Here's a nice package of four older films with Boris Karloff and Bella Lugosi. It's from Universal and there are two discs, each with 2 movies, and it's under 10 bucks on Amazon. Well, worth having in any good horror collection.
The Black Cat is a 1934 horror film and it's the best movie in the set. It's one of my favorite horror movies. You can't get much better characters than Hjalmar Poelzig and Dr Vitus Werdegast.
It's directed by Edgar G Ulmar, Peter Ruric wrote the screenplay, the two of them wrote the story and Tom Kilpatrick is an uncredited writer.
The Raven is a 1935 film with Bella as a surgeon who's a big Edgar Allan Poe fanatic, especially the parts where Poe talks about torture. Bella's got a torture dungeon in his basement. A judge asks him to come out of retirement and operate on his daughter. Bella eventually agrees and operates. Bella falls for the young woman but the judge objects since she's already engaged to a young man. Crazy sets in, Bella straps the judge to a pendulum and puts the young woman and her fiance into a room with walls that move to crush them. Entertaining but not anywhere near as stylish as The Black Cat.
David Boehm is the screenwriter and Lew Landers is the director, using the name Louis Friedlander.
The Invisible Ray is from 1936 and this time we find Boris playing a scientist who's discovered Radium X. It's powerful and deadly, soon he's completely poisoned by the stuff. Boris starts to get all paranoid on us, thinking that other scientists are after his formulas. He slips over into mad scientist territory, starts killing, and enjoys it. Bella is one of the scientists that Boris is after.
It's directed by Lambert Hillyer, the screenplay is by John Colton, with Howard Higgin and Douglas Hodges writing the story.
Black Friday is from 1940 and Boris is a surgeon who transfers part of a gangsters brain into an injured professor's body. The professor wakes up and starts to recover. Soon after the gangster starts to take over the professor's body. That can't be good, huh. Bella turns up as a local gangster boss. He tangles with the gangster. It's OK but the least interesting of the lot. Still, I'd watch it again sometime.
It's directed by Arthur Lubin and Curt Siodmak and Eric Taylor wrote the screenplay.
I have all four of these on dvd. I haven't watched my dvd's yet but I may have seen some or all of these in the past. I will watch them sometime in the future before I die, preferably.
Posted by: Gary Mattingly | December 02, 2018 at 10:13 PM
It's a race to the grave, what books and DVDs will I have unread or unwatched?
Posted by: Garth | December 05, 2018 at 08:22 PM