Number Seventeen (1932)

 

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville and Rodney Ackland

Based on the play by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon

Cast: Leon M. Lion as Ben, Anne Grey as Nora, John Stuart as Barton, Donald Calthrop as Brant, Barry Jones as Henry Doyle, Ann Casson as Rose Ackroyd, Henry Caine as Mr. Ackroyd, Garry Marsh as Sheldrake

Canon Fodder

 

Sausage. Hit him over the head with.

Number Seventeen promises a lot as an early Alfred Hitchcock film immediately, of expressionist shadows as a homeless sailor enters a house for sale, only to find another man and also a corpse there. Already you have awesome compositions, almost like a supernatural drama, of looming shadow hands alongside jump cut editing to a train to show shock. It is however, just in its title too, a weird film for Hitchcock, the kind of “weird” in terms of not a positively delirious title but something that is absolutely curious in his career. It is an oddity with virtues but a lot of issues behind its creation.

Hitchcock had to make this film, part of his career with British International Pictures¹. Despite the fact he had already made The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) and Blackmail (1929), and was becoming an acclaimed filmmaker, his career up to sailing to Hollywood and the United States for Rebecca (1940) includes films which stand out in premise (his personal project, the drama Rich and Strange (1931)), only to not become films which stand out the highest in his career, and titles which he made as a studio director whether he wanted to make them or not, such as the operetta film with Jessie Matthews, Waltzes from Vienna (1934). Number Seventeen, based on a thriller play by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, has a suspense plot including one of the earliest McGuffins, if not for the first, for Hitchcock’s career in that it is a piece about jewel thieves swarming around this house alongside a detective, his daughter, a cop in disguise and the homeless man Ben (Leon M. Lion). Hitchcock however, in adapting this, decided to turn it into a farce on purpose tonally, which affects the final result.

The final film because of this is a really broad farce which does not really work. Hitchcock films can be legitimately funny, without becoming comedies but being suspense films which have incredibly dour winks at the banal mixing with the morbid – the cop in Frenzy (1972), one of his grimmest tales, whose wife is trying experimental cooking to his horror, or a key scene of Strangers on a Train (1951), whilst not played for laughs, being based on whether the lead can complete a game of tennis as quickly as he can – or incredible one-liners, such as the many Cary Grant has in North by Northwest (1959). This does eventually have charm, with Leon M. Lion as Ben, once you get past his initial gurning klutz performance, becoming lovable as a genial homeless man caught in the middle of this against his will, but a lot of the humour, being the slapstick to speed up fight scenes, goes over the head in actually landing. A lot of it being a pastiche of the suspense drama completely falls flat when it eventually gives up and becomes a more heightened crime film by the finale. Instead a lot of this feels like a stage play with Hitchcock managing to make it visually vibrant and soaked in shadows, entirely set at night, of a group of people ending up in this house all at once. The sense of this comes when one of its parodies, the female lead on the villains’ side who is so mysterious she is a deaf-mute, being jettisoned. When this character Nora (Anne Grey) just starts speaking, completely kneecapping one of its more idiosyncratic touches as quickly as it is introduced in a film only an hour long, you get the feeling Hitchcock made a legitimate mistake with his collaborators which effects the final quality.

Seventeen, by way of its finale with model trains, gets a really thrilling ending of escaping by train and the commandeering of a public bus to catch up with it, which shows how the film could have been cultivated into an ambitious and grander work by its director. The film had the potential to be a great production, full of McGuffins and plot points for the sake of getting to the next scene – corpses not quite dead, cops posing as lackeys, heroines secretly hiding in the villains’ side – as people fight over an expensive necklace. Even a scene of falling over a broken wooden railing does show how the comedic tone of the film could have mixed with suspense. What this feels like is a germ of a bigger work, and instead it is Hitchcock the master craftsman who sticks out than a successful result, still early in his career showing the mind which planned out his films carefully before they were filmed, compositions even here of the images which stand out incredibly. If it is a failure in Hitchcock’s career, but that does not mean you cannot appreciate the skills he shows here that would grow in his filmography.

 

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1) Alfred Hitchcock Collectors’ Guide: Number Seventeen (1932), written by Brent Reid for Brenton on Film and published on August 16th 2019.

The Black Cat (1934)

 

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer

Screenplay: Peter Ruric, Edgar G. Ulmer and Peter Ruric              

Inspired by the short story by Edgar Allen Poe

Cast: Boris Karloff as Hjalmar Poelzig; Bela Lugosi as Dr. Vitus Werdegast; David Manners as Peter Alison; Julie Bishop as Joan Alison; Egon Brecher as The Majordomo; Harry Cording as Thamal; Lucille Lund as Karen

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An Abstract Candidate

 

Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not. There are many things under the sun.

This is not a real adaptation of the "immortal Allen Poe" classic, before any reader who has never heard of this title asks. The irony is that, over decades, Poe's work would be subjectively appropriated in stories which have the loosest of connections to his work. Menahem Golan, whilst running 21st Century Film Corporation, produced Luigi Cozzi's 1989 The Black Cat, and had that film renamed from Demons 6: De Profundis (1989) because they had been adaptating Poe titles, regardless if it had any real connections to the Black Cat story. That film had Bango Tango, shots in outer space and was a Suspiria meta-sequel. Following Universal Studio turning Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) into Bela Lugosi wanting to find a bride for his intelligent gorilla, or The Raven (1935) having Lugosi a Poe obsessive who uses the torture dungeon he built in tribute as intended, this Black Cat is however an eerie horror film, a metaphor for World War I, which is perplexing to witness in its in one hour length.

I also do not think Poe would appreciate this version of The Black Cat. The actual short story is an abstinence tale of the ruin of alcohol, significant from an author whose image has been connected for some to being addict himself, destroying a man through an act of cruelty to a black cat which escalates to murdering his wife, his violent side opened by the alcohol and his neurosis. Poe would have appreciated this tale of revenge, as a man who penned The Cask of Amontillado, which has a perverse sexual edge too. Only the Satanism involved might have seen too gauche for Poe's tastes in mind to his literature.

The Black Cat is arguably as well the weirdest film ever to be produced under the Universal horror era unless anyone wants to make a claim for a dark horse, or James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932), another worthy candidate for that title. Structurally it can be arguable to call it a mess, but you witness something which is compelling, befittingly involving an American mystery writer Peter (David Manners), on his honeymoon with his wife Joan (Julie Bishop), finding himself stuck in this morbid tale set in Hungary, where Dr. Vitus Werdegast, Lugosi in a rare heroic role, returns to his homeland after WWI for revenge on Hjalmar Poelzig, played by Boris Karloff, who betrayed him in the war and has literally built his modern art deco home on top of the war field their fellow troops died upon.  It is not a poor critical opinion to make when, based upon a war criminal and one of his victims coming for revenge, this exists as a premise where a mansion built on a mass graveyard in a battle zone in Hungary, impossible in hindsight to not to consider (whilst referencing World War I) how World War II now paints this film. As much as this is its own peculiar genre tale meant to sell as the other famous Universal horror b-pictures, this side to the film's plot cannot be ignored by history itself even in coincidence. 

The film is strange. The black cat is only of note as Lugosi abruptly kills one, despite being the hero, out of an irrational fear. Set in a conventional set up, where a carriage accident leaves Peter and Joan stuck between the war that will transpire between Vitus and Hjalmar, you have in despite of Universal's traditional b-horror aesthetic, still rich but one grounded in comparison to its content, its perverse touches. It is not even just that Hjalmar has Vitus' wife preserved in the former gun turret room, but little shots, like in the foreground Karloff clutching a nude female statue suggestively when he sees Joan for the first time, as sexual as you can get but easy to miss in the cinematic language.

Boris Karloff menaces the screen with the elegance expected but underrated from the English actor, looking like a cult leader with his haircut and elaborate dressing gown, managing even to make chess and saying the phone is dead eerie. Bela Lugosi getting a deserved heroic role is special, seeing the two together what sold the film back then but also special to see still even if they would appear together other time. This is also a rare showing of Lugosi's charisma, as a theatre actor of great regard back in his homeland of Hungary before he came to Hollywood, constructed by the character being mentally damaged prisoner of war out for revenge, again in mind to the real horrors beyond cinema. That David Manners and Julie Bishop, as the two North American cast members, are out-shadowed by these two horror titans, too conventional among everyone else in the film, helps the film perfectly in hindsight. Manners at one point wishes he went to Niagara Falls instead, which now as well as being a legitimately funny line emphasises the purpose of Peter as a character for me now, that he has entered this morbid fairy tale as a figure who, honestly, contributes nothing but accidentally shots the wrong person and is the bystander, another of the curious touches which adds positives to the film. The two American leads are ones put in films like this in Universal's history, even in the modern day, as a step-in for a viewer, and in The Black Cat Joan, as a potential victim of 000, but especially her husband Peter, feels so much more vital now seeing the film as the hapless figure, our representation, stuck in this world as elaborate as the mansion is with its secret rooms, secret corridors that can be unlocked, and has dynamite set up that, with a flick of the switch, will blow everything up, logic not up to question.

A lot of The Black Cat is surprisingly adult, just at the cusp of the Hays Code finally regulating American cinema, where in the trappings of an Art Deco stage set you get preserved human beings, an quasi-incestuous dominant sexual relationship between someone raised as a daughter and now is a figure loved as an adult woman in Karen (Lucille Lund), Vitus' still-living daughter, and a hero still stroking the hair of the white bread male protagonist's sleeping girlfriend in the train, and with an erratic fear of black cats involving throwing knives. That there is Satanism is a little silly, a contrived inclusion, but in this pulp world, it just comes off as a regular expectation when Karloff's bedtime reading is Satanic devil worshiping texts. Even Julie Bishop gets a sequence almost in a trance as strange as everything else which happens, a sequence where Joan wanders in as a sleepwalker which warns of the haze this film has, the first moment where The Black Cat suggests it is not even like the other Universal horror films of the period.

And  I cannot forget the human flaying, which is not a spoiler because, while you do not see it onscreen, I am amazed that got passed in an early 1930s Hollywood, as you are not prepared for how gruesome and abruptly dealt with as it is. It is arguably a moment for thirties horror cinema which, when seen, is truly a one-off especially for how unexpectedly gruesome it is. It is the capstone to the film The Black Cat, which is to The Old Dark House as the two films, one of the most idiosyncratic films made from the Universal horror productions. Alongside Detour (1945), Edgar G. Ulmer has a cult status which has made him of note as even an auteur. Sadly, falling in love with Shirley Beatrice Kassler, who was married to independent producer Max Alexander, nephew of Universal studio head Carl Laemmle, during the production of The Black Cat, did doom any chance of a Hollywood career just when it began, an aspect of Ulmer's life thankfully contrasted by the fact his marriage to Shirley lasted the rest of his life. A collaborator on his films in poverty row afterwards, and the head of preserving his work after he gained considerable attention, their marriage was arguably the better than having that Hollywood career, as it was a sincere romance where they collaborated in cinema still¹. More so as Ulmer was a man whose swings between independent and public domain titles, between Yiddish language films to a nudie naturism picture, paints a fascinating figure that fascinates to the modern day, whose most well regarded film, his most commercial, is naturally The Black Cat, happily just as idiosyncratic as the life he had in the pictures.

Abstract Spectrum: Eerie/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1) Shirley Ulmer: Queen of B-movies, as screenplay writer and script girl, written by Ronald Bergan for The Guardian as an obituary on September 4th 2000.

A Day in the Country (1936)

 

a.k.a. Partie De Campagne

Director: Jean Renoir

Screenplay: Jean Renoir

Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant

Cast: Sylvia Bataille as Henriette; Georges D'Arnoux as Henri; Jane Marken as Madame Dufour; André Gabriello as Monsieur Dufour; Jacques B. Brunius as Rodolphe; Paul Temps as Anatole; Gabrielle Fontan as the Grandmother; Jean Renoir as Uncle Poulain; Marguerite Renoir as Waitress

Canon Fodder

 

A family of a Parisian shop-owner - including wife, daughter, mother-in-law and the daughter's fiancée - go for a day in the country. The daughter Henriette (Sylvia Bataille) falls in love with a man, one of two at the inn they go to, and thus begins one of the many pieces of the career of Jean Renoir, a legendary French auteur but also someone who may come off as unexpected to be covered by myself. My taste in idiosyncratic cinema could be stereotypically paint brushed for more stranger fare, but his however is a distinct worldview I admire, a great humane figure in his love for humanity.  His idiosyncrasies are also visible, including the result of his real life, a figure who had to leave in exile from his homeland of France after the Nazi occupation of the country in World War II, eventually returning to there in cinema in 1955 and in-between having gone through the likes of Hollywood and even filming in India for The River (1951).

Before that history, however, came his attempted adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's short story. It was never completed initial during its shooting in 1936, but in 1946, the remaining footage was completed into this short piece. For myself, any work is that is considered "unfinished" is paradoxically that but also not unfinished, simply in mind to the fact that, if released into public access in any form, what is unfinished is only the gaps and holes in the crafted art rather than the finished product you have to adapt to. A Day in the Country itself also feels fully formed, a miraculous fact it had enough footage from its production to tell a succinct story to stand on its own two feet too.

The final result including that, per one of his greatest trademarks, Renoir fully humanised his stories. The narrative for a modern audience does have a plot aspect which may discomfort - two young men wish to go "fishing", to woo the daughter and mother of the Parisian family for a one-off romance, the one who comes off the most lecherous, even if he keeps a finely trimmed moustache he has to mould using a special mask, especially an off-putting figure in the current day. Thankfully, he is reduced to clowning around with the mother, turning into a Pan-like satyr, whilst a romance that will never become complete between Henri (Georges D'Arnoux with his deep brooding eyes) and Henriette will be kindled in the countryside. Said tale, aptly a short story in cinematic form, is told fully and feels its weight. Even in mind to content which may be problematic - where the moment passion strikes, in the middle of the woodland canopies, invokes the action of Henriette resisting Henri at first only to succumb to his passions - you have a the story in itself feels a fully formed and complex. One of a love connecting unexpectedly from a playful seduction, that sequence (or actually, gesture in acting) only an issue because such iconography has been used in cinema in a way that is inherently problematic, whilst everything else in how it begins and where it ends is a real bitter sweet romance. Where the entire scene and the story of Henriette with Henri turns into one of two adults falling in love by accident, with the weight of it Renoir provides more powerful than merely a choice in depiction which has aged.

Everything else is striking, even in mind that a lot of the film is very light in tone, as much to its virtue as well for emotional impact. Renoir's greatest favour is how everything is relaxed and even playfully humorous in his work, in contrast to when he has to be serious and makes those films and scenes powerful. Even an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (his TV movie project The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (1959)) is light in tone but still takes the material serious in its drama, an obscure title in his career showing his skills in both sides of the emotional coin. A Day in the Country has a perfect title which describes its atmosphere, one in mind to the source material Renoir fleshed out to be sympathetic to his entire cast of characters. Even the father and the husband-to-be, a portly man and a thin fishing obsessed guy who legitimately look to Stan Laurel and Laurel Hardy, are likeably oafs accidentally fishing up boots from the river, with the sense of Renoir caring for them even if playing to a comedy of the pair of goofs. Everyone even if they can be broad is a character to care for in such little time, where eventually the sadness, in the epilogue, means more when Henriette is going to be stuck with the younger man as her husband when Henri and she suddenly have a spark of love that is real.

Contrasting this is how vibrant the film is. Even if Renoir, once he transitioned to it, would embrace colour in all its passionate energy, the use of the natural environment the story is set in is exceptional. It opens up fully, in a brilliant use of deep composition of a scene with fore and background content, when a window is open and we see the countryside in its fullest the first time seeing Henriette and her mother on swings. Nature in the film, the wildlife and the landscape, becomes a magical place which is yet real and accessible, adding to the narrative that, by pure accident, a game of lust between the two male suitors, to trick the men away for them to go boating with the women and seduce them, is stripped away to a real romance between Henriette and Henri as much because the woodland they get to by boat is a place of pure aesthetic beauty. Even if the landscape was as much a cause of the film's production problems, where it rained continuously during shooting¹, it is in itself a character as well as would be the case in later films. It actually evokes Picnic on the Grass (1959), a very odd little film later in his career, a comedy with a satirical edge of a scientist and political figure pushing forth artificial insemination who instead finds love, and emotion, when he meets a peasant girl. It is a film with quirks that you have to adapt to, from a time period dealing with modernity to tradition, but in colour Renoir again dealing with the natural landscape having an incredible power and God-like form which can heighten emotions like love. (Even, in mind to one character playing up as a satyr in A Day in the Country, this is escalated in the later film in having a subplot of an old pagan landmass and unnatural winks which cause stuck up rationalist people to suddenly become freer and loose, all for the better in a sudden mass Dionysian possession).

The success of A Day in the Country, in mind to the inherently fascination with "unfinished" work, is both the luck of having enough substance to be a fully formed narrative, the rain which plagued the original production becoming the change where, cutting forwards in time, the romance briefly found once before cannot be gained back but will be remembered forever. The other aspect is Renoir himself whose talents made sure said story was complete and worthy even if it never properly concludes.

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1) Referred to HERE.

Bird of Paradise (1932)

 

Director: King Vidor

Screenplay: Wells Root, Wanda Tuchock and Leonard Praskins

Based on a stage play by Richard Walton Tully

Cast: Dolores del Río as Luana; Joel McCrea as Johnny Baker; John Halliday as Mac; Richard "Skeets" Gallagher as Chester; Bert Roach as Hector; Lon Chaney Jr. as Thornton; Wade Boteler as Skipper Johnson; Reginald Simpson as O'Fallon

Ephemeral Waves

 

"What do they call this place?"

"Probably one of the Virgin Islands"

"Heaven forbid."

Immediately from the gate, pointing out that Bird of Paradise is offensive and politically incorrect - as a pre-Hollywood Code film where natives of a Pacific island are defamed superstitious and exotic, sacrificing maidens to volcanoes, compared to the white male protagonist - is obvious, but a waste of a review if that was the only thing to spend a review writing about. That should be something we should be already be aware of, and to have to repeat that as the basis of a review is in itself a sad state of affairs. Context should already support a viewer in realising this is from a different era be it the attitudes spoken of in terms of the "native" characters we see portrayed and that, with establishing shots taken in Hawaii, the lead female lead despite being a maiden from the Pacific Ocean islands is being played by an actress not from the region, Mexican actress Dolores del Río.

What Bird of Paradise is now is a cultural artefact, one which for many would be difficult to appreciate, or have to clench through its problems, but I came into with fascination as a text alien to the modern day. It is of the old Hollywood of pure fantasy, a construct depicting a Pacific island of the mind, the kind of haze dream which, camp nowadays, would have fed the brains of the likes of avant-garde filmmaker Jack Smith, and perverted with overt phallic plants by Bertrand Mandico for The Wild Boys (2017). Its racism, and the complex web it ends up in for a tale of a white sailor Johnny Baker (Joel McCrea) falling in love with del Rio's native girl Luana, is a reminder that even a decade is a time ago, so the early ninety thirties is itself a time before with a lot of attitudes that have to be tackled head on. The film states it is set in the early thirties in dialogue, but you could swear it was turn of the century, the islanders the stereotype of the naive exotic "others", the white sailors teasing them with ice in the water which confuses them, and offering items from the first world like smoking pipes as trinkets as one would to children. It would be easy to just bury a film like this, probably not the worst film likely to exist from this era in terms of depictions, but that would be an unwillingness to look at ourselves and see our bias.

It also has a farcical edge, surrounding a notion in the plot of virgins being sacrificed to volcanoes. The entire volcano sacrifice concept is one that led me to wonder mid-viewing, as the film will eventually hinge around Luana, the tribal chief daughter, being there to sacrifice to appease the volcano God, whether it is something which is actually happened in one obscure tribe or likely a pure construct of colonially bias pulp. Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin pastiched in The Forbidden Room (2015) among countless influences, which is where this idea only exists for me, and this is likely one of the first (if any) sources for this fancy as a plot device then anything remotely practical as a practice.  

Again, I find myself with idea that merely saying that this film is merely offensive and not to watch is a worthless act to do for a review, even if I have to return to this over and over. I would hope you, the reader, if you are to feel uncomfortable with the content I will warn you about would just avoid the film - of white leads looking down on the natives, with some of the extras cast for authenticity, a romance with a native girl that eroticises her and shows her as a simple figure among figures backwards in their violent superstitions. If you were to still watch the film, my imagined reader, and be offended it would be obvious why. However, the film exists and, just from the volcano subplot, what Bird of Paradise is as content deserves to still be prodded with curiosity as much with these concerns in mind.

What Bird of Paradise definitely is camp melodrama, emphasised by the fact that even the sailors, despite Joel McCrea with his manly leading man appearance being the centre of attention, alongside beingcomedic foils are frankly flamboyant in a couple themselves. This is a film of exaggeration, not that dissimilar (but with more political issues) to the fifties tiki hut lounge music movement of exotica. With an uncredited Busby Berkeley choreographing the "native" dance sequence in the middle, this is Hollywood's extravagance in both its glory and bad taste too. It is emphasised knowing this film contextually has many importance sub currents to it in terms of American cinema's history. From RKO Studios, which would grow in stature over the thirties and forties just from King Kong in 1933, this is produced by David Selznick, in a brief period with RKO before a future including the legendary Gone with the Wind (1939) among his projects. King Vidor, a figure behind a fascinating film like The Crowd (1928), is here as is the fact that this is a sound production. Moving from the silent era Vidor worked in, to a period where actors were pushed aside when their voices now became a factor to consider, and the technology for sound having to be negotiated around practically just beforehand, Bird of Paradise from its exotic score to the dialogue stands out knowing just before sound was alien.

Then there is the fact this is a pre-Code film, a period sadly not easy to access still outside of the United States. Suffice to say, even if former post-master general Will Hays had already being brought into Hollywood at this point to clean up the cinema, there was a period in the early thirties where a lot of adult and edgy content for the time was still flagrantly around. Baring its problematic ethnographic content, Bird of Paradise is tame in the modern day, but it is still surprising for an underwater sequence where clearly, whilst blurred in the image, a female stand-in for Dolores del Río is very naked. Or that del Rio herself eventually wears above the waist only a strategically place garland which leaves nothing to the imagination. Or that, in contrast, McCrea's body is eroticised too, in a scene where coconut milk is seductively drank between them and spills on their figures whilst among of the native foliage.

It is a shame such a film is embedded to its historical context, the artificial reality of the dream factory felt fully here in its lack of subtlety or the exaggeration, where something like a shark randomly causing the natives to flee in their canoes is touched upon with a heightened shock for what is merely a fin gliding through the water and strategic use of pre-shot footage of a real one. Sadly, such an aesthetic is found, in its sincere form, in problematic material. del Rio, whose reputation includes her work back in her homeland of Mexico and the theatre for her full legacy, is frankly stuck with a character unable to grow as, with her childish grasp of English, the character of Luana is the eroticised innocent. Even Joel McCrea, who would make a career in the last half of his career mostly in westerns, is stuck with generic bland white male hero. These films appealed, and they influenced figures that could run with their best virtues even on lowest budgets into phantasmagorical content, but you are stuck with a film which has to cast a Hispanic actress, in a role which ultimately does not give her a lot to do, as an entirely different ethnicity. A film which has to dance a merry dance awkwardly around miscegenation, something Will Hays among his many do-and-don't would have as prohibited in Hollywood cinema but continues here beforehand to be uncomfortable for the ideas of the culture. [Spoilers] The volcano appears for a tragic ending but you can suspect as much of it is loaded even by accident in this mess of the time's attitudes. [Spoilers] I enjoyed this film when it was pure pulp, of whirlpools lovingly rendered in heightened style, or the extravagance of a flying fish swarm with many extras in boats and McCrea hitting them with a tennis racket, but you have to take these moments with the cultural baggage. The difference is I accept this and try to find these aspects to take of interest. That does mean rolling one's eyes a lot and having the kindness to warn others out of concern of their worst aspects.

The Old Dark House (1932)

 

Director: James Whale

Screenplay: Benn W. Levy

Based on the novel Benighted (1927) by J. B. Priestley

Cast: Boris Karloff as Morgan; Melvyn Douglas as Penderel; Charles Laughton as Sir William Porterhouse; Lilian Bond as Gladys; Ernest Thesiger as Horace Femm; Eva Moore as Rebecca Femm; Raymond Massey as Philip Waverton; Gloria Stuart as Margaret Waverton; Elspeth Dudgeon as Sir Roderick Femm (as John Dudgeon); Brember Wills as Saul Femm

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #195

 

Have a potato.

I had the pleasure to see The Old Dark House the first time during a brief British theatrical release in the 2010s. This is a rarity for me to experience as sadly such screenings have never been practical for me to access. This rare case in particular was a fascinating case, to experience a film from the era of mono sound and Academy ration framing on a large cinema screen, culturally alien to modern theatrical cinema which is post-widescreen and 5.1 sound. The film itself however is something completely alien even in context to when it was made, thankfully so. It is a film made by James Whale, in the midst of the boom in American horror films and when he made a huge iconic success with Frankenstein (1931) for Universal Studios, which is perplexing, hilarious and peculiar as something meant to be a horror film. Something I was thankfully able to experience in the dark on a giant theatrical screen in a pristine 4K restoration, rather than the history of a film once presumed lost and also neglected over the years.

And The Old Dark House is definitely a weird film. Not one of the strangest ever made in premise or aesthetic, but so peculiar. It is in premise a Universal horror movie without a main monster, and baring one major event it is a plot which is entirely against expectations for horror, completely going against its peers with a tone that is completely off-kilter the moment we get to the titular house. One which, baring of course a model avalanche nearly hitting a model car in the prologue bringing in some of the main characters, and one of two struggles, is entirely told in dialogue.

To think as well a film of this vintage was already possessing such a dark, scathing sense of humour with a deliberately sense of camp is already amazing to even consider, arguably more timeless than other peers of the era due to its and why, whilst not a major film of its era originally in success, it has thankfully grown in reputation over time. It is one of the most deliciously camp films populated by a smorgasbord of great performances firing on all cylinders, all purposely adding to this, in which a group of people - Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey), his wife Margaret (Gloria Stuart), and their friend Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) - end up at the titular home to escape the extreme weather in the middle of isolated Welsh countryside. The people in the aforementioned house though are just off in their entirely - the godless and eccentric Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), his surly and religious near deaf sister Rebecca (Eva Moore), and Morgan (Boris Karloff), their voiceless hulking servant they have to keep around but is a problem whenever he gets to the alcohol. This does not even begin to elaborate on where the film goes, as another couple, Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his female friend Gladys DuCane (Lilian Bond), appear, and there are secrets about the house and its lineage including the figure locked away upstairs to contend with.

I can see why The Old Dark House was not as well known like Frankenstein or another of Whale's horror films The Invisible Man (1933), but having grown to admire him as a filmmaker, he is a fascinating figure. In mind of him as an openly gay man during his career at this point, a subversive streak in the material exists just going from these horror films. Bride of Frankenstein (1935), his even bigger success, is known as the film where he was able to get away with far more eclectic, humoured and even camper content, but even The Invisible Man also happens to be a lark juggling humour alongside full blown misanthropic content. I wonder how an audience back in 1932 reacted to The Old Dark House, but in hindsight the result's magnificent and perfect for our generation of viewers to finally appreciate.

It is still at its heart a Gothic tale, capable of incredibly atmospheric moments, the scene inter-cutting Gloria Stuart and Eva Moore in fragments of reflections masterful for the era, as Rebecca berates the younger woman in her late sister's room how beauty is a limited thing which decays and dies out. But this at its heart has its tongue so firmly in cheek it could dangerously pierce through the skin. Ernest Thesiger in particular is a shining star - a feat in a film with Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff among everyone else stomping through scenes - who manages to even make the phrase "I like gin" have incredible comic timing. Even before his introduction, when we start with the lead characters trying to drive through the Welsh countryside during a downpour, the potential problem of two milquetoast characters lead the film which has always plagued these older horror films, a heterosexual American couple, is counteracted by their friend Penderel being a likable wisecrack, and a spark of dialogue which allows all the characters to have personality. When we are introduced to the house and its occupants, even a gag of Thesiger's Horace suddenly throwing flowers into the fire is hilarious.

Even the fact Boris Karloff is not with a speaking role, which might be seen as a tragedy as he had an incredible speaking voice, is thankfully avoided by his stature and the physical acting he portrays. Charles Laughton is exceptional too, which is not a surprise, and to the film's credit, with no one necessarily bad, Laughton's character of a self made man conscious of his low self esteem is lovable as its own plot. Even the fact his female friend Gladys falls for Penderel does not lead to Laughton's character being demonised, but with a lovely grace to it of acceptance and a great little subplot as a result.

The general tone and plotting evoked mid-viewing two later films I lov for this type of comedy with horrific tones. They feel like they belong on their own peculiar family tree, bearing in mind that it was only in the late sixties due to the hard work of director Curtis Harrington that the film was rediscovered and preserved, and that in 1963 William Castle, the legendary hype man and filmmaker, remade the film. Jack Smith's Spider Baby (1967) is the more b-flick version of this strangers-in-a-strange-home story, handsome in its own idiosyncratic qualities, a whit to the dialogue and with Lon Chaney Jr. a nice web of connection back to the Universal horror films. And than there was Thundercrack! (1975), the infamous bisexual porno haunted house melodrama, which is so visibly influenced by this film in hindsight, especially as The Old Dark House was rediscovered and saved in the sixties, I cannot help wonder that it would have been a huge inspiration for a production that was a collaboration between screenwriter/co-star/LGBT experimental filmmaker George Kuchar and its director Curt McDowell. Even with its reputation for actual hardcore sex in the uncut form, Thundercrack itself is just as bonkers and relishable in its own dialogue too, and its eccentric characters, that this grows as a theory for me.

And there is a lot in The Old Dark House itself to admire beyond its humour. Willing to be surprising explicitly in sexuality just before the Hays Code was properly enforced, such as Gloria Stuart in revealing negligee, able to bring in implicit gay subtext, such as the hidden away patriarch who is over a hundred years old being played by a woman, or how Laughton's character, with a northern accent just above my neck of the woods to be proud of, introduces class issues into this light hearted romp. For an American film in particular it is also incredible British and, much to my amusement, set in Wales with the appropriate level of rainfall to match I experienced when I went there as a lad. It sadly was not shot Wales, so we could not get their beautiful countryside, but the choice and the cultural ticks from the British director and a story adapted from a British novelist's work do stand out.

That the plot itself is not really about much but still manages to go through various tropes of classic Gothic storytelling, of hidden attic rooms and mad relatives locked away, bringing them together into a nice potpourri, is a huge virtue for me, in mind that a lot of these horror films from the thirties are very short, even less than eighty minutes, and this one feels more detailed and elaborate than others. Of Christianity and heathenism butting head in two older siblings who've driven each other mad, or that Karloff manages to evoke such a great deal of emotion just through grunting and speaking gibberish.

It was a wonderful experience to see this type of film on the big screen, particularly as this is a rare case of a film even back in the past that, as a Hollywood bankrolled production, would have been an oddity to witness, and in the modern day is one too but has been thankfully canonised as a gem. I think back to the dining room sequence in particular, of how a horror film, or what is meant to be one, has a lengthy scene of just characters dining at a table, discussing their lives, and how Thesiger manages to say "potato" in so many different ways within a short passage of time and make that the main excitement of the sequence. If I could ever get away from quoting anything Thesiger says in this film in my ordinary life, I would gladly do so with the appropriate relish.

Freaks (1932)

From http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/wp-content/
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Director: Tod Browning

Screenplay: Tod Robbins

Cast: Wallace Ford (as Phroso); Leila Hyams (as Venus); Olga Baclanova (as Cleopatra); Roscoe Ates (as Roscoe); Henry Victor (as Hercules); Harry Earles (as Hans)

Synopsis: Within a travelling carnival and its sideshow "freak" attractions, the owner Hans (Earles), a midget, falls in love with the Amazonian trapeze artist Cleopatra (Baclanova). Unfortunately Cleopatra is in cahoots with the strongman Hercules (Victor), and the pair as well as being cruel and abusive to those within the sideshow have a plan for Cleo to marry Hans and poison him to claim his financial inheritance. However, as a carnival barker who bookends the film states, the sideshow "freaks" including a living torso, a bearded woman and "Pinheads" live by a code. In a world where they are discriminated against, they have their own community where they protect each other and deal with their own foibles; those from the outside who befriend them, including animal trainer Venus (Hyams) and Phroso the Clown (Ford), will be treated as equals, while those who trespass against them will suffer horrible consequences.

A lot of cineastes will know of Freak's notoriety. Banned in the United Kingdom, causing outrage in its country of origins, sold to Dwain Esper to be churned out on the grindhouse tent circuit until it was critically revaluated, living with the reputation as a thirties horror film that still surprises. More so today with political correctness, the film from the title to some of the words in the synopsis will be even more uncomfortable without having seen the film, and even to the cast it was a film both championed but also damned for its depiction of those with physical differences. As someone who grew up with a learning disability, autism, whilst I cannot compare to someone like Prince Randian, the living torso, who had no limbs to speak of, viewing Freaks more and more since I saw it the first time in college film studies has a different perspective for me as someone not part of "normal" society even if it's not because of a physical handicap.

From http://breakfastwithplato.com/wp-content/uploads/
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In testament to the film, Freaks never mocks the titular individuals. While in broad brushes depicting the lives within a circus, the brief snippets of a community are rich as they stand. Tod Browning did run away with the circus when he was young and throughout there are many aspects to the film that couldn't be seen in anyway but heartening. A community where everyone helped each other, married and had kids as the human skeleton and the bearded lady do in one scene, and whilst the film is fictitious the normalisation of everyone's lives and letting actual sideshow attractions act is a huge virtue. The rawness of amateur performers is matched by the charisma of everyone, from Schlitzie the pinhead (actually a man playing a woman) to the already mentioned Prince Randian, who only gets one moment but shines just from showing how you don't need limbs to light a cigarette. That the film was cut down to only around an hour does mean a lot was probably lost that would've been exceptional to see, but what snippets remain are utterly inspiring and subversive in seeing these people be filmed having meals and merely gossiping between themselves. This is where even someone like myself with a mental disability can embrace this film more beyond a love of the movie, where not only is there solidarity between the sideshow, but also how it shows how ordinary they are even if their lives travelling could've been exciting and full of gossip. The film's in the same vein of the Universal horror movies of the thirties that it was meant to capitalise on, a lurid carnival drama also in the vein of the decade later Nightmare Alley (1947) where deceit and murder plots bubble up. Barring a finale where people crawl in the mud during a rainstorm with knifes ready, the horror movie moment, this exists in-between dramas as a pot-boiler which straddles the line between respectability and being offensive. The film for me is the former, but it still gladly provokes taboos. Just before the Hays Code, which was already created, finally clamped down on what it perceived to be morally offensive material, you had films in the early thirties which still stand out for how brazen and quite progressive they still are. Hans is openly wooing Cleopatra, hinting of an eroticism that is still not tackled in cinema a great deal, and more openly subversive is to be found the subplot with real life Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton playing sisters who are planning to marry their respective suitors, one of the funniest parts of the film for imagining how the arguments with the sister-in-law is going to turn out like but also hinting at more when both sisters can feel the sensations of the other.

From http://www.popoptiq.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/freaks1.png

You can easily connect Freaks, even though it was and always will have meant to be a horror movie to scare, to the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Harmony Korine, Lars von Trier's The Idiots (1998) and Ulrich Seidl, all of which have prodded the taboos of either (or both) physical and mental disability, Freaks by possible coincidence being an ancestor of them in disregarding the safety bubble used around the subject. Whilst no way near as explicit as those films, and not in their cult/art cinema environment, this still does everything those examples do - showing the disabled as human beings, far from perfect, passionate and even having sexual desire. This doesn't detract from Freaks being a fun film, with a proto-Tales From The Crypt twist that's nasty, but the humanity is still worth relishing too.

From http://filmint.nu/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Freaks-2.jpg

Technical Detail:

The one flaw with Freaks that I've finally overcome, but must be bared in mind, is that as an early thirties movie, it had to grapple with the introduction of sound and how films would now have to be made, visible in its basic cinematic structure. Browning was said never to be comfortable with sound - Dracula (1931) is an utterly sluggish and misshapen creation even with Bela Lugosi - and Freaks is a quietly put together work as a result of this. The content is what Freaks succeeds though, not elaborate technique you can find in another great film like Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). This was why it took a while for me to fully embrace Freaks over all these years, superficiality no longer a bias.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WeC8r2kZajo/maxresdefault.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: None

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

The term "grotesque" could've been used but for me that would be utterly offensive to the people in the film. There should be a distancing of that word away from connotations of physical deformity and disability by itself barring the extreme realms of body horror and its fictitious exaggerations. Grotesque for me should represent exaggeration and transgressive material like taboo sexuality or the worst in mankind's behaviour. I could use the word for if I cover an Ulrich Seidl film. Another work based around a carnival "freakshow", the notorious anime Midori (1992), could also qualify for the word as would Horrors of Malformed Men (1969), a film banned in its home country exactly for the concerns of it being offensive to the disabled but firmly entrenched in a truly strange reality instead.

Aside from this, Freaks isn't a weird film at all. Barring having real sideshow performers play themselves rather than using practical effects, nothing is unconventional from other movies. Nothing is abstract and there is no cinematic techniques which effect the content. Having the performers be real sideshow attractions is confrontational, causing people to react and if the legend is true it caused a violent reaction at its original premier. The rest of the film is a melodrama with lots of dialogue, mostly if not all shot statically without anything to baffle. Now if what I've heard is true about Tod Browning's silent films, where dialogue wasn't an issue, films like The Unknown (1927) which made his name with Lon Chaney could be awesome and utterly strange too.

From http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/styles/full/public/image/
freaks-1932-001-two-men-in-the-rain-car-detail.jpg?itok=7KR2ZtNt

Personal Opinion:

This was and still is a unique film, still utterly provocative to a modern audience, and despite its technical limitations, the boldness of the premise is still strong. It could be seen as sad, it would still be shocking, but firmly on the side of the titular characters, it champions them as much as it would offend others. This is also a film which doesn't fall into the annoying convention of the normal defeating the outsider evil. Here instead it's the outsiders who are the good people and the apparently normal people are evil, a simple idea far and away more relevant and more entertaining now in a fun film than most horror movies that do the opposite.

Halloween 31 For 31: Drácula (1931)

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_UKP0d3td5A/VDoiK0vWIWI/
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Director: George Melford

Screenplay: Baltasar Fernández Cué (based on the Bram Stoker novel and the theatrical play by John L. Balderston, Hamilton Deane and Garrett Fort)

Cast: Carlos Villarías (AS Conde Drácula); Lupita Tovar (as Eva); Barry Norton (as Juan Harker); Pablo Álvarez Rubio (as Renfield); Eduardo Arozamena (as Van Helsing)

Synopsis: Change the "a" to an accented one and you get the Spanish language version of the Universal horror film, shot at the same time at night whilst Tod Browning's more well known version with Bela Lugosi was being filmed before in the day. As with that film, Conde Dracula (Villarías) moves to England, terrorising Eva (Tovar) the fiancée of Juan Harker (Norton). However with the help of the wise Van Helsing (Arozamena) the Conte may have his comeuppance.

(Spanish) Dracula is certainly a curiosity which has blossomed into its own fan base, from a brief period when sound had been introduced into cinema where, instead of dubbing, it was viewed as wiser to film two versions of the same film in different languages. (One of Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse films, the second, is another example of this). It's been a very long time since I viewed the Lugosi version, so attempting to compare the two would be misinformed, only a few things from memory visibly mirroring each other. (Spanish) Dracula however is noticeably longer in running time and, in a great irony considering the film was once thought lost, its seen as been superior because a) shooting at night time on the same Universal sets was seen as more atmospheric and, b) along with the longer running time, the Spanish production could learn from what was being done in the takes for the English version and change things. I cannot help, though my knowledge of this region of cinema is vague, but think of how this film would've been taken in Spain itself as well, and in a Spanish speaking country like Mexico if a print ever travelled down there, as even with this film the potential influence of horror films could've been significant.

From https://terrymalloyspigeoncoop.files.wordpress.com/
2012/10/carlos_villarias-dracula.jpg

It's peculiar watching a film where everyone in Transylvania and England are able to speak fluent Spanish, but this is as much an issue with how England is usually depicted with many of my ilk speaking without thick regional accents. If anything, here with (Spanish) Dracula as well as the other Universal horror movies the entire film exists in its own world, a monochrome filmed one where the sets from the English language version are immediately gothic and evocative of a place far removed from the viewer. The only regret with this film in terms of depicting the Dracula story is that, even if the film is nearly ninety minutes already, it skips through Dracula's castle almost completely, recasting Renfield (Rubio)  as the one who travels to Transylvania to meet the Conte. Nonetheless the film still has a great deal of mood to it, of people walking between mist covered cemetery gates,  to the ruin that Dracula occupies including a giant staircase that seems to lift up into the sky itself, able to feed viewers' imaginations of a vast environment on manmade, small ones.  

There's a lot to like in the alternative casting in (Spanish) Dracula too. Not only do you have the very charismatic Lupita Tovar as Eva, the Mina role, but for the villains of the piece you have enough madness between them to fill a padded room. Though he's not Lugosi, Villarías does have suitably maniacal eyes which are wisely emphasised in extreme close-ups, and as for Reinfeld, I've now come across a candidate as the most deranged take on the character I've seen in an adaptation from Rubio. Whether he's laughing like a lunatic, shouting or switching between pleasantness and despair like a flipping coin, Rubio is special, his role so intense that the filming crew, in Tovar's post-film recollections, were worried he was cracking up for real.

From http://lh4.ggpht.com/-eRZ03mOO4-U/Tqxz9If7mrI
/AAAAAAAAEX0/ERx7MwvE2rw/s1600/Spanish
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Technical Details:

At first jarring, there's no musical score at all during (Spanish) Dracula barring an orchestral piece in the beginning credits. This lack of non-diegetic music to tell you when to feel scared or react to anything onscreen is noticeable in its absence, instead the bare sound of what was recorded left. It does add a lot of atmosphere to moments of environment building, but it's something you have to soak up for a while if you grew up like I did with horror films that use music either perfectly or badly.

Also of surprise is that, while horror films still use a look of dialogue scenes now, (Spanish) Dracula contains a lot of dialogue and scenes of characters standing around having conversations. Even Dracula and Van Helsing during an intense point decided to have a chatter at one point. This in all honesty weakens the experience of watching the film, and that this alongside the English language version were based on a stage play adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel is possibly the cause of this. That said, if there's any defence of this, from my vague memories of the Browning adaptation it was just as weakened by these facts as well. Also by coincidental luck I've just seen a new horror documentary, Fear Itself (2015), and its comments on this type of dialogue proved to be inspired and apt with watching (Spanish) Dracula, that there's so much dialogue in films like it to ground their content, in fear of not knowing the cause of the terror preying on the characters if it wasn't explained. In fact the dialogue scenes developed a purpose in that once you pass them, the moments of creepiness and mood where Dracula prowls after victims become more meaningful. It's as if the ordinariness of the morally good characters with their lengthy dialogues scenes get briefly cut down by the fear of what's after them. In fact in one case, due to a good performance in the scene from Tovar, a lengthy conversation turns into the worse when someone is suspiciously too bright and optimistic for what has happened to them.

From https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/88/52/
7a/88527a9b485272c2b6b7858596f981e8.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Nothing of mention, but even if covering an unconventional choice for a Universal horror movie, these films have had an incredible and profound influence on both horror cinema and also the types of cinema I cover on this site. The Universal films have created an entire aesthetic that will have even inspired underground avant-garde works with the symbolism used to depict the like of Frankenstein's monster to Dracula. The images here of dank, shadow covered environments are also visibly influenced by German Expressionism as well, the trail of a family tree to be found that also contains the more abstract horror films I've watched over the years and would appear on this blog.

Personal Opinion:

There're certainly flaws in pacing, but I cannot help but find (Spanish) Dracula charming and also rewarding. It's not a scary film now, but like Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary (2002), it's now more about the gothic mood of the story in this interpretation that captivates you, like a feint chill of a night's wind on the back of your bared neck. It's also nice to see this version of Dracula for the first time. Each of the (good) ones I've seen, from this to Francis Ford Coppola's, have all had their unique personalities, and after years of presumably being lost forever, (Spanish) Dracula was preserved and made available in all the recent Universal horror box sets even if as an extra. Appropriately, some suggest this is the superior version of the two versions made in 1931, even if the English version had Lugosi, something which I'll have to decide upon myself when I revisit that version at some point.