30's American Horror Part Five

MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM

(1933)

Dir - Michael Curtiz

Overall: GOOD

 

One of if not the last existing film to be made with Technicolor's ill-fated, two-color process, Mystery of the Wax Museum once again united director Michael Curtiz, actors Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, set designer Anton Grot, and a handful of other cast and crew members who had all participated in the previous year's Doctor X.  As far as the actual "mystery" element of the story is concerned, it is hardly suspenseful as Atwill's Ivan Igor is clearly the mad fiend behind all of the murders that everyone is running around trying to solve.  This would be obvious even to those who have not seen the more famous, Vincent Price horror career-making remake House of Wax twenty years later.  In spite of its lack of dramatic tension though, it still succeeds due to Curtiz' occasionally stylish direction, lack of distracting dramatic music, and clever and quippy dialog which is delivered in an amusing fashion by the unofficial main protagonist in Glenda Farrell's wise-cracking news reporter.  While comparatively low on frights or gruesomeness, all is forgiven in the finale which delivers some close and nasty calls, as well as the inevitable unveiling of Atwill's deformity so that Wray can let out her patented scream.

 

BLACK MOON
(1934)
Dir - Roy William Neill
Overall: GOOD

Helmed by Irish-born Roy William Neill who would go on to direct nearly all of Universal's Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce-stared Sherlock Holmes films, Black Moon is a typical pre-Code semi-horror outing where themes of child murder sit right at home with racial stereotypes that have aged as poorly as one would expect.  Based off of Clements Ripley's short story of the same name, the voodoo premise that pits primitive natives, (who are all black), against the compassionate, Caucasian heroes can easily be seen as a bit eyebrow-raising in a modern climate, but this was hardly the only cinematic offender of such a narrative backdrop with others coming before and after it.  The film does not pack any punches, but Neill takes his time presenting every set piece in a largely low-key fashion, singling out the eyes of some of the characters in expressive lighting and even getting creative with some of the camera movements at times, particularly during a tense sequence where people are being gassed-out of their hiding place.  Fay Wray is also on board yet again, proving that studios were hellbent on making her the premier scream queen for at least that decade.

 

TORTURE SHIP

(1939)

Dir - Victor Halperin

Overall: MEH

Even by Poverty Row standards of the day, Producers Releasing Corporation's Torture Ship is a motionless offering.  Based on Jack London's 1899 short story "A Thousand Deaths", it has what should be a fool-proof premise of a series of on-the-run murderers and criminals being invited passage to a fresh country by a suave doctor on a yacht.  Said doctor of course has ulterior motives and presumes that merely locking up all of the bad guy's fire arms will insure that they cooperate in getting experimented on by vague means.  Throw two "dames", the doctor's Captain nephew, and some sparse crew into the mix and everyone starts to bleed together in their banter about not trusting people, wanting to escape, and trying to gain the upper hand.  No one either on screen or behind it is notable except for character actor Skelton Knaggs who is wasted with the smallest part and the whole story leads to a hokey conclusion where Irving Pichel's grand scheme seems to be in rehabilitating his violent abductees with injections because science.  Humorless, dull, and painfully directed by Victor Halperin, it merely goes through the motions until its anticlimactic finish.