford) discover the location of the long lost tomb of Princess Ananka. Unfortunately for them, an evil cult leader (Zucco) controls the immortal, tomb-guarding, tanna leaf-tea slurping mummy Kharis, and he's hot afraid to use him to keep the secret of the tomb.


More of an adventure flick with a heavy dose of lowbrow comedy than a horror film, "The Mummy's Hand" isn't even a proper sequel to the classy 1932 "The Mummy."

This movie (and the three sequels that follow) are completely unrelated to the original film, despite the copious use of stock footage from it. The most obvious differences are that the mummy here is named Kharis, as opposed to Imhotep, and has a different backstory. Then, there's the fact he's a mindless creature who goes around strangling people at the bidding of a pagan priest where Imhotep was very much his own man and did his killing with dark magics without ever laying a hand on his victims.

If one recognizes that this film shares nothing in common with the Boris Karloff film (except that they were both released by the same studio), "The Mummy's Hand" is a rather nice bit of fluff. It's also the first film to feature the real Universal Studios mummy, as Imhotep was an intelligent, scheming, and more-or-less natural looking man, not a mute, mind-addled, bandaged-wrapped, cripple like Kharis.


The Mummy's Tomb (1942)
Starring: Wallace Ford, Turhan Bey, John Hubbard, George Zucco, Dick Foran, Isobel Evans, and Lon Chaney Jr.
Director: Harold Young
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Thirty years after the events of "The Mummy's Hand, the High Priest of Karnak from the last film (Zucco), who, despite being shot four times and pointblank range and tumbling down a very long flight of stairs, survived to be an old man. He passes the mantle onto a younger man (Bey) and dispatches him to America with Kharis the Mummy (Chaney), who survived getting burned to a crisp at the end of the last movie, to slay those who dared loot the tomb of Princess Anankha. (Better late than never, eh?)


Take the plot of "The Mummy's Hand" (complete with a villain who has the exact same foibles as the one from the first movie), remove any sense of humor and adventure, toss in about ten minutes of recap to pad it up to about 70 minutes in length, add a climax complete with torch-weilding villagers and a mummy who is just too damn dumb to continue his undead existence, and you've got "The Mummy's Tomb."

Made with no concern for consistency (Ford's character changes names from Jenson to Hanson, the fashions worn in "The Mummy's Hand" implied it took place in the late 30s, or even in the year it was filmed, and yet "thirty years later" is clearly during World War II... and let's not even talk about how the mummy and Zucco's character survived) or originality (why write a whole new script when we can just have the bad guys do the exact same things they did last movie?), this film made with less care than the majority of B-movies.

Turhan Bey and Wallace Ford have a couple of good moments in this film, but they are surrounded by canned hash and complete junk.


The Mummy's Ghost (1944)
Starring: John Carradine, Ramsay Ames, Robert Lowery, George Zucco, and Lon Chaney Jr
Director: Reginald Le Borg
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Modern day priests of ancient Egyptian gods (Zucco and Carradine) undertake a mission to retrieve the cursed mummy of Princess Ananka from the American museum where she's been kept for the past 30 years. Unfortunately, they discover that the archeologists who stole her away from Egypt broke the spell that kept her soul trapped in the mummy and that she has been reincarnated in America as the beautiful Amina (Ames).


"The Mummy's Ghost" starts out strong. In fact, it starts so strong that, despite the fact that the priests who must be laughing stock of evil cult set were back with pretty much the exact same scheme for the third time (go to America and send Kharis the Mummy stumbling around to do stuff, that it looked like the filmmakers may have found their way back to the qualities that made "The Mummy" such a cool picture.

Despite a really obnoxious love interest for Amina (played with nails-on-a-chalkboard-level of obnoxiousness by Robert Lowery) and a complete resurrection of Kharis (boiling tannith leaves now apparently reconstitutes AND summons a mummy that was burned to ashes in a house-fire during "The Mummy's Tomb"), and a number of glaring continuity errors with the preceding films (the cult devoted to Ananka and Kharis has changed their name... perhaps because they HAD become the laughing stock among the other evil cults), the film is actually pretty good for about half its running time. The plight of and growing threat toward Amina lays a great foundation.

And then it takes a sharp nosedive into crappiness where it keeps burrowing downward in search of the bottom.

The cool idea that the film started with (Ananka's cursed soul has escaped into the body of a living person... and that person must now be destroyed to maintain the curse of the gods) withers away with yet another replay of the evil priest deciding he wants to do the horizontal mambo for all enternity with the lovely female lead. The idea is further demolished by a nonsensical ending where the curses of Egypt's ancient gods lash out in the modern world, at a very badly chosen target. I can't go into details without spoiling that ending, but it left such a bad taste in my mouth, and it's such a complete destruction of the cool set-up that started the film, that the final minute costs "The Mummy's Ghost" a full Star all by itself.



The Mummy's Curse (1944)
Starring: Peter Coe, Lon Chaney Jr, Kay Harding, Dennis Moore, Virginia Christine, and Kurt Katch
Director: Leslie Goodwins
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A construction project in Louisiana's bayou uncovers not only the mummy Kharis (Chaney), but also the cursed princess Ananka (Christine). Pagan priests from Egypt arrive to take control of both. Mummy-induced violence and mayhem in Cajun Country follow.

What happens when you make a direct sequel where no one involved cares one whit about keeping continuity with previous films? You get "The Mummy's Curse"!

For the previous entries in this series, Kharis was shambling around a New England college town, yet he's dug up in Louisiana. (He DID sink into a swamp at the end of "The Mummy's Ghost", but that swamp was hundreds of miles north of where he's found in this film.)

He also supposedly has been in the swamp for 25 years. For those keeping score, that would make this a futuristic sci-fi film with a setting of 1967, because the two previous films took place in 1942. (And that's being generous. I'm assuming "The Mummy's Hand" took place in 1912, despite the fact that all clothing and other signifiers imply late 30s early 40s.) Yet, there's nothing in the film to indicate that the filmmakers intended to make a sci-fi movie.

And then there's Ananka. Why is she back, given her fate in "The Mummy's Ghost"? There's absolutely no logical reason for it. Her resurrection scene is very creepy, as is the whole "solar battery" aspect of the character here, but it is completely inconsistent with anything that's gone before. And she's being played by a different actress--but I suppose 25 years buried in a swamp will change anyone.

There's little doubt that if anyone even bothered to glance at previous films for the series, no one cared.

Some things the film does right: It doesn't have the Egyptian priests replay exactly the same stuff they've done in previous films for the fourth time (although they are still utter idiots about how they execute their mission), it manages for the first time to actually bring some real horror to the table--Kharis manages to be scary in this film, and I've already mentioned Ananka's creep-factor--and they bring back the "mummy shuffling" music from "The Mummy's Ghost" which is actually a pretty good little theme. But the utter disregard for everything that's happened in other installments of the series overwhelm and cancel out the good parts.

"The Mummy's Curse" should not have been slapped into the "Kharis" series. If it had been made as a stand-alone horror film, it could have been a Six-Star movie. As it is, this just comes across as a shoddy bit of movie making where I can only assume that anything decent is more by accident than design.

'A Chump at Oxford' is funny but infuriating

A Chump at Oxford (1940)
Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson, Anita Garvin, Forrest Harvey, Eddie Borden, Wilfred Lucas, and Peter Cushing
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A pair of down-on-their-luck laborers (Laurel and Hardy) receive a scholarship to Oxford as a reward for foiling a bank robbery. They are greeted with cruelty by the snobbish student body until one of them is revealed to be the long-lost Lord Paddington.

"A Chump at Oxford" is the first Laurel and Hardy film I've seen where I remember being irritated. I wanted the collection of entitled, self-important jerks who decide to make their lives Hell when the arrive at Oxford to get what they dished out ten-fold, yet they never seem to be adequately punished to my mind. While Stanley beating them up after he regains his memories as Lord Paddington is a good start, but nowhere near enough--I wanted to see them tossed out of the school, not just out a window.

The rest of the film more than makes up for it though. From the pair's attempt to work as domestics at a fancy mansion through the various bits at Oxford--even if they were mostly brought on by mean tricks--are all very funny. An added bonus for Peter Cushing fans is that you can see him in an early role as one of the cruel students... it's not a big part, but he's there. And he's the only one who doesn't get to wear a silly mustache when the gang is passing themselves of as professors to Stan and Ollie.

An interesting note about this film is that it was originally intended to be released in two versions--a 40-some minute version for the American market an a 60-some minute version for Europe. The first part of the film--where Laurel and Hardy work as servants at a fancy party--was to have been omitted in the American release.

No doubt that 'Shadow of a Doubt' is great

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Starring: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotton, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, and Patricia Collinge
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Ten of Ten Stars

Ennui-ridden teenager Charlie (Wright) finds her drab world filled with life and hope of excitement when her legendary, globe-trotting Uncle Charlie, the man she is named for, pays a surprise visit to her and family. But Charlie's delight soon gives way to suspicion, then fear, then terror as she gradually comes to realize that he is hiding a dark secret -- that he is a serial killer on the run.

This is said to be Hitchcock's personal favorite among all the movies he made, and he was well within his rights to be very, very proud of it. With a script that is absolutely perfect in every way, a setting that captures the essence of the idyllic small American town so perfectly that Ray Bradbury would be moved to tears, and a cast that all deliver great performances in parts it seems they were born to play, there simply is not a single sour note in this movie.

It starts with a script that deftly sets up all its characters and manages to draw them as fully realized, three-dimension people within minutes of their first appearances on screen... usually through subtle character actions or exchanges. The most impressive of these is the film's lead character, a typical whiny restless teenager who in a script from lesser writers and interpreted by a lesser director would have been extremely annoying and someone you might wish ill upon. However, the character is so deftly written here and her reactions so believable--a mixture of childishness and adult and perception of what it means to be an adult--that you are rooting for her almost from the moment she is introduced into the story.

The same is true of the opposite side of the coin, the film's other Charlie... a man on the run with a secret, who may or may not be a serial killer. Like Young Charlie, he is deftly established a few touches that are followed up with further development that lends texture and deep character to him.

These two characters, and the oft-referenced "special bond" that exists between them, are the solid center around which story and other characters rotate, each developed as they relate to the two Charlies and each eventually emerging as fully realized as they are. Even the "special bond" ends up taking on personality, evolving from childish imaginings born of coincidences to something more real and that gives sinister weight to either Charlie when the younger of the two promises she will kill the older one if he hurts her mother.

Heck, this script is so perfect that the insta-romance the develops between Young Charlie and one of the detectives who come into town on Uncle Charlie's tail doesn't bother me one bit. Where this has nearly ruined a couple other Hitchcock films for me, here it

Of course, as well-written as these characters are, they would have withered in the hands of the wrong actor. Here, the casting is so absolutely perfect that the actors have an exponential impact when it comes to breathing life into the characters. Casting Joseph Cotton as a serial killer, who up to this point in his career had played nothing but lovable good guys, was a stroke of genius, and petite Teresa Wright nails her teenaged character perfectly despite being 25 at the time this film was made. Even the bit-players--like the small town's librarian and traffic cop--fit their roles perfect and instantly make the audience feel they know the person in question.

The great script and the perfectly cast actors are further supported by a great location and even better sets. A problem I sometimes have with Hitchcock's American films is sometimes jarring and obvious difference between footage made on sets or the studio back lot versus footage made on location. The quality of the environments change so drastically that I am sometimes pushed out of being absorbed in the movie. Not so here. Location and sound stage merge seamlessly and undetectably to form a perfect whole.

If you only watch one Hitchcock film, this is the one to choose.