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

=====

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.

Ghosts on the Loose (1943)

 

Director: William Beaudine

Screenplay: Kenneth Higgins

Cast: Leo Gorcey as Muggs McGinnis; Huntz Hall as Glimpy; Bobby Jordan as Danny; Bela Lugosi as Emil; Ava Gardner as Betty; Rick Vallin as Jack; Ernest Morrison as Scruno; William 'Billy' Benedict as Benny; Stanley Clements as Stash

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Remind me when we get into town to give you the Iron Cross for bravery...to your skull.

[Some Major Spoilers]

From b-movie kings Monogram Pictures, Ghosts on the Loose is part of a series of films with the "East Side Kids", a franchise which combined actors from the Dead End Kids, part of a group of young actors from New York City who appeared in Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Dead End in 1935, brought to Hollywood in 1937 by Samuel Goldwyn, and the Little Tough Guys, a group of actors who made a series of films and serials released by Universal Studios from 1938 through 1943. Over 22 films, made within 1940 to 1945, this was a franchise which was produced on mass by Monogram Pictures, with over thirty exact members in a variety of roles. This was not a troupe with everyone being the same each production, instead a representative of a band of boys who have their jokes and puns, here in this form beginning this film preparing to sing at one of their member's sister's wedding.

Said older sister is Ava Gardner, playing Betty, surprising to see her when she would be off a film like The Killers (1946) only some time later. This early in her career in a Monogram Pictures film shows everyone starts somewhere, and as much as you can tell how much she stands out, even in a William "One Shot" Beaudine production, she is as much just part of the cast as everyone. This also includes an older Bela Lugosi, in a wilderness period, taking work in these films after his golden one. All of them exist within a tale of Betty and her fiancée trying to get a house Bela Lugosi does not want them in, so there is already suspicious shenanigans afoot, decades before there would be a concern with the house even being on Elm Street. With the estate next door being apparently haunted, and the groom convinced to not go to the home after the wedding, the East Side Kids presume all they need to do is redecorate and head over.

The film is more comedy than horror, the latter entirely in how this is a haunted house scenario as Lugosi tries to scare them off. The humour at times has not aged, coming from this early forties b-picture time, having not travelled to ours with connections to what is humorous now. This is cruel to write, but is merely in mind that a lot of it is innocuous and not land even in terms of being funny in a modern context. Some of the humour is just innocuous in a more positive way, if not exceptional, be it the banter or someone deciding to cook the rice that is thrown at weddings first. Some jokes do land - such as stealing funeral wreaths for dead gangsters for the wedding, especially wreaths that were gifts from those who shot him and "did not" want to - this is a type of comedy based on the East Side Kids cast being goofs. They were clearly created to be humorous, to be able to sing, who do also struggle as a unit, and with most of them suffering from the group being too large for everyone to stand out, a motley team in a Monogram Pictures genre hybrid.

There is also many single takes of talking to tell the film cinematically, to the point it is not a William Beaudine thing, despite his infamous "One Shot" nickname, but also is what would presumably be the b-movie style of the time. This is instead not an infamous and prolific director showing a trademark, but that which is quick and efficient, pulp for sale and audience interest. In this case, very silly jokes are in the centre, from a seven dwarfs like group in the East Side Kids, even one who is sleepy all the time, if you replaced the leader with a wise guy who uses mock gangster lingo. Place them into a haunted house, and cash in on Bela Lugosi's legacy from Universal horror films, playing off his name recognition, and you get a film as a result. It is very silly. I have never seen someone, with the traditional joke of sweeping dust under a rug, be done instead under a cobweb, especially as they still stick the end of the web back down, or that most of the "haunted house" plot is merely to do with paintings, a Napoleon portrait that can revolve and show him without a coat and with one, or when the Bela Lugosi portrait sneezes and growls at you.

There was a huge concern, with one of the Kids being a young African American actor, Ernest Morrison, that he would be painted as a scaredy cat against the white cast, a trope from this era that actors like Mantan Moreland played in his career at this time. Thankfully, alongside doing a nice backwards fall stunt off a ladder onto a sofa, everyone in the group is a scaredy cat, all goofy in how they react to spooky things, be it one that literally climbs up the walls on top of a mounted moose head or the lead being so scared his hat flies off. Honestly only one joke feels of its era, and it is a weird one, even before it becomes the punch line for the film's ending. It is about catching German measles, in a World War II era film, which leads someone having black swastikas marked on his face. That definitely came from another period, but continuing in mind to this being a time capsule, you have a film, made when the United States entered the Second World War, that reflects when alongside being real enemies of the world, Nazi Germany could also be stock villains in these b-pictures and have strange punch lines like that one, alongside the main MacGuffin being a printing press and Nazi propaganda being made from it.

The film is, over only an hour, watchable, a public domain production which is more interesting for its quirks and as a cultural item of the past, for its many dated moments and for its curious nature. It is fascinating for what it is, a film coasting on horror tropes, in a comedy, which spends a lot of its time still being an adventure romp putting one over the Nazis, who barring the propaganda are incredibly vague goons ran by Lugosi. That, also from the director of Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966), in itself makes it a strange concoction, and certainly interesting.

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)

 

Director: William Beaudine

Screenplay: Tim Ryan (with additional dialogue by Leo 'Ukie' Sherin and Edmond Seward)

Cast: Bela Lugosi as Dr. Zabor; Duke Mitchell as Duke Mitchell; Sammy Petrillo as Sammy Petrillo; Charlita as Nona; Muriel Landers as Saloma; Al Kikume as Chief Rakos; Mickey Simpson as Chula; Milton Newberger as Witch Doctor Bongo; Martin Garralaga as Pepe Bordo; Ramona, the Chimp

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #255

 

Don't mind my friend. He has a one-syllable brain.

For what was considered one of the worst films ever made, this requires having to unpack an entirely different era of pop culture few may know of to explain why this even exists. That effectively, with this premise starting Sammy Petrillo and Duke Mitchell, producer Maurice Duke  felt there was an opportunity to cash-in on the craze of films by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, a popular duo at the time, without having to hire Martin and Lewis. To contrast those figures, you have a young Duke Mitchell, who would go on infamously to self-fund two cult films in the seventies, Massacre Mafia Style (1974) and Gone With the Pope (1976/2010), whilst Sammy Petrillo was known for doing Jerry Lewis impressions and even worked with Lewis at one point. Paramount Pictures producer Hal B. Wallis, who then had Martin and Lewis under contract at the time, even sued the creators of the film, with a compromise likely to be found in burning the negative. Why that did not happen is to speculate, but it led to this film to gain the infamy it has.

The strange thing is that, even with Lugosi in the cast as a star, this is not a horror film. It really is not substantial (nor funny) enough to be a comedy. It is a complete oddity, as Mitchell and Petrillo end up introduced stranded on a Pacific Island "Kola Kola", one where the natives are (mostly) very white actors masquerading as non-white people in tribal dress. Pointing out insensitive cultural appropriation here is like pointing out the practicalities of sculpting a fire guard from chocolate. Instead, knowing the infamy of this film, the obvious point is still the most important thing to point out, that it is an awkward film. Sammy Petrillo in particular has the ignoble job, as a visibly young man in this film, of replicating Jerry Lewis, who act was an acquired taste anyway. Contrasting him, Duke Mitchell calmly coasts through with ease, about to sing very well even when his character is turned into a gorilla by Dr. Zabor, played by Bela Lugosi, for eyeing up his native assistant Nona (Charlita).

This is the type of low budget film where no one bats an eye about a gothic castle in the jungle existing, all because this is aware of what it is. It wants to play to the Jerry Lewis-Dean Martin films of a Lewis figure going for yucks, the Martin figure being suave and crooning songs, whilst playing off the reputation of Bela Lugosi even if at this time he was badly in need of work, even having a meta joke about Lugosi playing someone who looks like Dracula. This is the type of film on paper which sounds compelling to witness, but the film itself watching is surprising in how much even time seems to drag. It is strange, after all the years I have heard of this film, actually watching the film as see how a horror icon, an act meant to cash-in on a huge comedy duo, a jungle set and a barely cohesive narrative are meant to be bolted together.

It is a film where the MVP, even with Bela Lugosi in the cast, is Ramona the chimpanzee, a cute trained simian who plays a comedic foil to Petrillo. Only knowing, even if likely an infant, that this type of animal casting was stopped for a reason undermines the fun of this character, plus knowing that an adult chimpanzee is strong enough to rip appendages off human beings with ease and willing to if provoked. Even Ramona feels abruptly placed in, for a film which never finds a point to itself baring the vaguest of variety shows in filmic form. All of the obvious thoughts that, yes, this film lives up to its reputation as a bad film do not actually explain that this film also is a curious experience, felt with less pain than a strange apathy fascinating. More so as this is effectively a comedy - a comedy where none of the humour worked for me, which made it a perplexing movie.

Large portions are spent with Petrillo prating about. There is a dance sequence. There is a romance with Nona and Duke Mitchell, but he and Petrillo playing themselves, with a very educated daughter of the island's leader. Yet nothing here even turns into a slog but just exists. More so as well that the film does feel unfinished, with no ending to a narrative of one of your leads being turned into a gorilla and an evil scientist baring, to spoil this and the aforementioned film, the conclusion of the 1939 The Wizard of Oz. The director William Beaudine became infamous for films like this in his career, despite being a journeyman who worked in a variety of genres, and honestly, as a simplistically shot movie, he does not take the blame. It looks average, but even the fake stage bound jungle sets have a fascinating artificiality. Bela Lugosi, even at the time with a drug addiction where he would eventually encounter Ed Wood Jr., is charismatic here as a significantly older man, managing to wear white in the jungle without it being stained. Even Duke Mitchell when stuck in a gorilla suit, even if dubbed over, is vaguely amusing to see the weird trope of cheap gorilla suits for comedy. That is the really strange thing, in that having seen the lowest of low even next to this film in my viewing experiences, no one here is really the blame for dropping the ball. Even the cinematographer Charles Van Enger worked with Ernst Lubitsch and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

It is really the point where you have to sit and ponder its existence. Only Sammy Petrillo really stands out as egregious trying to mimic Jerry Lewis, as a younger man, with a heightened shrillness, but beyond the jokes being dumb, this is innocuous. In fact, most barely register, almost sweet in their lack of impact. The script is to blame but I do not want to really criticise the screenplay either. The rest is perversely anti-entertainment, which could sound gimmicky to say, but in the sense that, whilst a narrative film, it leads nowhere, leads to no humour or subversion for this, and is entirely a conservative film of conservative jokes with problematic cultural appropriation, yet completely innocuous in spite of this. In a way, it is admirable for a film to achieve this state of existence, of a form of nothingness, even if in truth, one would rather prefer a film that tried for this tone but with more on the table. Or a film which, with its history and content - ripping off a famous comedy duo, Bela Lugosi, men being turned into gorillas by cheap suits - was more over-the-top then this, which is just a weird film instead.

Voodoo Man (1944)

 

Director: William Beaudine

Screenplay: Robert Charles

Cast: Bela Lugosi as Dr. Marlowe; John Carradine as Toby; George Zucco as Nicholas; Wanda McKay as Betty; Louise Currie as Sally; Michael Ames as Ralph; Ellen Hall as Mrs. Marlowe; Henry Hall as Sheriff; Dan White as Deputy Elmer

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #253

 

I have a good mind to report you to the Chamber of Commerce!

Another Monogram Films production, though they were more a distributor of this than its producer, but here we also can talk of Bela Lugosi. His life, and in mind to when this film was made, does admittedly cause me to feel sad. This will be a fun review, but it should be considered this is close to when he started making whatever films he could to make the bills, the tragedy of not only the man who played Dracula ending in the position he did, but an acclaimed theatre and film actor in his homeland of Hungary who did so to his death in the late fifties. And yet even here in Voodoo Man, a very silly film, Bela does stand out. It softens this thought, and the mood, that this fun film still has Lugosi stand out. That and being to refer to this being a William Beaudine film.

Beaudine for me was dubbed "One Shot", christened to him by the Michael and Harry Medved with their book The Golden Turkey Awards. The man is arguably more than his notoriety - he was working from the 1910s to the late sixties, over countless genres between The Bowery Boys film series to the notorious Mom and Dad (1945), an exploitation sex education film. What likely did not help Beaudine over the years, and was how I first heard of him, were the notoriously "bad" films in his career in the horror genre. Beaudine helmed Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), which is at the point Lugosi was in the midst of the era of a drug addiction and having to get work for money, and whilst I look to them with interest to see again, my younger self did not appreciate The Ape Man (1943), also with Lugosi, or Beaudine's last film Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966). His is the type of career undermined by merely picking at it rather than seeing how large it was, over a hundred credits, and whether a large percentage of them were good or not, Beaudine was still a man who worked and had a life, whether working on obscure Disney films, exploitation sex hygiene movies, or here with the horror genre.

Voodoo Man, as one of these titles, is unabashedly goofy. With a nearby gas station to his home in cahoots, Bela Lugosi and his associates, including John Carradine and George Zucco, are abducting women off the highway and using the voodoo rituals of "Roombuna" to transfer the souls/consciousnesses of the victims into his young dead wife to resurrect her again. Multiple attempts have failed when we get into the narrative, which means mindless female zombies have to be kept locked up, and Hollywood screenwriter Ralph (Michael Ames) finds himself stumbling into this when the bridesmaid of his upcoming wedding is the latest victim. As a film ending with a note onscreen asking the audience to buy war saving stamps and bond notes, this is of another era onscreen, mid World War II, a type of horror cinema including its cast which has its own legacy and its own ticks. One, admittedly, is questionable cultural appropriation of Haitian and Voodoo beliefs, likely made up here, with white people using for evil means. That is definitely something to raise an eyebrow on.

Admittedly this is summed up with George Zucco, who played Professor Moriarty in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) with Basil Rathbone, in silly "tribal" makeup, and a very confused looking John Carradine playing bongos in a set full of deliciously exaggerated skull ornaments, so the problem is more having to use another's "other" culture and calling the film "Voodoo" Man, not the idea of the film being about occult arts to resurrect a noticeably younger wife. Aside from that, nothing is really problematic here at all, in terms of how it has aged, instead entirely innocuous. It has definitely aged in how stiffer this is from, say, Revenge of the Zombies (1943), also from Monogram Pictures. Yet the most rewarding thing about the film is that it feels as if it knows this, and almost has an air of parody of itself, least a banality creeping into what is meant to be a horror film which is intentionally funny.

I think of the perpetually annoyed Sheriff and his deputy Elmer for example - the former once had an easy job, whilst Elmer talks of his wife constantly shouting at him for always being at work - and see how the film has a banal matter-of-factness to admire. Our main lead Ralph, ultimately useless when he has to come to the rescue in the finale, only gets involved at first due to forgetting to have the station attendant fill his gas tank when he drives off, having the audacity to threaten to go back and punch the attention for taking his money. Throughout this, the movie feels like a comedy, even to the point, predating meta-horror of decades later, especially into the nineties, where the film ends with a script for a film also Voodoo Man being finished and someone suggesting Bela Lugosi should be the star in dialogue.

Even for an ultimately cheesy film, this tone helps so much. It is also, taken seriously, from an era where you could bolster them with recognisable and prolific actors who were capable hands onscreen. It says a lot of John Carradine for example, in his diversity, that he could go from being a debonair and calm Nazi scientist in Revenge of the Zombie, to here playing Toby, a simpleton obsessed with "pretty women", his fawning over the zombies thankfully never becoming further creepier than it is, and leading to one escaping from the glass pods they are stored in. And Lugosi even in context of this historical time, when his career was declining, is always compelling, even tragic here as a man whose love for his wife sadly has led him to what he should not be doing. His performance does carry over some emotional weight to this, even if in the end this is a silly movie, and that is something of a testament to him as a charismatic figure and his acting skills, the reason actors like him, especially in genres viewed as disreputable, gained cult audiences over the years after. Voodoo Man is a ridiculous movie, but for these various reasons, it was a pleasure to see, and as I sample more of this era, their simplistic natures, working around limited sets and clichés, become jumping boards to appreciate the people in front and behind the cameras trying to squeeze out the material in an entertaining way even if for a pay check.

Scared to Death (1947)

 

Director: Christy Cabanne

Screenplay: Walter Abbott

Cast: Bela Lugosi as Prof. Leonide; George Zucco as Dr. Joseph Van Ee; Nat Pendleton as Bill Raymond; Molly Lamont as  Laura Van Ee; Joyce Compton as Jane Cornell; Gladys Blake as Lilybeth; Roland Varno as Ward Van Ee; Douglas Fowley as Terry Lee; Angelo Rossitto as Indigo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #203

 

Metabolism. That's a good word. I wonder what it means?

You could pad out your writing just on bad horror films, which can cause a lot of grief through the act of forcing yourself to churn through a lot of disappointing work. If your expectations are to just review good ones, that in its self can be as pointless as, with horror cinema a subject covered greatly, everyone else has likely covered said films and it lacks interest for me particularly to repeat what everyone else does. Far more rewarding are the personal favourites, discoveries or those films which, whilst not great, allow you a lot to write about.

So let us be thankful for Scared to Death. It is not a great film, part of the time period, after his success with Dracula (1931), when Bela Lugosi had difficulty finding work but took anything he could get to pay the bills. Thankfully, legacy allows figures like Lugosi to shine, where even this public domain production intrigues as much as his successes. Also bless, this Golden Gate Pictures Inc. Production, from the era of independent low budget genre filmmaking, whilst a convoluted mess, also happens to be a charming one with so much to write about a swell.

For starters, the film is inspired by a real 1933 murder case involving Dr. Alice Wynekoop, a well-known and respected physician, civic leader, and lecturer who was charged for and eventually imprisoned for the murder of her 22 year old daughter-in-law¹. The film barely, frankly, re-tales the subject but merely uses it for a jumping pad for its own bizarre story. We start off in a morgue, moving to the body of Laura (Molly Lamont), which flashes back to when she was alive and tells the story up to that moment there. I have probably referenced old horror radio broadcasts from the United States in the past, but at first, this is literally one filmed in tone and attitude, worth bringing that up again.

In mind to its gristly real life tale, where Wynekoop was a very devoted mother to her son, Laura is a woman with a fragile continence, always watching behind her back for shadows, especially green masked ones, all whilst her relationship with her husband is close to separation and frayed, her father-in-law a psychiatrist possibly wanting to help his son in nefarious means. The film has no real interest in adapting the real case at all, and it can be lost within the film entirely. Instead, when Prof. Leonide (Bela Lugosi) enters their home as a guest as a mysterious figure, the premise gets more complicated and moves closer to a radio show like Suspense even in terms of the music, whilst with more constant orchestra, and using dialogue to convey the narrative rather than using the visuals.

Scared to Death is far more bloated than this comparison suggests though. Lugosi comes in with so much charisma that it is tragic, whilst he helped sell the film in its day in the advertising, he plays a secondary role to an overlarge cast. His assistant, a deaf-mute dwarf, is also Angelo Rossitto, a prolific actor most known for Tod Browing's Freaks (1932), bared used as an actor at all throughout. There is a reporter, a chauvinist and bland one, and his dim-witted if so much more sympathetic beau, a telephone operator who joins him at the house. The other character of note is Bill Raymond, the bowler hated cop wanting to woo the house staff and hoping even for "one slightly murdered body" to get back his job with the police from. A giant lummox of a man, Raymond is at first way too broad a comedy foil, until after a while winning me over.

Simple minded, wishing to be a great detective, and with a propensity for very flourished and smarter vocabulary that appears in his speech, which he does not understand the meaning of, Raymond won me over. The actor himself Nat Pendleton is another figure of interest too which helps considerably. Looking like a heavy for a crime film from the era, awkwardly here of all places, Pendleton was originally a wrestler who won the silver medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp in Belgium, before transitioning to pro wrestling. He transitioned to acting in the 1920s, one of his most prominent roles in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the 9th Academy Awards Best Picture winner. By Scared to Death, this would be his penultimate film before the end of his cinematic career and, bless him, he was memorable and helped me love this film legitimately

Examples like Pendleton are why even this production could win me over. It is a production not helped by the fact that it feels like an overstuffed stage play, shot in a way that you could with some modification actually stage it for theatre but with a lot of unnecessary plot baggage. Considering Lugosi is your main get, even in the period before his encounters with Ed Wood. Jr. in the fifties, he is lost here in the shuffle and there is so much put in for a film only an hour and seven minutes long. What you get thankfully is still compelling because of its odd quirks. Production wise, it is very conventionally shot as mentioned. Striking however is the fact this late forties low budget film is shot in "natural colour". Even this is a distinct thing of interest as it was shot in Cinecolor, a two colour process that, even in a public domain version that looks muddy, has a curious history, one of many vying for use before Technicolor took hold and left the likes of this process lost by the wayside. One touch which is just weird is the constant flashes back to Laura's head on the morgue table with her voice stating the next event in the plot whilst an eerie music cue is used. It is constant, they can last a few second, and are deeply silly, a sign of how over baked and charmingly shambolic Scared to Death is.

Particularity because of its vintage, as a forties pulp tale in its own ballpark, it is of its era, such as how much of an arse that reporter is to his girlfriend in his patronising ways, but there are plenty of odd touches to like. Working to actual violence, it has to racket up ghoulishness with a striking looking dummy's head but not a great deal of illicit content or any real threat, which is not an issue at all. In mind to the original Wynekoop case, her daughter-in-law Rheta was said to have died, by her own testimony, whilst treating her with pain with a chloroform anaesthetic, only for her heart to have stopped. [Spoiler Warning] Here, well, that title the film has surely would have given the plot twist away before you watched the whole film. [Spoiler Ends] What you do not expect is the film, partially in horror, to get a morality edge involving betrayal, hypnosis, karmic revenge, and a back-story including someone being betrayed to the Nazis and Parisian nightclub entertainment crammed into this slight length production. It is as if all the pulpy tropes which would vanish from modern horror were blended together into something compelling here. It is goofy, but with an undeniable charm.

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1) The full tale can be read of HERE.