Horrorfest 2018: Dracula (Spanish Version)

Ever since I was a kid I always heard about how Universal produced a Spanish language version of DRACULA at the same time as the famous Bela Lugosi version. The more famous English-language version of DRACULA would shoot during the day and then a Spanish-speaking cast and a separate crew shot on the same sets from the same script at night.
The reason I’d hear about this as a kid reading my monster books was that many held it up as a superior version of the film, which is mind blowing – how can DRACULA without Lugosi be better than DRACULA with Lugosi?

Well, the answer is, it’s not REALLY. But it mostly is! Here’s why. Despite being famous and having the greatest Dracula performance ever (Lugosi), the 1931 Universal version of DRACULA suffers from static directing. Which is weird because Tod Browning has clearly made visually dynamic movies – he just didn’t in this case. It’s based on a play and shot like a play, so it moves slowly.

The Spanish version, directed by George Melford, on the other hand, has a lot more dynamic shots and camera movement. It’s a longer movie, but moves more quickly than the Lugosi version because of the way it’s put together. There are tracking shots in dramatic moments, we get to see cool stuff like Dracula actually rising out of his coffin, the scenes on the ship are more creepy. There’s all kinds of examples.

The biggest strength the Lugosi version has over the Spanish version is Lugosi himself, though Carlos Villarias is no slouch. Lugosi plays the role as more of a gentleman who also happens to be cursed. Villarias is also a gentleman, but he seems to take more pleasure in his vampiric activities.

Another pair of actors worth comparing and contrasting are Dwight Frye and Pablo Alvarez Rubio as Renfield, who starts off as a normal real estate agent and progresses into insanity under the influence of Dracula. I love Frye in everything I’ve seen him in, and his otherworldly laugh as Renfield is unforgettable. However, Rubio is just as great, ratcheting the insanity up a notch and really going for it. He doesn’t have a subdued “insane laugh” – he has a roaring howl. It’s unsettling in a completely different way, and fascinating to watch two radically different takes on the same character that deliver similar results.

Anyway, that wraps it up for Horrorfest 2018. I’ve now seen 31 Universal Horror movies I’d never seen before. Maybe next year I’ll see the rest, and then I can claim to have seen all of them! It was fun to spend most of the month with the likes of Lugosi, Karloff and Chaney, with others like Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone showing up, too. Happy Halloween!

Horrorfest 2018: Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff

I figured I should watch at least one of the Universal Abbot and Costello flicks this month, but I’ve already seen my favorite (MEET FRANKENSTEIN) so I chose the next best thing: a flick with Boris Karloff not only in it, but also in the title!

This one’s not as fun as MEET FRANKENSTEIN because there are no real monsters in it. It’s just a murder mystery, with Abbott as a bellhop who finds a dead body in the hotel where he works and is suspected of the crime. Costello plays the house detective who tries to find the real culprit. Meanwhile there’s a ton of suspects (Boris Karloff among them) and they all want to pin it back on Abbott.

It’s interesting, for a comedy, this flick sure has a slow pace. There are plenty of funny parts, like recurring gags with booby traps Abbott sets up, but the movie seemed to last forever. There are also generally good production values, specifically in a series of sequences set in an underground cavern that look great – but they sure seem to be in that cavern a looooong time.

I just wish instead of starring in this one Karloff had reprised his role as the monster in MEET FRANKENSTEIN – then we could have had Lugosi, Chaney and Karloff all in one movie, all as their most famous characters. But it wasn’t meant to be.

Horrorfest 2018: The Creature Walks Among Us

The last of the movies featuring the Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1956’s THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG us is also the weakest of the series, despite its awesome title. Directed by John Sherwood, this installment reveals the Gill-man survived the last one and now haunts the Everglades.

A team of scientists goes to capture him, led by a twisted alcoholic doctor (Jeff Morrow) who brings his wife (Leigh Snowden) along primarily to emotionally abuse her any chance he gets. There’s also a guide (Gregg Palmer) on board who won’t stop hitting on her, so Snowden’s in for a rough movie. Rounding out the cast is the cartoonishly deep-voiced and square-jawed scientist hero played by Rex Reason, also known as “The guy from THIS ISLAND EARTH.”

In their attempt to capture Gill-man they burn the shit out of him, and in their attempt to revive him from his traumatic injuries, they end up discovering that he has backup body parts that allow him to evolve into an oxygen breathing creature that can live on land instead of lagoons. Even with all that, though, the Gill-man stays either on an operating table or in a cage for the bulk of the movie and only Walks Among Us in the last few scenes.

The interesting thing about this movie is that most of the running time is preoccupied with the abusive relationship between the drunken scientist and his wife. The real monster in the movie is this guy, not the Gill-man. Maybe the title is a double meaning. The creature walks among us, as in, IS ONE OF US! But probably not.

Horrorfest 2018: The Pearl of Death

Here’s another Sherlock tale, this one also from 1944, THE PEARL OF DEATH, directed by Roy William Neill. Rathbone and Bruce return, of course, and it’s another fun and creepy mystery, this time involving a master criminal (Miles Mander) who robs the Royal Regent Museum of a pearl.

This time it’s personal, because the theft comes after Holmes has already recovered the pearl from another attempt, and is stolen in Holmes’ presence as the museum’s security systems are being tested.

This one lands firmly in Universal’s horror canon thanks to the presence of Rondo Hattan as a killer known as The Creeper whose signature finishing move is breaking his victim’s backs. Rondo Hattan plays the “monster” with no special makeup appliances because he suffered from acromegaly in real life, and had a suitably interesting face as a result. You’d probably recognize it if you saw it, even if he never made it to super stardom before his untimely demise. He made two more films as The Creeper, outside of the Holmes series, and the one I’ve seen (HOUSE OF HORRORS) was pretty good.

Horrorfest 2018: The Scarlet Claw

Now let’s go back to Sherlock Holmes with 1944’s THE SCARLET CLAW, directed by Roy William Neill. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce return as Holmes and Watson in this installment, which is apparently considered the best of the series, though it didn’t seem necessarily better or worse than the other 4 I’ve seen. They all seem good to me.

This one resembles the first film, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, in several ways, except Holmes gets a lot more screen time as Holmes and Watson travel to France to investigate murders attributed to a ghostly monster who haunts the swamps.

Of course Holmes does not believe in ghosts, so he sets about trying to track down the REAL reasons behind the mysterious goings-on as Watson hits the pub. Without giving too much away, I will say the villain is appropriately creepy, the effects used to make him glow are also creepy, and Holmes’ methods of capturing him, while reminiscent of BASKERVILLE, are still fun to watch.

Horrorfest 2018: Inner Sanctum Mysteries

This year I watched all 6 INNER SANCTUM MYSTERIES that came out from Universal from 1940-1945. This was a series of feature length movies that adapted plots of novels on the Inner Sanctum label into thrillers and mysteries starring Lon Chaney, Jr. I was initially going to review each of them individually but have just decided to do all of them in one shot. They’re all similar enough that 6 full length reviews would be redundant. Here we go:

CALLING DR. DEATH

This one stars Chaney as a doctor who uses hypnotism in his practice and was directed by Reginald LeBorg. It’s heavy on voice-over inner-dialogue for Chaney who is tormented by living in a loveless marriage, filled with intrusive thoughts of killing his wife (Ramsay Ames). Sure enough he goes on a bender and his wife turns out dead. Looks like he did it, but did he? J. Carrol Naish is on the case as a police inspector who is straight out of a noir flick and a highlight of the film. This mystery kept me guessing until the end, so it works on that level, and is one of the better INNER SANCTUM MYSTERIES. We’re off to a good start.

WEIRD WOMAN

Once again directed by Reginald LeBorg, this time Chaney stars as… well, he’s a college professor of some kind, I think maybe a cultural anthropologist? He’s in the South Seas doing some research when he falls in love with a woman (Anne Gwynne, second only to Evelyn Ankers in Universal horror appearances, seemingly) who was brought up by the islanders, marries her, and brings her back home with him. Another professor at the college (hey look, it’s Evelyn Ankers) is jealous, and there’s much collegey bickering about publishing and tenure and things like that, plus some murder. Everyone suspects Gwynne, since she comes from an island, and overall this flick is mostly an outdated exercise in racism, though it was probably considered progressive for its time.

DEAD MAN’S EYES

Acquanetta makes her triumphant return to Horrorfest in DEAD MAN’S EYES. Reginald LeBorg is back as director and Chaney is back as an artist who finds himself blinded and unable to work. There is an operation that could cure him, but the eye donor’s gotta croak before the operation can go through and turns up dead prematurely. So now we have Chaney accused of murder again. DID HE DO IT, etc. There’s a pretty cool twist ending, and Acquanetta is on hand as a model that has fallen for the blind artist, so this is a better than average INNER SANCTUM flick.

THE FROZEN GHOST

This is where things go sort of downhill. To be honest I can’t even really remember that much of this mystery. This time we switch directors for Harold Young, and Chaney stars as a popular mentalist performing on stage and radio. A man accidentally dies while under hypnosis, and Chaney blames himself. Then there’s a bunch of stuff at a wax museum where a crazed and disgraced plastic surgeon played effectively by Martin Kosleck works as a sculptor. The climax is memorable, involving the furnace of the wax museum and an unfortunate fall. But for the life of me this one was so convoluted it lost me.

STRANGE CONFESSION

This one’s interesting in that it’s sort of a remake of NIGHT KEY, with flu vaccines standing in for security systems. Chaney’s developing a vaccine for a company owned by J. Carrol Naish, an actor who should be in everything all the time, and quits when Nash takes his vaccine and all the glory behind developing it. Settling into a humble life as a pharmacist, Chaney’s pulled back in when Naish apologizes and begs for him back. Chaney wants to say no but his wife (Brenda Joyce) wishes they had more money. As soon as he’s back in employ, Chaney’s shipped off to South America to develop a drug (along with Lloyd Bridges!) and Naish puts the moves on Chaney’s wife. He also rushes Chaney’s drug into development before it’s tested and proved, disaster strikes, and Chaney seeks revenge. This was probably my second favorite INNER SANCTUM mystery, after CALLING DR. DEATH.

PILLOW OF DEATH

And here’s the last INNER SANCTUM mystery, one of the more forgettable ones, this time directed by Wallace Fox. Now Chaney’s a lawyer who wants to divorce his wife and marry his secretary but when his wife turns up dead everyone thinks he killed her! This happens to Chaney a lot. His dead wife’s wealthy family employs a medium (J. Edward Bloomberg) who points the finger at Chaney. As usual there’s at least a little twist in the end here, and WIZARD OF OZ fans take note: Clara “Aunt Em” Blandick co-stars.

Horrorfest 2018: Sherlock Holmes Faces Death

The famous series of classic Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson started at Fox with 2 movies but then moved to Universal for 12 more sequels. The ones that lean more towards spookiness (with old dark houses or passageways or seemingly supernatural monsters) get to “count” as Universal horror movies.

The strength of all of these movies, of course, is the way Rathbone’s Holmes and Bruce’s Watson play off of each other with perfect chemistry. Purists may not that Bruce’s Watson is more bumbling than the original, but it works in this dynamic with Rathbone’s near-perfect Holmes. Rathbone is inspired casting, because you might be tempted to put a hero in the role of Holmes, but really it turns out a guy known for playing villains is ideal for someone as logically precise as Holmes. Usually villains are cold and calculating and heroes throw their emotions around. Not in this series.

This time around, Holmes arrives at a hall doubling for a home for recovering war veterans where Watson is serving as resident doctor, just in time to investigate an attempted murder, only to uncover a successful murder, and an apparent fight among the family to establish who inherits the family fortune.

There’s a cool scene where Holmes realizes the floor of one of the main rooms doubles as a life sized chess set, but my favorite part is when I realized Nicholas Meyer stole a sequence directly out of this movie for use in STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. I always knew Meyer intended the B-plot of STAR TREK VI to double as a Sherlock-style mystery, with Spock in the role of Holmes, but I didn’t realize until I saw this movie it went right down to exactly how a certain scene is shot, when Holmes uncovers the murderer.

Horrorfest 2018: Captive Wild Woman

In the 21st century we have Awkwafina but back in 1943 we had Acquanetta, star of Edward Dmytryk’s CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN.

This is the tale of an animal trainer (Milburn Stone) who returns from Africa with lots of new animals for the circus he works for, including a giant (and smart) gorilla named Cheela (Ray Corrigan in a monkey suit). Stone’s girlfriend (Evelyn Ankers, who has probably been in more Universal horror films than anyone) has recently dropped her sister (Martha MacVicar) off with an endocrinologist (John Carradine) who takes a liking to the gorilla and arranges to have it kidnapped.

Turns out Carradine’s not just any endocrinologist – he’s a MAD one. And he wants to transplant human glands into a gorilla for… reasons. He does this (and a quick brain transplant) and ends up with an exotic woman played by Acquanetta who doesn’t remember she was once a gorilla but possesses the ability to control other animals simply by being in their presence. This comes in handy at the circus where Stone’s in over his head with a show featuring too many lions and tigers. It backfires, though, when Acquanetta falls for Stone before realizing Ankers already has him all locked up.

Who is this Acquanetta, you might ask? I asked also. Turns out it’s a mystery. Some sources say she was an Arapaho orphan, others say she hails from Africa and still others say she was originally from Venezuela and grew up in Spanish Harlem. Whatever the case may be, she was a model in New York and then became an actress, starring in several Universal horror flicks, including this one and a sequel I won’t be watching this year (though she will pop up in an Inner Sanctum mystery later!).

This movie’s weird because it has a lot going on but is still full of filler even at its short running time. You’ve got an ape that transforms into a woman and back who can control other animals and a mad doctor who is burning through human female patients just to keep his ape/human hybrid alive. Seems like plenty for a 61-minute-long film but most of it is made up of stock footage of lions and tigers being trained to sit on chairs by guys with whips and revolvers. All the roaring and whipping and gunfire gets old after a while and it’s like “Hey man, get Acquanetta back on the screen.”

Horrorfest 2018: Night Monster

1942’s NIGHT MONSTER, directed by Ford Beebe, “stars” Bela Lugosi and Lionell Atwill as a couple supporting characters in an “old dark house” thriller that actually has a pretty good mystery. Although Lugosi and Atwill aren’t very consequential in the film, they get top billing for ticket-selling purposes.

Really front and center is Ralph Morgan as the wheelchair bound owner of the old dark house in question. The house is surrounded by marshes and there’s rumors of a monster stalking the marshes and killing people. Inside the house things aren’t much better: Morgan’s daughter (Fay Helm) seems to be going insane, Lugosi’s the butler, and the chauffeur (Leif Erickson) is a handsy would-be rapist.

The three doctors (Atwill, Frank Reicher and Francis Pierlot) who have each attempted to cure Morgan of his ailments have been summoned to the house for a demonstration of the psychic healing abilities an Eastern mystic (Nils Asther) has been teaching to Morgan. He’s able to materialize a skeleton seemingly out of nowhere, and only a mysterious puddle of blood is left behind when the skeleton is gone.

It soon becomes clear that there is indeed a monster killing both inside and outside the mansion, as the doctors start to turn up dead. Luckily yet another doctor (Irene Hervey) who has been summoned to help the insane daughter is on hand to look into this mess, along with the neigher (Dick Baldwin) who happens to be a mystery novelist.

Most of the movie unfolds the way these types of movies do but the solution at the end is so unique and different than anything I would have expected that it gets a couple extra marks for that. It’s a shame Lugosi’s wasted here, again – he could just have easily played the Morgan part, and probably made a more memorable movie. Oh well.

Horrorfest 2018: The Mummy's Ghost

1944’s THE MUMMY’S GHOST, directed by Reginald Le Borg, is the 4^th in the MUMMY series and continues the trend of not being a very good sequel. I do think it is a step up from the last one, though, if only because it has a unique setting: a college. They should have called it BIG MUMMY ON CAMPUS.

Chaney returns as the Mummy and is wasted in the role again, this time under the control of his Egyptian master (John Carradine, a better than usual co-star for these flicks). A college student of Egyptian descent (Ramsay Ames) lures the dubious duo with the possibility that she might be the reincarnation of the Mummy’s ancient love, Princess Ananka.

The ending is a little more satisfying this time around, since you have an ancient love triangle at play that leads to a tragic “end” for our Mummy anti-hero and his prize. Now with the two Mummy movies of this Horrorfest and the two covered in previous Horrorfests, every Mummy flick EXCEPT the best one (the original) has been written about here.

I guess one of these years I should do a bunch of movies I’ve already seen.

Horrorfest 2018: The Mummy's Tomb

If there was an opposite to the INVISIBLE MAN series, it’d be the MUMMY series – where Universal tried something new with most of the INVISIBLE MAN movies, the MUMMY movies seem to be one copy after the other, with exception of the first one, which is by far the best.

1942’s THE MUMMY’S TOMB, directed by Harold Young, is the third of the MUMMY movies and a direct sequel to THE MUMMY’S HAND (a victim of a previous Horrorfest). It’s a depressing affair because while THE MUMMY’S HAND was kind of a light hearted and fun adventure centering around the likable pair of heroes played by John Hubbard and Wallace Ford, this one is a grim affair that picks up 30 years later, featuring Hubbard and Ford now as old men, who each end up murdered.

Although it’s the 3^rd MUMMY movie, it’s the first appearance of Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Mummy, and as mentioned in another review, he’s wasted here. Anyone could play the Mummy. Karloff got a good crack at it in the original because in the original the Mummy could talk and was an interesting character. In all of these sequels he’s just a lumbering, murderous zombie. I guess they want the Lon Chaney name on the poster, but it might as well be anyway under the makeup.

In the last MUMMY movie, the MUMMY was seemingly killed by fire, but here he is, alive again. At the end of this one, he’s killed by fire again, but why anyone would think this would actually do the Mummy in when it clearly survived fire the last time is beyond me.

Horrorfest 2018: The Black Cat

I covered an earlier film called THE BLACK CAT for a previous Horrorfest, that one starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. This is the 1941 version, directed by Albert S. Rogell. It has a totally different story and is not a remake – it just happens to share the same name. Both films claim to be based on THE BLACK CAT by Edgar Allan Poe, but it’s hard to imagine how two such different films can be derived from the same source. I’m guessing Universal just liked the title, and the use of the name Poe.

Bela Lugosi’s once again on hand, although this time he does not star and is relegated to a secondy (though creepy) role as the caretaker of the estate where the movie takes place. Basil Rathbone gets top billing but also doesn’t really star so much as support, as the patriarch of the greedy family the plot centers around. Like THE CAT AND THE CANARY before it, this plot revolves around family members fighting over a will.

So, with Lugosi and Rathbone sent to the sidelines, who is the real star of this flick? Oddly enough it turns out to be Broderick Crawford as a realtor invited to appraise the house ahead of the matriarch’s (Cecilia Loftus) death. Along with his sidekick (Hugh Herbet), the duo is basically comedic relief, except Crawford takes up the majority of the screen time and drives the majority of the plot, as the people in the house try to figure out what’s going on when all the cats die and someone turns up murdered.