PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 915

The Devil Rides Out 1968 Based on the 1934 Dennis Wheatley novel of the same name, screenplay by Richard Matheson, directed by Terence Fisher. A movie so memorable that none of us could remember seeing it at movie night in December 2009. Below is the post I made then.

Our second feature is the 1968 Hammer film The Devil Rides Out. It's based on a 1934 Dennis Wheatley novel. Christopher Lee plays the Duc de Richleau. He's an expert on the occult who's trying to save his friend Simon from the hands of a devil worshiping coven. He's got the help of his pal Rex. Good boy. They need to get Simon away from the cult before he's initiated and his soul is lost forever. Charles Gray is the leader of the cult. You might remember him as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, or as the narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "It's just a jump to the left." Gray is a formidable opponent, he's got the devil for a master. The devil does make an appearance in the movie but he's easily dispelled by tossing a crucifix at him. What a pussy. There's a lot of running around and the old cars are nice. It's set in the sort of 30's you get when you have a small budget. People still seem to like it. It gets an amazing 7.2 on the IMDb and Christopher Lee said it was his favorite film. Perhaps because it was one of the few that feature him as the hero. More were planned but the first wasn't too good a draw at the box office and they were never made. I thought it was OK but a tad boring at times. I don't see what others are crazy about in these films  but I've never been a staunch Hammer supporter. They made cheesy low-budget horror films and some are more interesting than others. Not sad I saw it but it's another that I don't need to run out and buy.   

Back to the present. I think pretty much the same now as I did then. Vincent is only barely the hero, he's mostly a failure at communication and planning. Charles Gray is more to blame for his own destruction by calling the Angel of Death.

Turns out years after seeing the movie I did wind up buying the DVD. It was packed with 20 other Hammer films in a box set that I bought in 2018 when I was trying to gather in as many Hammer films as I could before they disappeared on disc. I have a good number of them and a lot of them are much more entertaining than The Devil Rides Out.

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde 1931 Based on the 1886 novella by Robert Louis Stevenson  The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, screenplay by Samuel Hoffenstein and Percy Heath, directed by Rouben Mamoulian. We watched the nicely restored version on Blu-ray.

Fredric March play Dr Jekyll, he won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the performance, he tied with Wallace Berry who won for his role in The Champ.

Jekyll is laughed at for his thoughts on splitting the evil and good sides of a man's personality. He develops a potion and it turns him into Mr Hyde. Soon Mr Hyde controls his life with Jekyll looking forward to his life in the gutter's of London. He forsakes his fiance and takes up with a singer in a tavern. He keeps her in a flat and treats her rough with whipping and beatings. Jekyll's life falls apart and he's finally killed by the police.

It's fairly good but I watched the Dan Curtis TV film from 1968 and that was a much more interesting adaption of the story.

Tower Of London 1939

Tower Of London 1939 Screenplay by Robert N Lee, produced and directed by Rowland V Lee. This is the first of four films that make up the Universal Horror Collection Volume 3. Three of films in this set appeared in an earlier DVD set called Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive. It had 5 films on 2 discs: The Black Cat, Man Made Monster, Horror Island, Night Monster and Captive Wild Woman. The Tower Of London Blu-ray has a commentary by Steve Haberman, he spends a lot of time talking about Basil Rathbone and not the movie. There's a still gallery. I like that this set has four commentaries but there are little else listed on the box other than still galleries. One of the films has a trailer.

An entertaining biopic about the horrible life of King Richard III. It's not very accurate and skips through time compressing events. Basil Rathbone plays Richard, Duke of Gloucester and he's a right bastard. He'll kill anyone who gets in his way while he's heading for the throne, including those little princes in the tower. Boris Karloff plays the head torturer in the King's dungeon. Vincent Price plays the Duke of Clarence. He'll get in Richard's way and die for it.

It's got nice production values and there's some good battle scenes. It's the longest movie in the set, 92 mins and they spent some money on the movie. I hadn't seen it for a number of years and had forgotten most of what went on. I enjoyed it all over again. I got a good feeling in my heart when Richard got his comeuppance. Who doesn't like that?

In the real battle of Bosworth Field Richard was trashed pretty well, blows to his helmet so hard they smashed his skull. One of the many useless Kings of England.

Murders In The Zoo 1933

Murders In The Zoo 1933 Screenplay by Philip Wylie and Seton I Miller, directed by A Edward Sutherland. The first of four movies in the Shout Factory Blur-ray set Universal Horror Collection Volume 2. They've started skimping on the extras already, the first set has 6 commentaries and 4 featurettes with other shorts and radio productions, trailers and still galleries. This set has two audio commentaries, a Lionel Atwill documentary and a still gallery for each film.

I'd seen Murders In The Zoo a couple of times and it still holds up well. Lionel Atwill is a jealous zoologist with a violent streak. As we first meet him he's in the African jungle sewing a man's mouth closed for kissing his wife. He lets the man go with his hands tied behind his back and that poor sap gets eaten by a tiger. Lionel's not bothered, he even pretends surprise when he hears the news. On the ship back to the US his wife takes up with another man and plans to leave Lionel. He finds out about the situation and after delivering the animals to a zoo sets his plot to kill his wife's new lover in motion. It's a good reminder not to marry some people.

The zoo is having financial trouble, they hold a fund raiser but that's ruined by the death of the wife's lover. He was supposedly killed by a mamba snake but Lionel's wife finds a fake snake head with venom dripping fangs in his desk. Lionel learns she's got the snake head, he follows her to the zoo, they get into a big fight and he tosses her into the alligator pond. Randolph Scott plays a zoo doctor, he's Lionel's next victim. Lucky for him his assistant has an antidote handy. The zoo guards chase Lionel through the zoo, when he hides in the boa constrictor cage he's crushed to death.

I found the darn thing riveting for the most part. It's moody and good looking. There's a great villain, that Lionel is a real bastard, I sure was cheering on the snake. I hope he wouldn't get killed by the authorities, he was doing everyone a big favor.The cast was good, besides Randolph we've got Charlie Ruggles as the comic relief, Gail Patrick as the assistant, John Lodge as the lover, Kathleen Burke as the wife and Harry Beresford as Professor Evans.

Gregory William Mank does the commentary for the film. The film's only 63 mins long but he manages to pass along a good bit of info. The film was made by Paramount, it was part of a package of films sold for TV distribution to Universal in 1959.

The Raven 1935

The Raven 1935 Screenplay by David Boehm and directed by Lew Landers. Another one I've seen 3 or 4 times already. It's the second of four films in the first volume of the Shout Factory Blu-ray series Universal Horror Collection. Despite David Boehm's name on the film as writer there were several tries at the screenplay. Both David and Lew had decent careers but nothing really stands out on their IMDb pages.

Boris and Bela are reunited for this loose adaptation of Poe. Bela plays Dr Vollin, a surgeon who's obsessed with Poe and torture. He's a sadist with a giant basement and that basement has a tall ceiling. He needs that space for his fancy pendulum set up. I could probably get my whole house in there. According to the commentaries the set was re-used from The Bride Of Frankenstein.

Bela helps a young woman surgically and falls for her but she's only interested in her fiance. Bela is mad at her rejection and wants some revenge. Boris is a hunted murderous criminal, he wants Bela to make his face more presentable, thinking that if he looked nice and people didn't fear him, he might turn into a nicer person.

Bela takes advantage and screws up Boris's face even more. He'll fix the damage if Boris helps kills the father of the young woman. The father is actively discouraging Bela's romantic leanings. Boris helps reluctantly, while posing as a servant the young woman is nice to Boris, when push comes to shove he saves her and her fiance from a shrinking room. Bela shoots Boris but before he dies he tosses Bela into the shrinking room and sets it to squish. The couple escape the house.

It's rather lurid, especially for the time, and it got banned in China, The Netherlands, Ontario and British Columbia. In the UK it triggered an announcement from the British Board Of Film Censors that said it would be the last horror passed by the board.

Not the best of Bela and Boris but still quite entertaining. It packs a good bit into it's short 61 min runtime. Bela gets the lion share of screen time, Boris doesn't show up until a good third of the film has passed. Despite Boris being a murderous robber he gets some sympathy from the audience because Bela is such a horrible monster. It's not as good as The Black Cat but I still find I'm enjoying it on re-watching.

Extras:

Audio Commentary With Author/Film Historian Gary D. Rhodes. Good commentary with plenty of background material.

Audio Commentary With Author/Film Historian Steve Haberman. Another good commentary with plenty of background info.

A Good Game: Karloff And Lugosi At Universal Part Two: The Raven. Quite short and less interesting than the featurette on The Black Cat.

Bela Lugosi Reads “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Short radio play, kind of interesting.

Still Gallery - didn't even bother to look at it.

The Black Cat 1934

The Black Cat 1934 Based on The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, screenplay by Peter Ruric, directed by Edgar G Ulmer. A movie I've seen several times. It remains entertaining after several views.

The Black Cat is the first film in the first Universal Horror Collection. Each set holds 4 films, all 4 films star Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. They appeared together in 8 films total, two more for Universal. You can also get all four of the films in this Blu-ray set in a 4 film DVD set at a much lower price. All are worth having for the classic horror film fan.

The Black Cat is a stylish horror film about a Satan worshiping architect who sacrifices young women to his god. He hangs their embalmed dead bodies in glass cases in his basement. Bela's wife is one of the poor victims. Bela is going to see Boris when the bus he's on crashes, a young woman on her honeymoon is knocked out, Bela, the husband and Boris's servant bring her to Boris's house.

That poor young woman wakes up to find herself in the middle of a nightmare of depravity and death. She would become the newest sacrifice to Satan but for Bela's help. The newlyweds are about the only ones who get out alive. It's dark, bleak and highly entertaining. The public thought so too, the film was the biggest hit for the studio that year, returning $236K on a $96K budget.

The movie looks and sounds good at 1080p and the disc is packed with some nice extras. Gregory William Mank and Steve Haberman each have their own commentaries, both were entertaining with info about the production, the stars and the people behind the scenes. I was interested in their comments on the film and the changes that happened after the film was screened for the studio. There were several days of reshoots to make Lugosi's character more sympathetic to the audience and reduce the violence. Still the film was banned in places.

Their comments on Edgar G Ulmer make me dislike the guy. The Trivia page has the incidents mentioned by Mank and Haberman in a more condensed form.

While working on this film, director Edgar G. Ulmer began an affair with Shirley Castle, who would eventually become his wife, known as Shirley Ulmer. At the time, however, Castle was married to Max Alexander, a producer at Universal Pictures and a nephew of powerful Universal chief Carl Laemmle, who did not look kindly on "outsiders" upsetting his family. Castle left her husband for Ulmer, and the ensuing scandal resulted in Ulmer being blackballed from all of the major Hollywood studios for the rest of his career. After a short period of directing micro-budgeted independent films, Ulmer went to work for the low-budget studio Producers Releasing Corp. (PRC), where he stayed for most of the rest of his career.

Harry Cording saved the life of Lucille Lund when he got her off the slab table, after he found her bleeding from the mouth. According to Lund, Edgar G. Ulmer was a sadist, who retaliated against her when she turned him down when he asked her to be his girlfriend. He also left her hanging in the glass case by her special canvas panties equipped with wires, when they all went to lunch. She estimated she had been left there for an hour. It is unclear why no one else in the cast or crew helped her, or even noticed her absence. 

Nothing surprising here, old Hollywood is filled with plenty of woe behind the scenes. Ulmer made a few good films despite the small budgets, his 1949 film Detour is an entertaining and important noir film. Too bad the man behind it is such a creep.

Other extras:

Dreams Within A Dream: The Classic Cinema Of Edgar Allan Poe – Narrated By Doug Bradley. A decent look at Poe in cinema.

A Good Game: Karloff And Lugosi At Universal Part One: The Black Cat. More entertaining and informative interviews and commentary about the film.

Vintage Footage – The Black Cat Contest. There was a contest to find the best black cat, over 200 turned up at a park to have their cat picked. It's kind of interesting but too short and without any sound.

Still Gallery. Typical jumble of pictures set to auto play. I don't need these sort of extras.

The Dark Eyes Of London 1936

The Dark Eyes Of London 1939 Based on The Dark Eyes Of London by Edgar Wallace, screenplay John Argyle, Patrick Kirwan and Walter Summers with additional dialogue by Jan Van Lusil, directed by Walter Summers. Released in the US in 1940 under the title of The Human Monster.

Bela Lugosi plays Dr Orloff, head of an insurance agency, he also lends money to clients on their policies. Turns out Dr Orloff isn't that to be a nice a guy, he's been murdering some of his client's and pocketing the insurance payout. He used a hulking deaf guy to murder people.

One client didn't tell the Dr about his daughter, she's on her way to visit her father. Greta Gynt plays the daughter and Wilfred Walter plays the deaf hulk. Lucky for Greta an inspector from Scotland Yard, played by Hugh Williams, is looking into the murder of some of the Doctor's victims. There's plenty of activity and some gruesome bits too. A good script with a bit of humor and a good cast to carry it out. Worth a gander for the Bela fan and those that like a crime story. You can take a look at a copy on YouTube in the link above.

 

The 9th Guest 1934

The 9th Guest 1934 It started as a 1930 mystery novel called The Invisible Host by Bruce Manning and Gwen Bristow, Owen Davis adapted that into a play called The Ninth Guest in 1930, Garnett Weston adapted that lot for the film and Roy William Neill directed.

Eight people get invited to a party in a big fancy penthouse apartment. Most of them know each other and they aren't the best of pals. At first they think that one of them invited the lot but soon a mysterious voice comes over the PA system. They're all the voice's enemies, soon they're going to die. There's no way out, the doors are locked and electrified.

The murderer says someone is going to die every 15 minutes and he's a man of his word. He invites them to outwit death and escape. Some doe. You can find out by watching the film in the link above. I enjoyed it, it's a bit better than average, but it managed to keep my interest and it's short. A lot of people gave it a 7 on the IMDb but I only gave it a 6. Those two rankings are over 55% of the votes. It's got 453 of them, not too bad for an old movie. You can get a DVD for 6 bucks on Amazon. It's from Reel Vault, part of Oldies dot com. They have a lot of odd stuff including a lot of public domain titles.

The Ghost Walks 1934

The Ghost Walks 1934 Screenplay by Charles Belden, directed by Frank R Strayer. Belden would go onto write 4 of the Charlie Chan series, Mr Moto's Gamble, Dracula's Daughter and a bunch of films I haven't seen. Frank started in the silent film era and his 27 year careen ended in 1952. He directed a few films I've seen, Murder At Midnight, The Monster Walks, Gorilla Ship and The Vampire Bat. He also directed a dozen of the Blondie and Dagwood films. I have a set with a bunch of them that I haven't watched yet.

It's dark, the rain is fierce, the roads slick. A playwright is driving a producer and his secretary when they skid into a fallen tree blocking the road. He suggests they go to a local house to get out of the rain. The playwright turns out to know the man of the house and they are admitted. Once inside strange things begin to happen and a woman is murdered.

The playwright confesses it was a put up job, he's hired his actor pals to act out the play he wrote, but the producer doesn't believe him, at first. Enter a guard from a sanitarium who's looking for an escaped madman. Now everyone is jumpy.

It's a nice take on the old dark house story but as a comedy. There's a fair number of OK jokes, fun characters, and plenty of secret passages, yelling and larking about. I got a kick out of it and would watch it again someday. You can see if you like it by clicking the link in the title above.

The Phantom Fiend 1935

The Phantom Fiend 1932 The film was titled The Lodger in the UK and it was based on the 1913 novel of the same name by Mrs Belloc Lowndes. She'd written a short story called The Lodger in 1911 which was based on Jack The Ripper and the Lambeth Poisoner. The novel was adapted for the screen by H Fowler Mear, the scenario is by Miles Mander and Paul Rotha with an uncredited Ivor Novello. It was directed by Maurice Elvey. It appeared on US screens in 1935 cut down from 85 mins to 62 mins.

Alfred Hitchcock directed a silent version of the film, it was released in 1926 in the UK as The Lodger: A Story Of The London Fog and 1927 in the US under the title of The Case Of Jonathan Drew. Ivor Novello appeared in that version and this one. There were versions of the book adapted to feature films in 1944, 1953 and 2009. In 1967 Armchair Mystery Theater adapted the novel for an episode. In 1967 there was a German version for TV called Der Mieter. There were 6 radio versions and an opera in 1960.

That's Ivor Novello with Elizabeth Allan and some dead guy. Elizabeth lives with her mother and father, they're having a bit of time with cash flow and decide to take a lodger. Ivor shows up and rents the room. The family is happy to have the rent money. They are worried about the murders, especially when Elizabeth's boyfriend, an annoying reporter, comes to call. He can't shut up, not that guy.

Elizabeth becomes enamored with the new lodger, he plays piano and violin but is a bit moody. The murders continue and mom is a bit suspicious of her tenant's activities and mood. Elizabeth doesn't believe he's the killer but it sure looks like she's wrong.

I had seen the movie some years ago and had forgotten most of it. It's about average and I enjoyed it all over again, you can check it out in the link in the title above. Sadly, the film is in rough shape and a bit noisy.

Friday Night Movies 807

Death Force 1978 Story by Cirio H Santiago and Robert E Waters, screenplay by Howard R Cohen, direction by Cirio H Santiago. Also know as Vengeance Is Mine.

James Iglehart is a Vietnam vet who turns crook, he's part of a three man gang that does a big deal with a crook in the Philippines. The three men cruise off in their boat. Little does James know that his pals are planning his murder for his cut of the $50K payout they just got. James is stabbed, his throat is cut and he's tossed overboard. He's not dead when his body washes up on an island where two old Japanese soldiers have been living since WW2. They save his life and he trains in the way of the samurai. He gets lessons in fighting with a katana. Eventually he's rescued and he returns to LA to get him some vengeance.

There's plenty of mixed quality action. Lots of men get stabbed and slashed when James attacks the gang that his two old partners have set up. They've been running roughshod over the local crooks and taking over their biz, the police can't seem to get anything on them. One cop helps James track down the pair.

It's about average for a Santiago movie, it's lacking much by way of production values, and stunt talent. At 110 minutes it's way too long, they could easily have trimmed a whole lot out of it. I might not bother watching it again. You can see it on YouTube at the link in the title. You might get a laugh.

The Monster Walks 1932 Screenplay by Robert Ellis and direction by Frank R Strayer.

A rich guy dies, he leaves all his money and a big old house to his daughter. He provides a place in the house for his invalid brother and a poor stipend for his house keeper. If the daughter dies all the money and house to the brother. Soon as the will is read the plotting begins. The daughter has help from her fiance but there are serious attempts on her life.

It's pretty standard old dark house stuff, the unusual story element is the big old ape locked up in the basement. The creature has it in for the daughter but he's securely chained in his cage. A hairy hand comes out of the wall behind the daughter's bed and tries to strange her. Luckily she woke up as it was groping for her. The house is said to have secret passages running through it but the invalid brother insists that they've all been sealed up.

It's touch and go for the daughter. There's plenty of running about and noise. The cast includes Misha Auer as the housekeeper's son. He turns out to be the brother's son as well. It's all been a secret and Misha feels he was cheated out of some inheritance.

One of my favorite character actors, Willie Best, plays the scared chauffeur Exodus, he's billed in the credits as Sleep n' Eat. He was credited under that name for 6 movies, he was uncredited for many more than that, he did receive credit for 77 of the 124 films he made. Sadly a drug arrest ended his film career but he continued to work in TV. He died at age 45 in 1962.

All in all I enjoyed it well enough but it's barely average. Still, I'd watch it again. It's only 57 mins and it passes quickly.