All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Tyler over at the Portly Politico has a link to some of his content that would be of interest to all those who get into the spirit of Halloween.
“I did a whole series on my YouTube channel during October about various Halloween and/or horror movies, 31 Days of Halloween:
I think you’ll enjoy it!”
And now a return to form. Whereas Charles Laughton can make a “horror” movie into a semi-legitimate film, putting Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi into a movie ensures that the full Universal horror treatment will ensue.
The Black Cat was such a pairing. Bela Lugosi is a German medical doctor who was taken prisoner by the Russians during the First World War and eighteen years later he is looking to take revenge on Karloff who was the German commander who sold his troops out before the battle. Also, while Lugosi was in prison Karloff stole away his wife telling her that Lugosi was dead. Lugosi comes back to the scene of the battle where strangely Karloff has built an art deco palace on the site of the fort that he had commanded. Later on, we learn that the whole hill is still booby-trapped with dynamite. Well, you never know when that might come in handy.
There is a young American couple honeymooning in this Hungarian locale (sure why not) and Lugosi befriends them and then because of a motor vehicle accident during a rain storm, Lugosi is forced to bring them both to Karloff’s house where the doctor performs minor medical procedures that require putting her under a powerful sedative that makes her somewhat prescient upon meeting Karloff.
While the Americans sleep that night Lugosi and Karloff have a conference and we find out that Lugosi’s wife died of “pneumonia” years before. Unsurprisingly Karloff decided to have her embalmed and put on display in his basement. Well, sure, who wouldn’t! And if all that isn’t bad enough Karloff tells Lugosi that his young daughter also died. Next, we find out that Karloff is a satanic priest and the next night is the new moon and he will be celebrating a black mass at which he wants to sacrifice the American girl to Satan or something. Lugosi objects and Karloff offers to play a game of chess to see whether she will die. And Lugosi loses. Darn. Meanwhile we discover that Lugosi’s daughter is not dead but is married to Karloff and living in the house they are in. The American girl meets her but somehow Lugosi still hasn’t heard about her.
A lot of goofy stuff happens with Lugosi’s servant pretending to obey Karloff and the American man being trapped in a room that eventually he escapes by just opening the door. And even though the satanic mass is quite crowded Lugosi somehow easily manages to rescue the American girl. And then everyone heads down into the basement for the climax.
So, let’s see. Lugosi stumbles on the dead body of his daughter. Karloff and Lugosi get into a fight that ends when Lugosi’s fatally wounded servant helps him over power and chain up Karloff to a dungeon wall (yes dungeon). Then Lugosi decides to finally revenge the deaths of his wife and daughter on Karloff by skinning him alive. But when the American girl sees this going on she screams and her husband finds their location and mistaking Lugosi’s intention he shoots the doctor. Lugosi calls him a fool but tells the American couple to rush out of the building and get away from the hill because he is about to set off the timer that will trigger the dynamite to blow up the satanists, Karloff and Lugosi. And in the last scene the happy honeymooners continue their railway journey to Budapest.
This movie has so many hokey things going on. Why would Karloff believe that Lugosi’s loyal servant would do his bidding instead of his master? Why would Karloff still have the timer and detonator for the dynamite not only intact but on prominent display in his basement? Why wouldn’t Lugosi have killed Karloff as soon as he saw his wife stuffed and mounted in Karloff’s basement? Are all art deco architects, satanists? Or are all satanists art deco devotees? What did Lugosi’s morbid fear of black cats have to do with anything else in the movie except the title? So many questions.
The strange thing is I enjoyed the movie. Sure, it made no sense. But there was a style and an energy to it that was fun. You sort of knew the American couple would emerge unscathed so really, we were watching the duel between Lugosi and Karloff and we knew that some kind of justice would prevail. And those lousy satanists would get blown up.
In a way, with its modernist architecture juxtaposed against the medieval stonework of the underground fort it was a perfect way for the modern (1930s) world to intrude on the gothic horror that is the stock in trade of the Universal horror movies. Art deco horror. Well done Bela and Boris.
So, I enjoyed my recent first foray into old horror movies with Dracula enough to give it another whirl. Tonight, I was going to try the Mummy but last night TCM had some Lugosi movies on so I picked “The Island of Lost Souls.” This is a 1932 film starring Charles Laughton as Dr Moreau; a scientist who experimented on surgically converting animals into humans. Lugosi has a relatively small part as one of his experiments. He looks like a man-wolf and functions as, “The Sayer of the Law.” This movie is just a renamed version of H.G. Wells’ story, “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”
Okay, the first thing to take into account is that Laughton is a much better actor than your typical horror movie mad scientist. Now granted, this isn’t “Mutiny on the Bounty” so he has to work with what he’s given but Laughton sells it well. The rest of the cast is adequate to the task at hand. And the movie does deliver the climax that a fiendish Frankensteinian scientist will always reap; destruction at the hands of his tortured creations.
The highlights of the movie are of Moreau portraying an omnipotent ruler as he commands the obedience of his many creations. On a hill in the jungle, he rings a gong twice, cracks a bullwhip and shouts down to his assembled subjects repeatedly, “What is the law?” And the Sayer of the Law gives the various answers at each repetition of the question,
“Not to walk on all fours. Are we not men?”
“Not to spill blood. Are we not men?”
“Not to eat meat. Are we not men?”
And this is enough to quiet the beast within each “man” when the night awakens his blood. And if they become especially restless, he reminds them of “The House of Pain.” This is where Moreau rearranged their living flesh to simulate a human form and apparently anesthetic was not part of the program. Just the mention of it triggers howls of fear.
But when Moreau orders one of his creatures to murder an outsider, a man like Moreau, the creatures put together the pieces of the puzzle. Moreau ordered one of them to spill blood, so, “the law is no more!” And a man like Moreau was killed, so Moreau could be killed! And so, dragging Moreau into the House of Pain for some unskilled surgery of their own was now on the agenda!
The subplot where Moreau tried to get an outside human male to fall in love with the “panther woman” who was his most successful attempt at mimicking the human form is somewhat interesting. And the antics of the sailors who show up in a couple of sections of the story provide a slight amount of comedy. But the real story is Moreau playing god to his creations and the inevitable revenge reaction destroying him. H. G. Wells was a good writer so it is no surprise that his story is somewhat fun to watch in its first Hollywood portrayal. I very much enjoyed rewatching Island of Lost Souls. And I assume that Charles Laughton is the main reason. Now, without a doubt he hammed up his portrayal as needed. But his Moreau is a successful portrayal of the mad scientist. Kudos to Mr. Laughton.
I was thinking of watching the Vance/Walz debate. But I just didn’t feel like it. Around ten o’clock I was browsing my X timeline and noticed that several of the people I follow were saying that Vance was doing serious damage to Walz. But I just couldn’t be bothered. I figure by tomorrow if he really did serious damage to Walz there would be all kinds of highlights to watch and if there weren’t I would have saved myself a lot of annoyance. Instead, I decided to celebrate October by watching some Universal Horror. I watched Dracula.
Now. I’ve seen that movie dozens of times. I know it inside and out. But what I did was to try to watch it as if for the first time. I divorced it from the familiarity that renders it just a collection stereotypes and associated memories and tried to look at the images and the dialog to see how they strike me as cinema.
And it’s a funny thing. It occurred to me that an audience that was used to cowboy movies and had only in the last year or so begun watching talking pictures might have been very excited by the visuals and the scenes portrayed. The opening scene of Renfield travelling by horse drawn carriage into the Carpathian Mountains was very atmospheric. The backdrops of the mountains were very well done. And Castle Dracula was equally well done.
Renfield’s interview with Dracula was just the right combination of comedy and menace. I will confess that I never found Bela Lugosi menacing enough to make his Dracula compelling but Van Helsing’s scientific vampire hunter is highly entertaining. When he confronts Dracula with the mirror and later during his conversation with the vampire where he promises to find Dracula’s coffin and drive a stake through his heart, we are witnessing the central tension of the movie. Everyone else is blind to how their neighbor from Transylvania is the nexus for all of the death and inexplicable occurrences. But once Van Helsing shows up with his wolfbane and crucifixes even Renfield starts talking sense.
And that brings me to another aspect of the movie. The humor between Renfield and the psychiatric orderly Martin is hammy and over the top but provides a very enjoyable counterpoint to the wildly unrealistic dramatic story. The working-class manners and behavior of Martin and the rest of the staff contrasts to the more aristocratic manners and speech of the Sewards and their friends. Even the madman Renfield is humanized in his dealings with Martin who affectionately calls Renfield “old fly-eater” and seems genuinely friendly to this vampire-in-training.
The final climax of Van Helsing and Harker storming Carfax Abbey and finishing off Dracula with the promised stake through the heart is a little underwhelming but I think that at the time and at first view Dracula must have been an exciting motion picture that thrilled audiences, especially young women who would have personalized the erotic danger that Dracula was meant to imply for them.
Now of course, for us, after nearly a century of time in which the movie has accreted mostly comical connections to everything from breakfast cereals to Sesame Street characters it’s hard to imagine real fear associated with this film. But looked at as a piece of art it can definitely be enjoyed for what it is. There is still blood left in the movie. And as Bela reminds us, “The blood is the life.”
Update:
War Pig commented:
To the contrary, since I first saw it as a child, Lugosi was the perfect Dracula. While Christopher Lee was more intimidating, Lugosi was the epitome of the Count. Suave, debonaire, charming, intelligent, faultless evening dress which he wore with dignity and aplomb. So smooth and with the east European accent. Yet he was also the very image of evil when he went for the throat.
Mom and my sister sat and watched it with rapt attention. The vampire is, of course, the ultimate Casanova, as well.
Election Day this year is the night of the full moon and I just saw the first wolfsbane flowers in my yard.
Even a man who’s pure of heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
and the moon is full and bright
The damp cool autumnal weather certainly evokes a Halloween mood in my neighborhood. We have our share of jack o’lanterns festooning the house and the grandkids are already imagining their trick or treat loot. But this year even Election Day has an unreal flavor to it. Outlandish candidates like Fetterman and that creepy old ghoul haunting the White House add an Edgar Allan Poe tinge to even the political page.
Now am I claiming that werewolf John Fetterman will be lopsidedly prowling the woods of Pennsylvania in his stretched out hoodie tearing apart innocent Republican voters in his insane lust to become a United States Senator? Well, read the poem and do the math yourself! I’m going to add a little extra garlic to Camera Girl’s sauce this week and hope for the best.
Today I spent a good chunk of the day on fiction writing. And it was very productive and I think successful. But the trade off is no time for web site work. I’m going to have to get much more efficient at splitting my time between the two tasks. Tonight I am employed watching the 1922 and 1979 versions of Nosferatu. The original is a silent film that is without a doubt a puzzling experience for the modern audience. The film quality is terrible, the special effects are non-existent and the acting is highly stylized if I want to put it politely. The 1979 version is titled Nosferatu the Vampyre and was directed by Werner Herzog. I just started it but it looks like it could be okay. I hope to have the review out tonight.
Finally up to snuff. So I’ve been catching up on my chores. Fixing a fence, stowing some gardening equipment, some prep for some larger tasks. But ti’s good to be back in the land of the living. As I was walking by a hill I could hear one lonely cricket still chirping slow and low. I couldn’t help saying to him, “Hang in there brother.”
I look around today at the headlines; economy tanking, inflation running amok, Biden sucks; same old, same old.
But on the home front lots of good stuff going on. Halloween will be a real thing this year. They’ve taken the plastic wrap off the kids and they can go out and beg for grubby candy. We’ve got a grandson’s birthday coming up here and we’ve also wrangled the rights to hosting Thanksgiving for all the grandkids this year. So whatever else Dementia Joe destroys he may be too late to destroy Thanksgiving. And I say that knowing that there may be no turkeys or pumpkin pie because of “supply chain” foul ups. But for whatever reason hope is in the air.
I looked at TCM’s line-up of horror movies for Halloween and they really are pathetic. They’ve ignored almost all the Universal Classic Monster movies and they’ve back-filled with a lot of shlocky 1950’s and 1960’s Vincent Price junk. I could understand if they had decided to go for more modern fare but then they could have had Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, maybe some of the really gruesome stuff from the 1990’s. But apparently they’ve lost interest. I’m looking around to review at least one good horror movie for Halloween. If anyone has a suggestion that I haven’t already reviewed feel free to leave it in the comments.
I noticed that the poll takers, Reuters and Harris and the rest haven’t tried too hard to boost Biden’s poll numbers over the last couple of weeks. Or if they have it hasn’t helped. He’s been at approximately -10 (40 up, 50 down) for a while. I’m curious to see if it can go much below that. If it got to -20 (30/60) I bet even Dementia Joe’s puppet master will consider trying to repair some of the damage done to the economy by shutting off the petroleum supplies. But then again they are true believers. Maybe nothing will stop them from trying to destroy the US economy and us.
I’m going back into some older pictures for my Photo of the Day. It’s stuff I took with my Sony A-850 DSLR. Some of it is more than ten years ago. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the great quality of a lot of the files. And it’s been a nostalgic experience seeing some of the people and places that were around back then.
Well, that’s enough rambling for now. More organized posting to follow.
“Dead of Night” is a 1945 British film that consists of a group of characters thrown together in a home and each tells a supernatural story. Then these characters turn out to be the subject of another character’s dream. And finally, the whole story turns out to be part of an endless recursive dream nightmare, a dream within a dream, within a dream like the images produced by two mirrors facing each other. The only actor I recognized was Mervyn Johns who played Bob Cratchit in the 1951 movie Scrooge.
The stories include a young girl meeting the ghost of a boy who was murdered a century ago in the old house where the girl is visiting. Another story involves a race car driver who while recovering from a crash has a vision of a hearse driver inviting him into the coffin. Later he sees the same man as a bus conductor inviting him to board the bus. He backs away and as he watches the bus drive off and crashes killing everyone aboard. A third story involves a bedroom mirror possessed by a murderous spirit. The fourth story is a comical golf ghost story. And the final story is about an evil living ventriloquist dummy.
Back in the underlying scene the character who recognizes the other characters from his dream commits a murder and then somehow finds himself inside the five stories we have just witnessed in a mish-mash of the stories until finally he awakes in his own bedroom. His wife consoles him for having another nightmare. He then receives a phone call that sends him to the house where the earlier story takes place. And the whole thing circles round to the introductory scene.
Despite the theatricality of some of the scenes the movie works. Of course, it’s all ridiculous but the atmosphere of the movie is claustrophobic enough to produce the requisite discomfort in the audience that makes a ghost story work. Admittedly the golf story is a bit of a distraction from this mood but there are enough creepy moments and characters to make this movie a success. I’ll have to say that the fact that the cast look like ordinary people and lack the movie star good looks of an American production actually goes a long way to aiding the illusion we are inside the story with them.
Like many British films from the middle of the 20th century the story had to depend on a good script and competent actors instead of expensive sets and special effects to immerse the viewers in the story. And because of that this movie still works as well today as it did back then. And it stands up after repeated viewing. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The British love a good ghost story and this one has several. Dead of Night probably won’t work for those who depend on comic book special effects to tell a supernatural story. But if you have an imagination you may like this one.