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.