Showing posts with label Mad Scientist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mad Scientist. Show all posts

Sunday, August 6, 2023

Sunday Comics with Milton Knight


Here's a tale of manslaughter and mystery from the pen of an underappreciated artist and story-teller, Milton Knight. This was adapted from a short story by the equally great Arthur Conan Doyle, and we hope you find it as enjoyable and impressive as we did! (Click on the pages to see larger, more easily read versions.)


By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight 
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight
By Milton Knight

 If you enjoyed the story, we encourage you to support Milton and his work by becoming a subscriber to his Patreon Page by clicking here.
 
 

Saturday, January 8, 2022

It's a Sala Saturday!

 Here's another early work from the late, great Richard Sala. It was collected in his anthology from Kitchen Sink Press "Black Cat Crossing" (1993) and it dates from the mid- to late 1980s. (Click for a larger, more readable version.)

This is my favorite of the sci-fi/horror genre-based one-pagers that Sala did.

One-page comics story by Richard Sala


Thursday, February 4, 2021

The Avengers: The Cybernauts

The Cybernauts (1965)
Starring: Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, Michael Gough, John Hollis, Frederick Jaeger, Burt Kwouk, and Ronald Lee-Hunt
Director: Sidney Hayers
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When corporates executives from firms competing to purchase the manufacturing rights to a revolutionary micro-circuit are murdered one after another, secret agents John Steed (Macnee) and Emma Peel (Rigg) are assigned to catch the killer.


With a story that's part murder mystery, part sci-fi, and industrial espionage caper, "The Cybernauts" is one of the best episodes of the Macnee/Rigg era of "The Avengers". It's got a suspenseful storyline where it feels as though the main characters are in serious danger--and this sense of danger grows right up until the episode's resolution.

The writing on this episode is also excellent in every way. The camaraderie between Steed and Peel is again highlighted by some great banter; the way the investigation into the murders and espionage is portrayed is sensible and logical within the comic-book universe rules that apply to "The Avengers"; and Emma Peel going undercover always adds an interesting aspect to the show--and here, she gets to show off her martial arts skills against an arrogant sensei and his students. The way each of the firms and their executives are portrayed as being distinctly different was also a nice touch--and one that I've found lacking in a couple modern shows I've been watching recently. Were the executives all stereotypes on this episode? Sure. But they were each a different stereotype.

"The Cybernauts" also benefits greatly from the presence of Michael Gough who plays a wheelchair-bound computer genius turned tech mogul. He plays the character with just right mix of excitement over the new world that technology can usher in, arrogance, and outright crazy that he steals every scene he's in. He's so good that I found myself wanting to see more of this character in the future. 


Tuesday, January 5, 2021

'As the Earth Turns' was decades in the making

As the Earth Turns (filmed ca. 1937, released 2019)
Starring: Alan Hoelting, Barbara Berger, Edwin C. Frost, and Richard Lyford
Director: Richard Lyford
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

The time is the near future. As war rages across Europe, a mysterious entity, Pax (Lyford), reaches out to world via a west coast U.S. Navy station, threatening natural disasters on a global scale if the war doesn't come to an end. The mysterious entity charges the U.S. government with seeing to it that its demands are carried out... and when peace does not come fast enough, Pax proves that it has the power to destroy mountains, move oceans, and ravage the world with earthquakes. A pair of reporters (Berger and Hoelting) and a physicist (Frost) set out to find Pax and stop his reign of terror.

Scene from "As the Earth Turns" (1938/2020)

"As the Earth Turns" was made in made in 1937 or 1938, but never released to the public until relatives of its writer/director/co-star connected with composer Ed Hartman. Hartman provided a wall-to-wall musical score for the film and became the driving force in getting it out into the world. 

Based on information provided by Hartman and extrapolating from Richard Lyford's IMDB entry, at least one reason why this film was abandoned was that was in final edits and assembly when Lyford went to work for the Walt Disney Corporation, leaving behind his troupe of fellow amateur actors and filmmakers in Seattle, WA, for a career in Hollywood. 

On the one hand, it's great that a talented filmmaker had the opportunity to make a living plying his craft--and even co-directing an Oscar-winning documentary--but, on the other hand, it's too bad it took ninty years for this fun sci-fi movie to see the light of day. (That said... if Lyford HAD finished and released his move, there might not have been the well-preserved raw material for Hartman and the restoration team to work with in producing what we now can watch today.)

As far as my purely superficial research has shown, the only person aside from Lyford who went onto a successful show-business career  was Barbara Berger--on Broadway and soap operas--and I think it was well deserved. Aside from Lyford himself, Berger gives the best performance in the cast and is responsible for two of my favorite moments of "As the Earth Turns" (and mentioning either would spoil parts of the movie, sadly).
 
As for the film itself, story- and pacing-wise is it's on par with the sci-fi films of the time, and the characters are also what you would expect. (Spunky, success-driven girl reporter. Heroic [more or less] male reporter. Wise scientist who happens to be a semi-mentor to one of the characters. Stark-raving mad scientist.) There are a couple of twists to how these standard figures are deployed within the story--one of which is borne from such pure plot convenience that it almost hurt, one which adds a little surprise to the ending. There are plenty of shaky parts in the plot, and the ending comes rather suddenly--but with a bit more of a denouement than many film of the period--but there is nothing worse that you don't see in professionally mounted low-budget films of the day. In fact, what we have here is superior to what you'd find in many of those films.

The Pax Plane from "As the Earth Turns" (2019)

Even more remarkable  are the special effects in this film. They are remarkably competent for an amateur film--from the construction of the models, through the filming of their eventual destruction through explosions and other mayhem. There's a plan crash that's especially impressive--and it compares well to what you might see in films from big studios in the 1950s or even the 1960s.

One curious choice was Lyford's decision to make it a silent movie. Maybe he did so because of technical and resource limitations, because I can't think of many silent movies being produced in 1937. Even cartoons had become more or less dialogue-driven by this point in time, so making a silent film seems a bit odd. (Although since people are still making silent movies today, perhaps I am making a bad assumption. Perhaps Lyford choosing to make a silent film is like someone today choosing to make a sci-fi film using practical effects and models instead of lots of CGI--he had a creative reason for rejecting the most recent technology of filmmaking. 

Another curious choice was for Lyford to present the film's final scene in color. Maybe I missed something along the way, but I didn't get the sense that there was anything in the resolution of the story to support such a change--especially given the "throwback" nature of the picture. Maybe the final bit was shot in color because Lyford gained access to a color camera and film and wanted to try it out? (This color portion is among the worst preserved bits of the film... the colors are so faded that this colorblind viewer didn't even see them. A friend who had also watched "As the Earth Turns" asked me what I thought about the film turning color at the end, and my response was, "It turned color?" I thought it was suddenly tinted blue ala some scenes in the silent Fantomas films or "This is the Night" (1932).

Despite some technical gripes and questions I have with the film, I recommend it to anyone who likes early sci-fi pictures and silent movies; you'll find plenty to enjoy here--including the excellent score by Ed Hartman. (More modern composers who try to score silent films should be like Hartman and actually pay attention to what's happening on the screen and match the music accordingly.)

As of this writing, "As the Earth Turns" available for viewing on Amazon Prime.


(Trivia: "As the Earth Turns" star Barbara Berger is remembered primarily for recurring roles on soap operas during the 1960s through the late 1990s. Under the name Barbara Berjer, she made her television debut with appearances in the landmark "The Edge of Night" through "As the World Turns" (funny coincidence there) and ultimately a 12-year stint on "Another World" (1985-1997).

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

'The Mad Ghoul' is worth knowing

The Mad Ghoul (1943)
Starring: George Zucco, David Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, Turhan Bey, and Robert Armstrong
Director: James Hogan
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

College chemistry professor Alfred Morris (Zucco) re-discovers a formula for a gas that ancient Central Americans used turn people into pseudo-living zombies, as well as a means for reversing the transformation. He uses his assistant, Ted (Bruce), as an unwitting human test subject while trying to put the moves on Ted's opera-singing fiance (Ankers)... but when the antidote for the gas turns out to only be temporary, Morris's life and Ted's psuedo-undeath become a lot more complicated.


"The Mad Ghoul" is a horror film from Universal Pictures--the studio that bought the world "The Mummy", "Dracula", and "Frankenstein"--that sounds like a film from Monogram or PRC, with its mad scientist with an even madder scheme, a young couple being threatened by evil, and a crusading reporter who is going to stop the monster the police have been unable to catch.

What the writers and director does with those elements are a great change of, though: The crusading reporter ends up, the young couple's romance is revealed to have been over even before the film starts, and the mad doctor's mad scheme keeps getting more insane, first because he was cocky and had to cover up a failed experiment and then because he wanted to remove all rivals for the woman with whom he believes he shares a mutual attraction. (Some of my favorite parts of the film is when George Zucco and Evelyn Ankers' characters are talking past each other; Zucco thinks they are expressing their love for each other while Ankers thinks she's just unloading her sorrows to a sympathetic ear. These scenes feature some nice acting and even better writing, because they perfectly communicate the notion that Zucco's character later expresses, after he realizes he was mistaken: "Sometimes we see what we want to see.")

The cast of "The Mad Ghoul" all provide good performances. Zucco is in particularly fine form, playing the crazed heavy he specialized in but with a tiny bit of nuances thrown in. Robert Armstrong is also fun as the "I'm smarter than the cops" newsman who populates films of this type, and while I saw his brutal end coming before it actually happened, I was a little sad to see him go. Meanwhile, Ankers and Bey play the kinds of characters they portrayed in many other films, and they do it with their usual skill. Finally, David Bruce, in one of his few starring roles, is good as what initially comes across as the standard, fairly bland romantic lead, but becomes an increasingly interesting and nuanced character as the film unfolds.


Tuesday, October 22, 2019

'Return of the Ape Man' can be skipped

Return of the Ape Man (1944)
Starring: Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Frank Moran, Teala Loring (as Judith Gibson), Michael Ames, and Mary Currier
Director: Phil Rosen
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A mad scientist (Lugosi) manages to restore life to a caveman (Moran) who had been frozen in ice above the Arctic Circle for 20,000 years. He then performs a partial brain-transplant from an unwilling donor (Carradine) so that he can control and communicate with the pre-historic man. Things go about as well as you might expect...


"Return of the Ape Man" is such a supremely, disastrously goofy movie that it's easy to hate it. However, it's so fast-paced and the cast so pleasant that the true awfulness of the film fades isn't felt as much; unlike so many weak other B-movies, this one is lean and straight to the point. The closest we get to padding is some stock footage of a ship in the Arctic, and a little too much running to and fro during the movie's climax. (The climax is actually undermined by the fact that it's dragged out too long.)

Highlights of the film include Bela Lugosi's performance as the mad scientist. a role in which I think he would have been even better if a scene like the one in the publicity still (with Lugosi, Teala Loring, and Frank Moran) had actually taken place in the film. Another bit that I really liked was that the mad doctor's original plan was to put part of a lawyer's brain in the caveman--which would have probably made him even more monstrous! And speaking of the caveman... I got a chuckle out of the fact that, as part of a sequence intended to show that some of the memories of the donor of brain tissue still exist, the caveman goes to the home of John Carradine's character, plays the piano, and proceeds to murder his wife. I can only assume there were some serious problems in that relationship...

In the final analysis, "Return of the Ape Man" is probably a movie you can skip, unless you're on a quest to watch everything Bela Lugosi starred in, or to experience the Complete Works of Phil Rosen.  It would make an excellent addition to a Bad Movie Night, as it's silly but never boring. The fact that it is a solidly entertaining effort--if you're in the mood for this kind of movie--earned it a bump from a high Four-star rating to a low Five.

(By the way, despite its title, this film has nothing whatsoever to do with "The Ape Man", which Lugosi headlined in 1943 for the same studio.)

Saturday, October 5, 2019

'The Tin Man' is a so-so comedy that ends strong

The Tin Man (1935)
Starring: Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly, Clarence Wilson, and Matthew Betz
Director: James Parrott
Rating: Six of Ten Stars


After getting lost on their to a party, Thelma and Patsy (Todd and Kelly) stop to ask for direction at a creepy old mansion. Unfortunately for them, it's home to a woman-hating mad scientist (Wilson) who decides to sic his robot on them. To complicate matters, a killer who escaped police custody (Betz) also sneaks into the house.


If "The Tin Man" shows us anything, it's that the who notion of making fun of "InCels" has existed for many, many years... even if some cute term hadn't been invented for it. Eighty-five years ago, they were poking fun at bitter, socially maladjusted men who lived alone and blamed women for their inability to get dates rather than their own failings, so this is a comedy that has stood the passage of time. It might even be one that both your Social Justice Warrior types and Right Wing whackadoodles can both find entertaining and amusing.

But that's about all they'll be--amused and entertained. While the script is a workmanlike send-up of the Old Dark House and Mad Scientist subgenres of horror films, there aren't a whole lot of jokes and gags will have viewers laughing out loud. For me, the film is at its funniest when the escaped killer (Matthew Betz) is repeatedly subjected to unintentional abuse because he is caught in the crossfire between the girls and the robot sent to menace them. It's not that any of the jokes weren't amusing... they just weren't spectacular. (The funniest bits come toward the end, after the robot goes bezerk due to rash actions by Patsy, meaning the film closes at its best. It's worth your while to stick with it.)

I think this film succeeds primarily on the tightly written story and the strong performances of its cast members. Despite the weak jokes, all four actors are in top form. Additionally, there isn't the sense that Thelma Todd's character looks down upon or otherwise views Patsy Kelly's character with contempt, as it has seemed in some of their other pairings. In "The Tin Man", while Todd is visibly frustrated with Kelly's dimwittedness at times, it seems perfectly believable that they're friends who would want to go to a party together.

"The Tin Man" is one of the short films included in Complete Hal Roach Thelma Todd & Patsy Kelly three-disc DVD collection. It's also one of the films that will make you feel the set is worth your time and money.

Friday, December 7, 2018

A mad scientist goes to extremes to get ahead (or is that "a head"?)

The Head (1959)
Starring: Horst Frank, Michel Simon, Karin Kernke, and Helmut Schmidt
Director: Victor Trivas
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A mad scientist (Frank) keeps the head of a brilliant doctor (Simon) alive so that the doctor can consult on an operation to transplant the head of Brandt's beloved--a hunchback nurse (Kernke)--onto a sexy body.


Writer/director Victor Trivas's greatest claim to fame is that his directorial debut--"Hell on Earth" (1931) was outlawed and destroyed by the Nazis in 1940, with no copies known to have survived. His second greatest claim to fame was being nominated for an Oscar for the script for Orson Welles' "The Stranger". And then there's "The Head".

"The Head" is an extremely cheezy, intentionally schlocky film that surprised everyone involved (except maybe auteur Triva) by becoming a hit across Europe and in the United States. But for all the melodrama and dodgy scripting and the prerequisite for big-time suspension of disbelief for the film to even work (but if you're not already planning on doing that, you wouldn't be watching this film to begin with), it's got stylish visuals and it delivers its story with a high degree of tension.

Unfortunately, as the film builds toward what should be a weird, over-the-top, insane climax, it starts to sputter and lose steam. It doesn't quite stall out, but the final act drags to a conclusion instead of roaring toward it, giving this otherwise dark and fun ride a slightly disappointing in. It's still worth your while if you like movies with mad scientists doing mad things.


Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Good idea, lousy execution in "Castle of Evil"

Castle of Evil (1966)
Starring: Scott Brady, Virginia Mayo, David Brian, Lisa Gaye and William Thourlby
Director: Francis D. Lyon
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A mad scientist (Thourlby) invites his relatives to his remote estate where his robot double proceeds to stalk and kill them in order to avenge a disfiguring accident he suffered years before.


I don't usually give away story twists in my teaser summaries, but in the case of "Castle of Evil", it doesn't matter. Despite the rating of 4, I don't recommend that you waste your time with this movie.

Which is too bad, because the script for this film is actually pretty good. It's a great retro-fusion of the "dark old house" and "mad scientist" film genres that flourished in the 1930s and 1940s, and the featured actors all give respectable performances in their various parts.

Unfortunately, the writer and cast are let down by an incompetent director. The staging of every scene is flat and lifeless, no opportunity for padding is left untapped--except for the ending that is inexplicably sudden and abrupt--and all the bad choices sap every bit of life from the film, driving even the most friendly-minded viewer into a stupour of boredom.

I love the "mad scientist" and "dark old house" movies--as the countless reviews of films in those genres here attest to--and I really wanted to like "Castle of Evil". But, it's just too incompently done. That is a terrible shame, because there's an excellent script that went to waste here.

(THIS is the kind of movie that Hollywood big shots sould be remaking, not "Karate Kid" and other movies that were already good. They should show themselves to be REAL artists and filmmakers who, if they are so devoid of creativity that they can't make original films, should at the very least take misfires and give them second chances.)

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Nip-and-tuck surgeries taken to the extreme!

The Head (1959)
Starring: Horst Frank, Karin Kernke, Dieter Eppler, and Michel Simon
Director: Victor Trivas
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When a scientific genius Dr. Able (Simon) suffers a heart attack, his psychopathic assistant Dr, Ood (Frank) decides to use his cutting-edge methods for preserving transplant organs to keep his head and brain alive--for SCIENCE! Ood then embarks on a project to put the beautiful head of a hunchbacked nurse (Kernke) on a matching beautiful body.



This German (dubbed into English) B-movie of horror and mad science has some themes in common with "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" (review here), but it tries to stay more scientifically grounded, and it avoids the unintentional comedy of that better-known film. It also generally features better cinematography and more moodily lit sets, making its chills more impactful.

Sadly, the film falls down over the fact that it is populated mostly with characters who are either dull or unlikable. I also had a strange feeling that we're supposed to feel empathy for the murderous Ood, despite the fact that he is utterly remorseful in is actions--although that could just be my reaction to the fact that Horst Frank has the strongest screen presence of any of the actors in the film.

This is not a film that I recommend going out of your way for, but if you see it in one of those multi-movie packs (like I did, in the Sci-Fi Invasion 50 Movie Collection) it's harmless filler.


Trivia: Victor Trivas's greatest claim to fame is that his directorial debut--"Hell on Earth" (1931)-- was outlawed by the Nazis in 1940, who attempted to destroy all prints. He was nominated for an Oscar for the script for Orson Welles' "The Stranger".

Friday, June 28, 2013

Classic Cinema: The Man Who Changed His Mind

This time around in Classic Cinema, Boris Karloff plays an obsessed scientist who has found the secret of the human soul and how to preserver it and transfer it between bodies. He summons his prize student, played by Anna Lee, to help him in the final stages of his research... but that's when things start to go horribly wrong.


"The Man Who Changed His Mind" is a spectacular early sci-fi/horror flick from England. The script is expertly paced and hits all the right notes, humorous, dramatic, and horrific. The cast all give fine performances, the script hits but Anna Lee is the true stand-out among the cast. Watch for the scene where she teeters on the brink between brilliance and madness herself -- it's a powerful bit of acting that's done purely with her eyes and facial expressions.

Click below to watch "The Man Who Changed His Mind" in its entirety, or click here to read my review first.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Noteworthy only for featuring the first
on-screen eye-ball eating and zombie-rape?

Maniac (aka "Sex Maniac") (1934)
Starring: Bill Woods, Horace B. Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller, and Thea Ramsey
Director: Dwain Esper
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Don (Woods), a mad doctor's assistant, kills his boss (Carpenter) in self-defense. Then, using his great skills as an impersonator, he pretends to be the doctor to cover up the crime long enough to dispose of the body. Things get worse and weirder from there.


"Maniac" is a loosely based on (well, I should probably say "ripped off from") Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat".

The filmmakers also pretend that they are giving us an intelligent tale of a man's descent into madness, like Poe's story "The Black Cat". As the film starts, our mad doctor's assistant is unwilling to even steal bodies for his boss's experiments in reanimating the dead, but by the film's end, he's plotting and executing all sorts of violence and depravity while laughing and carrying on in ways that made the dearly departed mad doctor Meirschultz look well adjusted.

I say it "pretends", because their true goal was to simply shock the audience as much as possible--and in 1934, this film would have been pretty damn shocking. The cat eyeball-poppling and eating scene is startling and appalling even when viewed with the very jaded eye of a modern movie viewer who's sat through hundreds of films along the lines of this one.

With copious nudity, a maniac raping a zombie girl, dancers walking around in their undies, perverted morgue attendants, cat-fur harvesting, and the aforementioned eyeball-eating scene, the film is clearly designed first and foremost to cram as much "objectionable" material into its 50-minute running time. I imagine this film showed in "adult" movie houses Back in the Day, and I can't help but wonder what the initial reaction might have been to it.

This can't be described as a good movie by any standards. It's even too dull to be suitable for a Bad Movie Nite--although there are admittedly plenty of moments of unintended hilarity from the overacting by just about every cast member and the horribly purple dialogue they deliver. However, if you want to see how even early filmmakers pushed far beyond the boundaries of good taste, "Maniac" is worth checking out. (I suspect it has some sort of place in cinematic history--"first eyeball-eating scene on film", or "first zombie-rape on film"?--so maybe all who consider themselves true cinema-buffs should check it out.



Sunday, April 3, 2011

Lon Chaney Jr nails the 'loveable victim' role

Man Made Monster (1941)
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Lionel Atwill, Anne Nagel, Frank Albertson, and Samuel S. Hinds
Director: George Waggner
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

After a carnival sideshow worker (Chaney) is the only survivor from a mass electrocution during a traffic accident, the world's leading electro-biologists (Hinds) invites him to become a research subject so the reason for his survival can be discerned. The scientist's evil assistant, however, subjects the unsuspecting man to illicit experiments that turn him into an electrically charged superhuman killer.


"Mad Made Monster" is a far-fetched tale of mad science of supercharging the naturally occuring electrical systems of the human body with high voltage in ways that Baron Frankenstein wouldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams. You'll barely have time to digest the pseudo-scientific whackiness because the film moves so fast.

Further, you'll find yourself buying to just about every aspect of the film thanks to some truly great performances by its cast. Lon Chaney Jr. is almost as good here as he was in anything he ever made, playing a kindhearted, trusting Everyman whose faith in his doctors ends up dooming him. Meanwhile, Lionel Atwill will have you hating him through-and-through as his characters' manipulative, self-centered ways seem all the more evil because he is exploiting and abusing such a nice guy as Chaney's character. The supporting cast are all likewise excellent in their parts, but it is Atwill and Chaney who make this movie and who elevate it to a level that almost equals Universal Studio's spectacular horror films of the early 1930s.

"Mad Made Monster" is of the very best films from the studio's 1940s horror output, and it is well worth a look by anyone who loves classic horror and monster movies.



Tuesday, January 18, 2011

'The Flying Serpent' was better as 'The Devil Bat'

The Flying Serpent (1946)
Starring: George Zucco, Hope Kramer, Ralph Lewis, and James Metcalf
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A demented archeologist (Zucco) uses a strange flying serpent that may or may not be the god Quetzalcoatl to protect an Aztec treasure and kill anyone who annoys him.


"The Flying Serpent" is, essentially, a remake of one of PRC's greatest horror flicks, "The Devil Bat", only with even less story logic. Once again, a mad scientist (here Zucco's archeologist instead of Lugosi's chemist) uses a flying monster to take out anyone who crosses him, up to and including the dashing romantic hero of the film. Instead of Lugosi's giant bat which is trained to attack anyone who is wearing a certain type of cologne, the creature in this film attacks anyone who is carrying one of its feathers.

Unfortunately, the one thing that doesn't have a parallel between the two pictures is the interesting performances, amusing script, and moody atmosphere from "The Devil Bat". The only non-bland aspect to this film is George Zucco's overblown performance as a melodramatic madman. It's almost a shame he didn't have a mustache, because he should have been twirling it. Even the creature--aside from the slightly silly, pseudo-supernatural ability it has to find its plucked feathers--is bland and uninteresting. Worse, the film has a slap-dash feel to it, as if only a minimum of effort was put into the script and the filming process... and nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the film's climax (which I won't detail due to my policy of trying to avoid spoiling a film).

If you want to a PRC film featuring a horror movie icon sending a flying monster to rip the throats out of anyone he doesn't like, go with "The Devil Bat". You'll be glad you did. (Although if you're a fan of this film, I'd love to hear your take on it, especially the ending.)

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Karloff is 'The Man Who Changed His Mind'

The Man Who Changed His Mind (aka "Body Switch", "Doctor Maniac", and "The Man Who Lived Again") (1936)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, John Loder, Donald Calthorp, and Frank Cellier
Director: Robert Stevenson
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Dr. Laurence (Karloff) devises a method to switch the intangible elements that makes up a being's mind from one body to another, but snaps when he is mocked by the scientific establishment and a rich newspaper publisher (Cellier) pulls his patronage for the doctor's research. He decides to use his method for his own gain, up to and including switching bodies with the son of his former patron (Loder) so he can marry the beautiful and intelligent Dr. Clare Wyatt (Lee).


"The Man Who Changed His Mind" is perhaps one of the most intense horror films from the 1930s that I've come across. From the first time Boris Karloff's chain-smoking mad scientist crosses paths with Anna Lee's brilliant and independent-minded surgeon, you know things are going to end badly for more than one of the film's characters. But even with that knowledge, you're not going to guess how badly and for whom until the story is all but done unfolding. Even after nearly 75 years, this is a horror film that countless modern-day filmmakers need to study and emulate' their films would be far better for it.

The film is driven by a tight, expertly paced script that presents just the right mixture of horror and humor to make both aspects as effective as possible, especially given that most of the humor is of a pitch-black variety. The cast is also excellent and everyone is perfect for their parts and talented enough to bring depth to even the thinnest of characters. Dr. Laurence's assistant Clayton could easily have been just an obnoxious and unpleasant jerk, but Donald Calthorp brings enough humanity to the role that the viewer had a little empathy for him. The same is true even of John Loder's character who belongs to that most loathsome of 1930s comic relief characters--the wise-cracking, corner-cutting reporter; the superior script and dialogue makes even that character type bearable, and the viewer will actually fear for him when he becomes a target of Laurence instead of cheering the villain onward to success just to shut him up.

But the film's coolest--and most chillingly unexpected-- scenes is the one where Dr. Wyatt takes on the mantle of "mad scientist". The lighting, editing, and superior acting talent of Anna Lee all add up to the character going to a dark place that few heroic characters go even in the nihilistic modern horror movies.


There is a hard coldness on her face and in her eyes that would have made even the mad Dr. Laurence shiver in fear, as she works switches and buttons on the mind-switching contraption. It's a performance that puts to shame even the one that I until now considered Lee's best--her turn as another strong-willed woman in Bedlam (review here, at the Boris Karloff Collection). It truly is one of the greatest moments in horror films, and I don't understand why more critics who fancy themselves experts in Great Cinema don't include it on their lists of "Top Fifty Horror Moments." Heck, it might even belong in the Top Ten!

"The Man Who Changed His Mind" is one of the many under-appreciated films from the early days of the horror genre. It is superior to a number of the more famous movies--including the ones from Universal that everyone has seen--and I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to give it a try.




Friday, September 10, 2010

It's all very Russian...

The Drums of Jeopardy (1931)
Starring: Warner Oland, June Collyer, Lloyd Hughes, Hale Hamilton, Wallace MacDonald, Clara Blandick, and Mischa Auer
Director: George B. Seitz
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When one of the men of the Petrov family makes his daugher pregnant, dumps her, and causes her to commit suicide, but then won't own up to his misdeed, Dr. Boris Karlov (Oland) sets out to gain revenge by seeing them all dead. He persues them halfway around the world, to America, where a secret service agent (Hamilton) and a feisty young American woman (Collyer) end up in the middle of this Russian struggle for survival and revenge.


"Drums of Jeopardy" is a nifty little thriller from the early days of talkies that's jam-packed with meldodrama, action, and humor. Its fast-paced script hardly gives the viewers a chance to realize that just about everything in this film has become almost painfully cliche in the nearly eighty years since its original release, nor does it pause long enough to really let us consider how outrageous and dimwitted the "brilliant" plan of the Federal Agents who match wits with Karlov is. We're too busy hating the slimy Russian nobleman Prince Gregor (Wallace MacDonald) who not only impregnated and dumped a poor girl, refuses to live up to what he's done and ultimately tries to sell out everyone else to save his own skin; admiring the beauty of the resourceful young Kitty Connover (June Collyer), snickering at the comic relief provided by her sharp-tongued aunt (Clara Blandick), and grinning with sinister glee as Dr. Karlov delivers zingers and pulls tricks on the good guys that allows him to take a place among the great villains of movie history 's zingers as his evil plans fall into place (an honor deserved in no small part due to an excellent performance by character actor Warner Oland who is best remembered or playing Charlie Chan and for his role in "Werewolf of London").

Another remarkable aspect of this film that sets it apart from many of its contemporaries is that it has a villain that the viewer can relate to. His daughter was violated and tossed aside by the Petrovs, so, given that this is a melodramatic thriller and we're talking about Russians here, it's only natural he'd take elaborate and final revenge against not only the Petrovs but Russian nobility in general. Karlov is a character who is almost like a tragic hero in his stature within this film and he is must more interesting than most film villains from the early days of film.

I should note that as much as I enjoyed this film, I was a little dissapointed in some apsects of how the story unfolded. I've already commented on the moronic nature of the government agents in the film, but a bigger dissapointment was that Karlov didn't really get his full revenge and we don't get to see that rat bastard Gregor die a slow and painful death. (That alone makes me wish for a remake of this movie. I'd love to see Tim Thomerson as Karlov!)

Speaking of Karlov... yes, the villain of this movie is named Boris Karlov. Given that this film is based on an American novel that was originally published in 1920, I think we can chalk this up to one of those weird coincidences. Karloff was an obscure stage actor touring Canadian backwaters at the time the book was written. (Although at least one source claims that Karloff chose his screen name because of the novel.)




Friday, July 9, 2010

Leave your brain off for this one....

The Brain That Wouldn't Die (aka "The Head That Wouldn't Die") (1961)
Starring: Herb Evers, Virginia Leith, Leslie Daniels, Adele Lamont, Marilyn Hanold, and Bruce Brighton
Director: Joseph Green
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Bill Cortner (Evers) is a surgeon and research scientiest who has developed new techniques for reviving dead flesh, techniques he knows will revolutionize surgery and transplants not only of organs but of limbs. After his fiance Jan (Leith) is decapiated in a car accident, he uses his techniqaue to keep her head alive while he prowls strip-joints and bikini contests for the perfect body to transplant it onto.


I promise to refrain from any "she gave great head" jokes while reviewing "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" (wait... I think I may have just broken that promise), because while this low-budget cross between "Frankenstein", "Donovan's Brain", and a cheesy exploitation flick may be exceedingly goofy, it does feature some genuinely terrifying moments.

The car accident that claims Jan's life, the scene where the Monster in the Closet gets its hands on Cortner's assistant Kurt (Daniels) and delivers a gory and ironic death to him, and Cortner's luring and poisoning of the owner of Jan's new body (Lamont), and the full revelation of the Monster--which I almost gave away with a still here, but then thought better of it--are all top-notch horrific moments. Unfortunately, they are almost without fail followed up by unintentional comedy (such as Kurt's never-ending death scene).


The film features actors who give better performances than I expected from a film like this, but they are undermined by a terrible script. To describe the dialogue in "The Brain" as stilted and flowery is being kind--some of the lines are so overblown and pompous that it's shocking that any actor could deliver them with a straight face. And just about ever single line uttered by Cortner after he starts prowling the city for a woman to serve as the recepient of Jan's head should be followed with a "bwahahahaha!" they're so pregnant with "Aren't I evil?" references and dual-meanings.

A bigger problem is that the film is padded. The exploitation parts--cat-fighting strippers, prancing bikini-babes, and the private model session given by Lamont's character--mostly detract from the narrative instead of adding to it, causing the film to drag. The purple prose that is the film's dialogue also helps drag it down below average. The good parts are good enough to keep it sinking into the depths of complete and total awfulness, but "good" is stiil not the word that should come up while giving an overall opinion on "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."

(Oh, here's a curious fact, only tangentially related to the movie. The version I viewed--included in Brentwood Video's "The Dead Walk" multi-DVD pack--has a couple of quirks about it. First, there a couple of instances where the reels aren't transferred right and we are treated to what I assume are film leads; instead of a test pattern and beeps, these leads are white and feature a male voice reciting part of a prayer, or reading lines from the Bible. The first time it happened, I had a "WTF" moment... but the second time, I realized it was a problem of some sort with the transfer to DVD. Second, the filmmakers apparently couldn't get the name of their own movie straight: It's called two different things between the opening ald closing titles, with both of the titles listed at the top of this review actually appearing on the film--one at the main title credits, and one at the end title credits.



Saturday, June 12, 2010

With Paula, it truly is a glandular problem

Captive Wild Woman (1943)
Starring: John Carradine, Milburn Stone, Lloyd Carrigan, Acquanetta, Evelyn Ankers, Fay Helm, and Ray Corrigan
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A mad genius (Carradine) proves the correctness of his cutting-edge theories in glandular functions by transforming a gorilla into a shapely young woman he names Paula (Acquanetta). Tragedy and death ensue.

The more one watches horror and sci-fi films from the 1940s, the more obvious it is why Universal's attempt to recapture the horror profits that carried them through the depression in the 1930s failed. Too many of the films from this "revival period" are no different than the nonsensical films from small studios like Monogram and PRC; instead of living up to greatness of "The Mummy" and "The Invisible Man," Universal executives and directors instead lowered themselves to the level of those who had followed on their coattails.

When compared to the classics of the 1930s, or even "Ghost of Frankenstein" and "The Wolfman" from the 1940s--something the modern-day Universal marketeers are encouraging us to do by including this film is DVD multipack titled "Universal Horror: Classic Movie Archive"--this movie falls woefully short. It's more in the league of low-budget efforts like "The Devil Bat" or "The Monster Maker," just to pick two movies about mad scientists at random. That is a serious step down from the great horror shows of the 1930s.

While disappointing when considered in the light of the cinematic greatness that Universal had once brought to the world, "Captive Wild Woman" is well-acted and well-filmed, with a fast pace to carry us quickly through the story. While Carradine is no Bela Lugosi or Lionel Atwill, he does a decent enough job as the mad doctor at the heart of the story, and the exotic beauty of Acquanetta makes the movie more enjoyable as well. This is not a "classic" in any sense other than it's an old movie, but it's worth checking out if you like the fantastic pulp-fiction science of the early sci-fi and horror flicks.



Trivia: The Universal Studio marketing department nicknamed Acquanetta "The Venezuelan Volcano." Her real name was Mildred Davenport, she was born in Ozone, Wyoming, and was of Arapaho decent with no trace of Venezuela in her blood or family tree. 

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Peter Lorre lends a hand in the name of 'Mad Love'

Mad Love (aka "The Hands of Orlac") (1935)
Starring: Frances Drake, Peter Lorre, and Colin Clive
Director: Karl Freund
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Dr. Gogol (Lorre), a brilliant but mentally unstable surgeon (Lorre) becomes obsessed with the beautiful actress Yvonne Orlac (Drake)--obsessed to the point where he has a wax statue of her installed in his music room. When Yvonne's husband's (Clive) hands are crushed in an accident, Orlac saves them using a revolutionary surgery technique to save them... but then turns to the task of driving Orloc insane, so he can claim Yvonne as his own.


"Mad Love" is a slightly muddled movie with a confused plot (made more-so by the obnoxious comic relief character of an American newspaper reporter (played by Ted Healey). However, the film is well-acted and filmed on impressively lit sets--Gogol's large, empty house/clinic becomes a great metaphor for his his hollow soul, as shadows play throughout it--and its mixture of romance and horror is bound to entertain lovers of early horror movies. The climactic scenes are particularly chilling, as the depths of Gogol's psychopathy becomes crystal clear.

(It may even serve as part of the lineup for a Bad Movie Nite, although it's by no means a bad movie. Some of the more melodramatic elements may tickle the fancy of certain kinds of movie lovers, especially Dr. Gogol's disguise at one point in the film. It's one of those rare cinematic moments that's both scary and hilarious.)

Although not necessarily considered one of the "founding" films of the horror genre, it is certainly the first "transplanted hands take on a life of their own" movies. I can think of at least three others I've seen over the years with very similar plots. (And I think there's a fourth one lurking in my Review Pile.)