1960s American Horror Part Twenty-Nine

FEAR NO MORE

(1961)

Dir - Bernard Wiesen

Overall: MEH

 

The only feature from television director Bernard Wiesen, Fear No More is an obscure gaslighting thriller that gets lost in its own contrived plot details, but it seems to be having fun while doing so.  An adaptation of Leslie Edgley's 1946 novel of the same name, the story leans into the whole "that lady must be crazy" gag harder than most.  Marla Powers' secretary is sent on an errand, a guy is waiting for her in her train cab, there is a dead body next to him, and then headache-inducing chaos ensues, particularly for Powers.  It turns out that her character did a stint in an insane asylum which provides the ideal opportunity for a number of people to pull a laughably convoluted con on her, all in order for a guy to inherent his now dead wife's fortune.  Wiesen and the lesser-known cast treat the material in a sincere and melodramatic fashion, with most of the suspense stemming from how off the rails the bad guy's scheme keeps getting.  There are so many details to it that can and do go awry that the movie becomes unintentionally funny to a point, but Powers actually points out how ridiculous such a villainous strategy is.  So on that note, maybe such silliness was not accidental.

 

THE LEGEND OF BLOOD MOUNTAIN

(1965)

Dir - Massey Cramer
Overall: WOOF

No.  Just...no.  The movie that was inexplicably hacked into the Big Foot "romp" Blood Beast of Monster Mountain, (The Legend of McCullough's Mountain), ten years later by low-rent producer Donn Davison, this original abomination was vomited forth by director Massey Cramer and screenwriter Bob Corley, and you are correct in having never heard of either of them.  The Legend of Blood Mountain, (Demon Hunter), fails on every level.  It makes the mistake of being a comedy that is as funny as termites sleeping, has an insufferable leading man in George Ellis who looks like Joe Besser crossed with Zero Mostel, the sound disappears completely at irregular intervals, eleven minutes of footage is missing, the rubber suit monster does not show up until nearly the end and looks as bad as you can imagine when it does, and of course this is the type of movie that wastes so much screen time on trivial nonsense as to constitute it as a hate crime.  There is an entire scene where Ellis sits in bed eating while listening to library cued music, followed by a dream sequence that feels nine years long, lots of driving, and unmoving dialog exchanges that will want to make anyone suffering through this want to shove hot pokers into their soul.  At least that would be over with quicker.

NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR
(1969)
Dir - Joy N. Houck Jr.
Overall: MEH

 

For his first crack from behind the lens, actor-turned-director Joy N. Houck made a low-rent Psycho-adjacent bit of exploitation with the sensationally-titled Night of Bloody Horror.  Shot in New Orleans, this was also Gerald McRaney's first movie, who plays the mentally cuckoo and consistently unlikable lead.  Recently let go from an insane asylum, (oh how horror films from this era loved their insane asylums), women seem to be dropping like flies via brutal murder wherever he goes, prompting a police detective to deduce that McRaney must be a "fag" for hating women so much.  Of course the real killer is someone else, and most viewers will put two and two together before the actual reveal, but the film is an inconsistent watch at best.  There are psychedelic flashes whenever McRaney suffers a particularly unstable episode, plus we get a couple of shots of skulls and whatnot, but this is horrendously-paced stuff from beginning to end.  Being inexperienced, Houck Jr. lets the camera linger on redundant scenes that do not go anywhere and coupled with McRaney being a short-tempered asshole to everyone that he meets, there is little to recommend here.

1950s British Horror Part Eight

ALIAS JOHN PRESTON 

(1955)
Dir - David MacDonald
Overall: MEH

Christopher Lee fans may rejoice at this obscure B-feature that he starred in for the American Danzinger brothers; pre-Hammer and in the title role no less.  Alias John Preston is a pedestrian affair from top to bottom, one that was clearly a rushed work and made on the cheap to slap on the bill of a comparatively more memorable A-production.  It runs a mere sixty-six minutes so one could hardly complain that it overstays its welcome, but it also represents an interesting historical footnote for Lee who had delivered few if any performances with this much screen time beforehand.  While his American accept slips regularly, he still proves himself to be an intimidating presence as a mysterious wealthy man who arrives in a small community, charms many of the locals, buys up property, gets himself on the city council, gets engaged to a bank lender's much younger daughter, and shows increasingly evidence that his mental facilities are on the fragile side.  The narrative loses its intrigue once Lee starts explaining his detailed and disturbed dreams to a therapist, at which point it crawls to an inevitable finish that everyone will see coming.  Also, director David MacDonald merely points the camera at his actors in order to get the job done, so there is no sense of style or agency anywhere to be found.

1984

(1956)

Dir - Michael Anderson

Overall: GOOD

The first theatrically released adaptation of George Orwell's famed novel, 1984 took its cue from the BBC production from two years prior.  Tweaking the ending of the source material while adhering to its nightmare-via-oppression tone, these are ideas that would continue to get expressed over virtually every other totalitarian sci-fi work going forward.  Not without its foibles, the relationship between Edmond O'Brien and Jan Sterling is abrupt and feels forced, intentionally to a point considering that the story exists in a world where feelings of love and personal closeness are foreign to everyone.  Still, their romantic bond is further hindered by O'Brien's oafish performance.  Once again though, it makes sense that his perpetually nervous Average Joe would stand out enough to Sterling, even if their chemistry is consistently lacking.  Besides that, director Michael Anderson handles the ever-imposing reach of Big Brother accordingly, providing only fleeting moments away from its all-powerful eye, or so our hapless protagonists are lead to believe.  The inevitable third act is when things kick into higher gear and doubles as the moment where O'Brien finally gets to let loose, all-in-all creating an agreeably paced and chilling cautionary tale of humanity's potential downfall.

 

THE SPANIARD'S CURSE

(1958)

Dir - Ralph Kemplen

Overall: MEH

 

A bog-standard thriller without any oomph, The Spaniard's Curse also stands as the only directorial effort from editor Ralph Kemplen.  Kemplen also co-authored the screenplay along with Kenneth Hyde and Roger Proudlock, which is an adaptation of Edith Pargeter's 1958 novel The Assize Of The Dying.  Things begin promising enough with a likely innocent and ill-stricken man being convicted of murdering a young lady actor, the man going on to curse the lot of people responsible for his condemnation.  Once some curious younger people begin investigating the details, (including the wise-talking news reporter son of the Judge), the film settles into scene after scene of characters walking into rooms to ask other characters questions.  Kemplen has no sense of pacing from behind the lens, though there are one or two suspenseful sequences that finally arrive in the third act which indicate who the culprit has been all along.  The music is curiously inappropriate at times, as if taken from more cheerful melodramas. doing the opposite of creating a tense atmosphere in the process.  Performance wise it is fine, since British thespians were by and large able to adequately deliver even humdrum material such as this in a manner void of scenery chewing.  That said, some pizazz on the actor's parts would have actually helped matters since few things need more assistance than an uninteresting murder mystery.

1940s Foreign Horror Part Four

LE CORBEAU

(1943)

Dir - Henri-Georges Clouzot

Overall: GOOD

 

His final work for the Nazi-run production company Continental Films, Le Corbeau, (The Raven), is renowned director Henri-Georges Clouzot's examination of French society's complex feelings towards the German occupation and the ensuing fear mongering and paranoia that goes along with it.  Set in a nondescript village that is deliberately labeled as "anywhere", poison pen letters become the talk of the town, all of which either directly target or eventually lead to Pierre Fresnay's emotionally detached doctor who engages in an affair or two while also performing maybe abortions on the down-low.  Though we eventually get an answer as to who the culprit is, Clouzot and co-screenwriter Louis Chavance's script is not structured or preoccupied merely with whodunit motifs.  It is a tale about what happens to people who are susceptible to gossip when such scandalous hearsay can push everyone to a point where few can be trusted and all can be suspected.  After the war, the movie garnished Clouzot a temporary ban from his home country due to his compliance with the German-controlled French film company, not to mention the anti-French slant that can be read into the material where compliance breeds turmoil.  Clouzot nevertheless proves himself here as a stylized expert in suspense, sly humor, and symbolism.

 

LA HERENCIA DE LA LLORONA

(1947)

Dir - Mauricio Magdaleno

Overall: WOOF

 

Writer/director Mauricio Magdaleno's Le herencia de la Llorona, (The Heritage of the Crying Woman), is easily one of the weakest takes on the La Llorona legend, but even calling this a "take" on it would be misleading.  Instead, we have a drab melodrama involving family squabbles, with one quasi-supernatural sequence occurring midway through.  Most Mexican genre film from the period were equipped with a comic relief character, and such a role is handled by Agustín Isunza who of course does nothing funny, yet he does come off as a coward in his small handful of scenes.  The film was likely done on a minuscule budget due to it all taking place at a single location, having no special effect shots of any kind, and Magdaleno maintaining a torturous pace that plays out almost entirely in wide shots where everyone either gets all of their uninteresting dialog out of the way or creeps around slowly while the stock music hints at something sinister going on.  No one on screen comes off as annoying, but the story is dull in every last one of its attributes, toiling around a patriarch dying, an asshole inheriting her estate, two people who want to get married and are then not allowed to get married after they were allowed to get married, and some other people trying to help solve a mystery that is fittingly anticlimactic.

 

NIJIOTOKO

(1949)

Dir - Kiyohiko Ushihara

Overall: MEH

 

A Western-styled sci-fi/old dark house hybrid, Nijiotoko, (The Rainbow Man), was the last movie from director Kiyohiko Ushihara who switched careers to become a film teacher for several decades following.  We have rivaling reporters of different sexes, a weird family headed by a mad scientist who studies rainbows because sure why not, an also mad son who is a painter, a mysterious house fire, the police suspecting the wrong person, and of course a guy going around with rainbow powers after an experiment went awry.  Even though there is no supernatural ingredients and it follows a standard murder mystery trajectory, it is all gothic spookiness as far as the atmosphere goes, largely taking place in a big ole house with faulty railings and wailing winds outside.  The pacing is dreadful and the odd elements like a family being cursed by rainbows and not even being allowed to talk about them are played straight, giving the film little intrigue to keep things going during larges sections where either nothing is happening or nothing of interest is happening.  Coming from Japan, it is a unique mix of Poverty Row tropes from across the Pacific, but it should be approached for historical curiosity only.

1940s American Horror Part Eighteen

THE MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET
(1942)
Dir - Joseph H. Lewis
Overall: MEH
 
Director Joseph H. Lewis and screenwriter Al Martin collaborate on another B-unit horror film, this time under the prestigious Universal banner with everyone's favorite mad scientist Lionel Atwill stepping outside of his comfort zone by playing...a mad scientist.  Released as a second feature along with The Wolf Man, the apply titled The Mad Doctor of Market Street struggles with misplaced comic relief and a preposterous plot where your typical megalomaniacal scientist is conducting rejuvenating experiments on unwilling subjects before he is able to briefly dupe some primitive natives into thinking that he is a life-giving god when he and some others are shipwrecked on an island.  Dopey and melodramatic in equal measures, Atwill cranks up the scenery chewing more than usual and meets a grisly, fitting end, but everyone else on screen are either broken English-speaking white people in brown face or cheery white people who do not seem to be taking their predicament seriously.  Neither should the viewer for that matter.

 

CRAZY KNIGHTS

(1944)

Dir - William Beaudine

Overall: MEH

The second pairing of Shemp Howard and Billy Gilbert, Crazy Knights, (Ghost Crazy), is a barely watchable Abbott and Costello knock-off from the ever-busy Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures.  As a pair of shifty carnies, (Shemp is the one in the gorilla suit because you gotta have one of those), they decide to take a vacation and in-turn pick up some hitchhikers who lead them to a haunted house that is of course not really haunted.  While Howard was delightful and more famous for his tenure in The Three Stooges, he basically does the same shtick here except with a comparatively higher IQ at his disposal.  Unfortunately and unlike other comedy duos or tropes, he and his side-kick Gilbert have indistinguishable personalities, both stuttering, stammering, and falling down at the slightest thing that is meant to spook them.  The gags almost exclusively revolve around one of them being slow on the draw as to something unusual happening, cue leaping in the air, widening their eyes, and squealing like children.  This would be fine if any of the gags were funny and/or not so derivative of better comedic players who behave the same way, namely Lou Costello whose mannerisms these guys are clearly channeling.  With such a dopey script to work with, forgettable supporting players, and flat direction from William Beaudine, it just becomes a sixty-three minute waste of potential giggles.

THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR

(1947)

Dir - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Overall: GOOD

A renowned supernatural romance from the also renowned filmmaker Joseph L. Mankiewicz, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir expertly morphs from a lighthearted comedy into a poignant melodrama about the allure of companionship amongst those who passively accept an existence of solitude.  Screenwriter Philip Dunne adapts R.A. Dick's 1945 novel of the same name, (which would later be turned into a sitcom at the turn of the 1970s), but the source material's first cinematic interpretation here tiptoes around the inherent love story as much as it does its melancholy.  Gene Tierney's protagonist is open to fall in love from the onset, at first being uncontrollably drawn to a dead sea captain's house just as she is to the sea captain himself, who miraculously appears to her as a bitter curmudgeon yet is quickly won over by Tierney's relentless charm.  Rex Harrison's gruff demeanor works against Tierney's graceful innocence, until a more tangible love interest dashes her hopes yet leaves her spirit intact for the eventual afterlife.  Mankiewicz spends little time on spooky set pieces and instead lets the story's sensitive themes play out gradually, with Bernard Hermann's perpetual score smoothing things over even further.

1940s American Horror Part Seventeen

THE LIVING GHOST
(1942)
Dir - William Beaudine
Overall: MEH

The fourth of many Monogram Pictures movies from journeyman director William Beaudine, The Living Ghost, (A Walking Nightmare, Lend Me Your Ear), has a whole lotta rapid-fire dialog amongst a whole lotta people, as bodies pile up, a banker turns into a walking "zombie", and a mystery unfolds.  An old dark house whodunit, it has James Dunn playing a wise-cracking ex-detective who fancies himself a regular Sherlock Holmes.  As usual, Beaudine's direction is pedestrian at best, plus the ultra-cheap production affords no visual flash, simply playing out like a stage play where everyone is in wide to medium shots while talking, and talking they do.  Worse yet, the screenplay by Joseph Hoffman, (based on a story "Money for What" from Howard Dimsdale), pretends to be clever, yet its grasp out-reaches its means.  The film cruises along while nothing interesting is happening, which is a sure-fire recipe to lose any audience member who will have a hellova time keeping up with such convoluted silliness in between all of the involuntary yawning.

 

CRY OF THE WEREWOLF

(1944)

Dir - Henry Levin

Overall: MEH

A sluggish B-movie from Columbia Pictures, Cry of the Werewolf tries and fails to capture some Cat People menace, instead coming off with a whimper instead of a roar, nyuck nyuck.  The correct ingredients are inherent in Griffin Jay and Charles O'Neal's story at least, which follows an exotic Romani princess who turns into a werewolf due to a cursed bloodline before she starts murdering people that have uncovered a tomb with her mysterious tribe's secrets possibly buried inside of it.  The presentation by director Henry Levin even affords one or two bouts of atmosphere, as well as some set pieces that specifically recall the aforementioned RKO film, with shadowy cinematography and a woman's high heels turning into paws as she is stalking one of her victims.  What goes wrong though is everything else, from uninspired performances, flat characters, and a drab pace that does nothing exciting with its cliches.  Also, (as was the case with Universal's equally lousy She-Wolf of London), there are no monster money shots, instead just ladies who are ladies in one shot and then dogs in another.  The power of suggestion can worth, but only within an overall more agreeable presentation than here.

THE SOUL OF A MONSTER

(1944)

Dir - Will Jason
Overall: MEH

Some quasi-horror/noir from Columbia Pictures, The Soul of a Monster takes on the theme of what happens to a man who so unknowingly has his soul sacrificed in order to cheat death.  Edward Dein had and would continue to work on screenplays within the genre, but his work here is too pretentious to justify the humdrum plotting.  When on his deathbed, George Macready's frustrated wife Jeanne Bates reaches out to "other" supernatural forces to save her husband, which brings in the mysterious Rose Hobart who somehow manages to revitalize him as a humorless husk of what he once was yet is now hypnotically inclined to do her bidding.  Unfortunately, little happens in the way of action, pluw there is no mystery for the audience to uncover, leaving the burden of the story for the flat characters to figure out.  This creates a dull watch that ends with a cop-out and everyone seemingly learning their lesson not to cheat fate, no matter how cruel.  Burnett Guffey's cinematography is better than the film deserves, but veteran director Will Jason shows little enthusiasm for the weak material, and the less than recognizable cast seem to be merely going through the motions.

1930s American Horror Part Eleven

THE BAT WHISPERS
(1930)
Dir - Ronald West
Overall: MEH

The second film adaptation of Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood's 1920 play The Bat, (both of which were directed by Ronald West), The Bat Whispers is notable for its flashy visual style which elevates an otherwise convoluted old dark house mystery.  West utilized two different cinematographers for two different film stocks, (35 and 65 mm, respectively), and shot it in widescreen, plus a smaller and more agile camera was brought in to create flowing panning sequences that glide through elaborate miniatures and full-sized sets.  We also have flashy cut scenes, close-ups, zooms, and inventive camera angles throughout, making this a striking early talkie and probably the best cinematic version of the source material.  Sadly, that source material is hokey pulp for the most part, which is burdened by too many characters and unsuccessful comic relief. Maude Eburne is particularly intolerable as a frumpy maid who outrageously over-reacts to the slightest breeze, plus the addition of Charles Dow Clark's second detective is pointless and only provides the movie with yet another character to to indulge in goofy mugging.  Streamline the narrative and remove the more annoying portrayals, and this would be a stand-out for its era.

 

DRUMS O' VOODOO

(1934)
Dir - Arthur Hoerl
Overall: WOOF

While it is fortunate that various race films from the 1930s still exist in some form, many were of a uniformly poor quality, and Drums O' Voodoo, (Louisiana, She Devil), is no exception.  Little information exists on the movie, which was allegedly adapted from actor J. Augustus Smith's own play, Smith credited with the script as well as appearing here as a benevolent yet disgraced preacher who once worked on a chain gang before turning steadfast to the lord.  Director Arthur Hoerl had a vast career as a  screenwriter, (this marking his last of only four directorial efforts), but his work here is unwatchabley dull. There is a clear lack of funds at his disposal since the entire thing is staged as a theater production, with minimal sets and scenes going on for ages without the camera making any adjustments.  Most of the performances are atrocious and borderline surreal in their melodramatic scenery chewing, (Laura Bowman as a wailing voodoo practitioner auntie is particularly irksome), but the movie's major misgiving is its unbearable pacing.  It is also incomplete in its current form, with scenes abruptly ending and starting in mid sentence.  Also despite its title and subject matter, the only horror element is a pimp spontaneously going blind when he causes too much trouble amongst his community, no doubt on account of a voodoo hex.

 

AIR HAWKS

(1935)

Dir - Albert S. Rogell

Overall: MEH

Featuring the only film appearance of famed pilot Wiley Post, Air Hawks is a unique aviation themed B-movie with a sci-fi angle thrown in.  A Columbia production that was based on an unpublished story by Ben Pivar, it features an easy-to-follow sabotage plot where Ralph Bellamy's independent airline becomes the target of a bigger corporation that wants to buy him out to no avail.  Enter in Universal's go-to distinguished thespian Edward Van Sloan as a wacky German scientist who invents a destruction ray for some reason, a ray which is then used to thwart Bellamy's business by way of crashing a series of his planes.  Director Albert S. Rogell had already done a few air travel movies and he keeps up a surprisingly agreeable pace for a film that is as talky as the lot of them.  Post is granted less than two minutes of screen time, so his involvement comes off more as a half-assed marketing ploy than anything.  It contains a fine performance by Bellamy, a happy conclusion for all things considered, charming flirtation amongst its male and female characters, a stock news reporter who annoys everyone by trying to get a scoop, and it is also ultimately forgettable.

American Silent Horror Part Five - (D.W. Griffith Edition)

THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE

(1914)

Overall: MEH

Immediately proceeding the landmark, one-two punch of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance was his loose adaptation/hybrid of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart and "Annabel Lee".  The Avenging Conscience, (Thou Shalt Not Kill), spends a scant couple of minutes indulging itself in macabre and nightmarish visuals, most of which come near the finish line.  It qualifies as a horror film in a lax context, but despite Griffith's noticeable ability to stage a few moments of tightly-wound tension here or there, it is mostly a bore.  Two lovers are initially thwarted to marry each other by the one's domineering uncle, (as was the style at the time), and for the most part, it is just a back and forth melodrama with people being in love and then being sad and being in love.  We have some intertitles of Poe's writings thrown in, and the structure just repeats itself until some ghosts and ghouls finally show up.  Though Griffith's eye was sharp and he was at the cusp of his creative peak at this point in his career, his powers are just utilized in a less compelling fashion than would be preferable.

 

ONE EXCITING NIGHT
(1922)
Overall: MEH

One of if not the first surviving old dark house movie, One Exciting Night is D.W. Griffith's entry into the sub-genre, and it bare several of the filmmaker's hallmarks for both better and worse.  Griffith concocted the story himself, which closely adheres to the framework that was laid out in the stage plays The Bat and The Cat and the Canary, (both of which would get cinematic treatments around the same time), pitting his mystery around a family fortune that is hidden in a mansion where a masked killer is also roaming around.  Being a Griffith movie, it is both laborious in length and prominently features white actors in black face playing unflattering African American stereotypes.  We even get derogatory words and jive speak in the intertitles, just to make this age as poorly as any of Griffith's other works in his filmography from such an unfortunately racist perspective.  Elsewhere, it is impressive in its fleshed-out narrative which while not the most engaging out there, at least spends more time than is necessary in emphasizing its barrage of characters who are more than just red herring fodder.  It is also quickly edited, light in tone, and features fun things like a full-blown hurricane in its finale and elongated fingers casting their shadow on a house miniature in a few shots.

 

THE SORROWS OF SATAN

(1926)

Overall: MEH

D.W. Griffith's first film for Paramount Pictures, The Sorrows of Satan is an adaptation of Marie Corelli's 1895 novel of the same name, which had already been brought to the screen two times before.  This also features the final screen performance from Griffith regular Carol Dempster who retired the same year and portrays the distraught love interest of Ricardo Cortez, a man who willfully sells his soul for money, power, and a taste of the good life.  While Dempster is appropriately melodramatic when such things are called for, Cortez turns in a more wooden performance until the end, reacting as if his miraculous good fortune is about as exciting as rearranging his sock drawer.  Speaking of which, Griffith was allegedly uninspired by the project as well, and his lack of enthusiasm shows since most of the film is flatly staged and cinematically sterile, save for an atmospheric finale and an impressive opening shot where Lucifer is banished from heaven by a swarm of angels and turned into his bat-winged form.  Still, as far as silent era Faustian movies go, this one is too routinely bland to recommend, but at least Bauhaus got a memorable single cover out of it.