THE GREY HOUSE -currently in previews on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre (149 W 45th St, NY NY) is the first Broadway ghost play since VOICES (THE OTHERS) in 1972, if you discount the various versions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
Campbell Scott in the brilliant 2019 A CHRISTMAS CAROL
VOICES, despite superb direction by Gilbert Cates with star turns by Richard Kiley and Julie Harris, played for only one week. I was quite surprised as it was a superior thriller with a gut punch surprise ending. The Richard Lortz play spawned a film adaptation, the near forgotten VOICES (1973, starring David Hemmings & Gayle Hunnicutt).
THE GREY HOUSE , set in the 1970s (though it is never implicitly said)has echoes of VOICES ( couple has car accident and is forced to stay in a foreboding house) ,but also references, whether unconsciously or not, some Clive Barker and DavidCronenberg , as well as the vengeful spirit from RINGU (1998). However, the play has enough original ideas to make it stand out on its own.
I will try and avoid going too much into detail, as the show is in previews, and it will work better if you arrive without having all the surprises given away. One thing I can say is that the play has a lot of intentionally funny moments and one liners that help ease the tension before the next shock .
The cast is top notch. Laurie Metcalf is completely riveting as Raleigh, the leader of the brood who resides in the house. She might have had a sense of déjà vu, as her last Broadway thriller was the stage adaptation of MISERY (2015-16), which also involved a snowstorm and a traveler with a broken leg.
Tatania Maslany as Max is the person who was driving the car when a deer jumped in front of them, causing their accident. Having missed her in the Broadway production of NETWORK (2018), I was incredibly pleased by her ease and naturalism on stage. Her character goes through a series of increasingly disturbing psychological events that make her question her reality. TV viewers may know her best from ORPHAN BLACK (2013-17) and SHE-HULK ATTORNEY AT LAW (2022).
Suffering more physical abuse as well as supernatural is Paul Sparks as Henry. His character is tormented throughout the show, but also gets dragged into flashbacks or memories which may have led to everything that happens in the show. A great physical presence, he won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his work on the HBO series BOARDWALK EMPIRE (2010-2014). He has been nominated several times for Drama Desk & Outer Critics Theatre Awards.
Speaking of physical, Cyndi Coyne is suitably creepy as The Ancient. This is her Broadway debut.
Sophie Anne Caruso (Marlow) is no stranger to the supernatural, having starred as the original Lydia in the original cast of BEETLEJUICE (2019). Here she is a disturbing presence, who seems to accuse and demand honesty, no matter how much it hurts others.
Millicent Simmonds (Bernie), making her Broadway debut, has experienced creepy events prior in her mega hit films A QUIET PLACE (2018) & A QUIET PLACE II (2019), after being lauded for her wonderful performance in Todd Haynes‘ WONDERSTRUCK (2017).
Colby Kipnes (Squirrel) is making her Broadway debut as a character who may be a bit mad, or more attuned to the events going on about her.
Alyssa Emily Marvin (A1656; yes, that is the name) is the 15-year-old who seems the most normal but also may hide some dark stories. Another person in the cast is making their Broadway debut, after years of Regional and Off-Broadway work.
Eamon Patrick O’Connell (merely identified as The Boy, but who might also answer to various other names), is the youngest member of the cast. He appears at times to be the most innocent. After five years of film work, this is his Broadway debut as well.
Scott Pask, the many times Tony nominated (and four-time winner) designed the stage. The home is an out-of-date structure out in the wilderness, wherein the kitchen with a curtained window adjoins the living room area, with stairs going up as well as doors leading to a side room, the front door through which we observe the snowstorm…. and … the basement.
The current Broadway cast of THE GREY HOUSE
Rudy Mance is making his Broadway debut with his costume designs. They seem to be from the 1970s, but the nightgowns worn by the children seem to suggest something from an earlier time. Mance has dealt with clothing involving the supernatural, having done costumes for tv’s AMERICAN HORROR STORY.
Seven-time Tony winner Natasha Katz (currently also represented on Broadway with SWEENEY TODD) creates the mood with lights that vary to the mood of the moment, and often with a bright light issuing from the basement. There are also several blackouts to show that a small bit of time has passed.
Music & Sound designer Tom Gibbons has worked in both the U.K. and the U.S. Here, he delivers the sounds of the storm, the car crash, as well as the various groans & creaks of the old building. He also has composed music that plays from a record play, and when the young women break out in song, I keep thinking we are now getting into WICKER MAN (1973) territory. The soundscape score also consists of frenetic energetic sounds as well as a haunting droning.
Playwright Levi Holloway makes his Broadway debut with this piece, after years in the Chicago Theatre, as well as co-founder of The NeverBird Project, a youth based deaf and hearing theatre company. This play ,THE GREY HOUSE ,was first staged to strong reviews in Chicago in 2019 .
Travis A.Knight ,Sadieh Rifai & Sarah Cartwright in the original Chicago production
Director Joe Mantello seems to be Tony nominated every season, having won for TAKE ME OUT (2003, which was designed by Scott Pask) and ASSASSINS (2004). He is a superb actor’s director, bringing out and featuring each of his performers, plus staging two superb jimp scares in the show.
Director Joe Mantello
The 120-year-old Lyceum Theatre supposedly has several ghosts, so one wonders if they approve of the ghostly goings on.
Opening May 30th for a limited run.
THE GREY HOUSE – Lyceum Theatre 145 W. 45th Street, NY NY
One hundred minutes no intermission Opens May 30th for a limited run.
The idea for this article began when actor JOE ZAZO (DEMON RESURRECTION, Feature Resources, dir WILLIAM HOPKINS,2008) posted a photo on Facebook. The photo was of a small Greenwich village pub that had closed , and an ad of its availability was posted.
The place in question was the Slaughtered Lamb Pub in Greenwich Village.
photo byJOE ZASO
For those who don’t know, the pub at 182 West 4th Street Greenwich Village • New York 100145. was the first of the horror themed restaurants in NYC.
Taking its name from the pub in the classic AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (Universal,1981). It opened in the 1990s, and proved to be quite popular with both locals and tourists.
young Rik Mayall on left before he was one of the YOUNG ONES.
The owner, realizing that he was onto a good thing, sought out and opened the Jekyll & Hyde Pub a few blocks away on 91 Seventh Avenue South. This location had a more horror funhouse themes as well as interactive performers. It even included a Frankenstein creation scene where the creature, in an elaborate electrical display, was brought back to life, only to be destroyed by a wrathful Hyde. The Pub opened in 1991 & closed in June ,2022 .
There was a third larger location Jekyll and Hyde Club on the Avenue of the Americas in Midtown between 57th and 58th street. This branch was four floors tall, and much larger than the original Greenwich Village locations combined. It had a lot more interactive performers as well as audio animatronics. The creation scene was also far more elaborate, with the creature rising 4 stories to receive its electrical jolts, before the (animatronic) monster sat up. Once again ,Hyde destroyed the creature.
There was also an elaborate two story tall Statue of Zeus that spun around and spoke to audiences, as well as a cranky gargoyle sitting upon an elevator that Dr Jekyll would drop in to greet his guests and change before his audiences. There was a goofy duo of skeletons playing an organ while they cracked bad jokes, and skeletons behind bars that would pop out of their coffins and scare/chat with visitors. Of course, creepy paintings were everywhere.
To gain entrance to the club, you went into the front door into a near black room. There, you were greeted by your ghoul guide. Then , the door behind swung shut ,and spikes popped out from the ceiling and descended. The guide told the group that the only way to survive was to scream. When they did, the ceiling rose once more and the inner door allowed guests to enter.
It was quite an elaborate set up, with some run on timers, but most by performers in a small hot fifth floor control room.
Actress Missi Pyle (GALAXY QUEST ,1999,Dreamworks) was a performer there, among the many multi talents who earned a check performing in the joint.
Missi Pyle in GALAXY QUEST
It was visited by many big name celebrities like PAUL NASCHY ,CHEVY CHASE,ANNA NICOLE SMITH, BEBE NEUWIRTH, and ICE- T. Due to the ICE-T connection, one suspects that is why the club was used in an episode of LAW & ORDER:SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT.
One of two vehicles that drove around NYC as driving billboards216 W 44th Street
In March 2012, this branch closed and moved to 216 W 44th Street, near Times Square. This reboot closed in March 2015. The 44th Street location seemed to be better organized and the food seemed much better than what the Avenue of the Americas address had descended to. Historical note: the address was world famous as the home of the American Theatre Wing’s Stage Door Canteen.
Poor maintenance and complaints about food , as well as high rents, made the closing of the Avenue of the Americas local almost inevitable. That the newer location, which was all new ,with better food quality, failed after only two years showed that the theme restaurants had lost their appeal to the majority of people, who had grown tired of the PLANET HOLLYWOODS and the like.
There was another club by the same company called the NIGHT GALLERY *, which tried for a more sophisticated crowd as well as supernatural themes. Located at 117 7th Ave S (west 10th st) NY,10014 , this Greenwich Village club mix which opened January 24,1996 , didn’t last long and soon shuttered.
They have designed some of the nicer and more upscale restaurants in the city, but they seemed to truly get the fun nature of the J&H Clubs , as well as making them functional for service.
Another company tried to cash in with a science fiction themed restaurant called MARS 2112 , but it was owned and operated by a company with no connection to the Eerie chain.
MARS 2112 entrance
MARS 2112 was more laid back , though it lasted from November 1998 to November 2012. Located at Paramount Plaza 1633 Broadway,NY , at 33.000 square feet , it was the largest such themed restaurant when it opened.
MARS 2112 interior
Another competitor not affiliated with the Eerie Entertainment group was TIMES SCARE NYC. Time Scare NYC was unique, in that it had the only year round haunted house located on its second floor , as well The Kill Bar and The Crypt Cafe in other areas. Certain times there would be visiting entertainers and magic acts , as well as the regular performers who greeted and gave the guests a regular scare.`Time Scare NYC opened October, 2011 at 669 8th Ave. New York, NY 10036, in the area known as Hell’s Kitchen, naturally.
Time Scare NYC extTIME SCARE NYC interior
The location had been the former home of the infamous SHOW WORLD CENTER , a 4 story porn emporium, where live sex acts occured as well as meet and greets with some of the biggest names of the adult film industry. It even appeared in the film NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER (MGM, 1980).
I do hope they sterilized the locale after Show World theatre shuttered.
Rudy GuilianI , long before he sweated off hair dye, made it his duty to close adult book shops all over NYC. Show World mostly shuttered , although a smaller section selling adult material sits adjacent to the performance area. The performance space rented itself out for non adult shows like THAT PHYSICS SHOW , DRUNK SHAKESPEARE ,and even some children’s shows(!), before transforming into TIME SCARE NYC.
NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER Show World peep show with James Brolin trying to find his kidnapped daughter
Time Scare NYC passed away on December 6, 2015 , due to declining patronage. It is now the site of pricey hamburgers. *
Eerie Entertainment tried to open clubs across the country ,and for a brief time they were successful, but again ,the saturation of theme eateries, an economic decline, and the events of September 11,2001 affected the whole world.
Odd bit of trivia: John Landis was in NY on September 11,2001 to publicize the DVD release of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON at one of the J&H locations , but of course the event was canceled after the horrific occurances of that infamous day.
The two remaining downtown pub/clubs continued on with its usual drop ins as well as sightseers.
Ownership had gone from Eerie Entertainment to other entities over the years but the pubs kept going.
NYC , it seemed, was now sans spooky eateries. However , like Dracula, you can’t keep a good meal down…. Er ..good theme down.
The hit musical BEETLEJUICE has sprung back to theatrical life on Broadway , but another Tim Burton inspired entity is quietly settled over at 308 E 6th St New York, NY 10003. The name of this establishment is BEETLE HOUSE. https://beetlehousenyc.com/ The small bistro, which seats about 45 , began as a pop up restaurant in April, 2016, but due to it’s popularity, it became permanent as of 2019. A much larger venue seating 500 opened Hollywood California.
The menu seems to be prix fixe at $55 a person, with drinks, appetizers and extras being charged for separately. They offer vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options. There are also interactive props and costumed performers.
Say Hi to Eddie!
The Slaughtered Lamb and The Jekyll & Hyde Pub offspring have been staked serving their last steaks, but like most horror films, there are always spin offs ,sequels, and reboots to come.
-Kevin G Shinnick
*Thank you Jeffrey Whitty for giving me the correct name of NIGHT GALLERY, which I had misremembered as “Twilight Zone”! That correction allowed me to get some better research on the club.
** Big thanks to Teel James Glenn for some of the background on TIMES SCARE NYC.
If you wish to contact with any questions,updates, coorections, suggestions, or if you would like to contribute articles ,reviews ,etc, please contact Kevin at scarletthefilmmag@yahoo.com
Articles , when possible , are also shared uponon FB, Twitter, Tribel, Instagram, Tumblr , WT Social &
THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (Film DetectiveBlu Ray ) Release date : June 22, 2022 Original Theatrical release October 1,1957 from Howco International. B&W. 71 min. 1.85:1 1080p DTS-HD Mater Audio 2.0 Mono Subtitles English, Spanish 1 DISC. Booklet . Region A 2k Blu Ray SRP $29.99
Film Detective continues to bring the best possible prints of 1950s sci fi flicks . This time the company has released one of the better known films of the period , THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (Howco ,1957) .
Howco Productions ( later Howco International Pictures), was a South Carolina film production and distribution company that created low budget features for about 60 Southern based movie theatres and drive ins . They later had a tv distribution company named National Television Films. They proved successful enough that they were able to also purchase and distribute films made by others (CARNIVAL ROCK, by Roger Corman, 1957). They were still in business up until the 1980s , releasing successful films by people like Charles B Pierce like THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK (1972) and it’s sequel BOOGEY CREEK II (1985). The name comes from Joy Newton Houck Sr., Ron Ormond , and J. Francis White (H.O.W. Co.).
In 1957 ,Howco budgeted for a sci- fi co- bill . Screenwriter Ray Buffum was assigned to write both films, THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS and “Monster On The Hill” (released as TEENAGE MONSTER,to cash in on the then current teenage monster craze).
Nathan Juran was brought in to direct on the strength of his work on THE DEADLY MANTIS (Universal,1957) & 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (Columbia,1957). He would direct this film and another cult film, ATTACK OF THE 50’ WOMAN (AA,1958),both of which he said he did strictly for the money . Juran was so disappointed in the result of the two films that he used the pseudonym Nathan HERTZ .
Since his ignoble firing from Universal in 1946 (after 20 years ,creating some of the most iconic effects make up in history), the great Jack Pierce got the occasional “A” picture like JOAN OF ARC (RKO,1948), but the majority of his work was on television and low budget features. Since tv and small budget films need to shoot quickly, it does seem to put the lie to the accusation that the make up genius was too slow in his creations.
For TEENAGE MONSTER , Pierce attached hair and some collodion to actor/stuntman Gil Perkins, who was fifty when he portrayed the title character. For BRAIN…, he created some radiation burn make ups , but his most interesting creation were the hard contacts with metal foil on them. They were incredibly painful, as flakes would come loose into actor John Agar’s eyes. Ever a trooper, Agar endured them as best he could , though you can see his eyes tearing at times . Variations and hopefully improved contacts similar to these were used again by Pierce in CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS (Emerson, 1962) .
Art Department/ prop master Richard M Rubin created or was responsible for the making of the floating brain with eyes and hanging spinal cord . Rubin also worked on TEENAGE MONSTER and ATTACK OF THE 50’ WOMAN , among other films. It seems to have been a light weight prop for maneuvering on wires (visible in a few shots) , with some lighting for the eyes .
Music for the co-bill was by Academy Award nominated (for a 1945 PRC (!)film , WHY GIRLS LEAVE HOME) composer Walter Green. Green used more brass than strings for his scores for both films, making his small orchestra sound louder and grander than it probably was.
Jacques Marquette handled the cinematography for BRAIN, with he and director Juran /Hertz setting up some fairly effective shots with moody lighting. One memorable shot is of John Agar ‘s face behind a water cooler, before revealing his eyes.
Marquette directed TEENAGE … with Taylor Byars handling the camera . TEENAGE must have been enough of the director’s chair, as he returned to cinematography and Nathan Juran/Hertz on ATTACK….
Both films had extremely low budgets estimated $58,000 for BRAIN…, with a thousand less being budgeted for TEENAGE …). I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (AIP) from the same year had an estimated budget of $82,000 .
The plot of BRAIN is that something crashes into the desert , emitting great quantities of radiation .Scientist Steve March (John Agar, FORT APACHE,RKO 1948 ) informs his girlfriend Sally Fallon (Joyce Meadows, THE GIRL IN LOVER’S LANE, Filmgroup,1960) that he & his assistant Dan ( Robert Fuller, EMERGENCY tv series,Universal 1972-8) are going out to explore and hopefully find the source of the energy out in the desert by Mystery Mountain.
Once in the desert, the explorers go into a cave, and encounter the alien Gor (voiced by Dale Tate, one of the film’s associate producers) a criminal who has fled to Earth. The creature resembles a gigantic human brain with eyes embedded into it. Its powerful mind kills Dan and the creature possesses Steve.
Steve returns after being gone for a week ,and visits his fiancé . Steve explains that Dan has gone off to Vegas. Her dog George senses that something is not right with Steve. Steve tries to rape Sally (the brain only wants her for her body?) but the dog quickly jumps in to save her.
Steve returns home, where Gor briefly leaves his body & explains his plan for world conquest ,with the added pleasure of Sally to amuse him.
just don’t make me wear the damn contact lenses!
Sally & her dad (Thomas Browne Henry, 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH) go to Mystery Mountain where they encounter another alien named Vol (also voiced by Dale Tate), He is seeking to recapture Gor . Vol explains that Gor is most vulnerable whenever he exits Steve . Then in its more corporeal form, it has a weakness in what on a human brain would be the fissure of Rolando. To get close to Gor , Vol enters the body of George The Dog where he can observe closely undetected.
What’s the matteeaaaahhhhhh! demon dog!
Steve/Gor start to merge more, best shown by Steve’s unnatural silvery eyes. Giddy with his powers, at one point Steve/Gor blows up a plane mid flight.
Later , at a meeting before Army officials , he blows up a nuclear test site to demonstrate his powers (stock footage). Can Steve/ Gor be stopped ?
This Special Edition from FILM DETECTIVE lets you choice between its original format of 1.85:1 or a widescreen 1.33:1 . Both seem pretty sharp in their 2k 1080p restoration. Too sharp, perhaps, as those pesky wires holding up Gor seem more obvious, making me wonder why Steve didn’t just cut them?
The sound is quite crisp and clear, with no muddying of dialogue, sound effects or the brassy score.
What makes this special edition truly special are the extras. Film Detective goes out of their way to give film nerds like me all the behind the scenes info that they can.
First up is
The Man Before The Brain :Director Nathan Juran. Film historian Justin Humphreys (The Doctor Phibes Companion, Bear Manor,2018) guides us through an informative mini doc on the director’s life and career.
The Man Behind the Brain – continues exploring the career of the director, this time led by filmmaker / film buff C Courtney Joiner (screenwriter of Empire‘s PRISON , 1987). Both are informative .
Not The Same Brain with actress Joyce Meadows, that explores some of the films locales as well as her role in the production.
There is a running commentary by filmmaker Larry Blamire (LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA ,Columbia ,2001) ,documentarian David Schecter, star Joyce Meadows, and TomWeaver, who also wrote the illustrated booklet included with this release.
For those who cannot get enough Brain , you can also buy merchandise
EDGE OF SANITY (Blu Ray from Arrow Video) -original release 1989 . color. 85 minutes. Arrow U.S.Blu Ray release June 21,2022 . NTSC Widescreen 1.85:1 Region A s.r.p. $ 39.95
During the 1970s and 1980s, Anthony Perkins gave amazing performances on film (FFOLKES,Universal,1980 ), television (LES MISERABLES, CBS,1979 ; THE GLORY BOYS ,Yorkshire TV,1984) and on stage ( magnificent on Broadway as Dr Dysart in EQUUS,1975).
Yet, even with his wide body of work , he was still stalked by his own creation, that of the cinematic ideal of Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s masterpiece PSYCHO (Paramount) . So powerful and indelible was his portrayal that he could not escape it.
He accepted that was to be how people would see him and so he did two theatrical and one tv sequels, as was as spoofing himself on tv on Saturday Night Live to promote one of them. Thus, the remaining ten years of his life were mostly variants of his twitchy Norman Bates persona.
One of the better ones was in Ken Russell’s CRIMES OF PASSION (New World ,1984, , available on Blu Ray from Arrow ). Five years later, he added Norman to EDGE OF SANITY, adding it to a retelling of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & M Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson(1886) and a Jack The Ripper variant. In some territories, the film was known as DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE.
In EDGE OF SANITY , sex & cocaine are mixed into the formula of this 1880s set thriller. A young boy witnesses a couple having sex but is soon discovered & beaten for his voyeurism. During the beating , the young boy imagines the woman laughing at him is covered in blood . This is shown to be a dream memory , as an adult Dr Jekyll awakes in a sweat. His wife asks him if anything is wrong ,but he shrugs her away and, grabbing his cane, walks down to his laboratory.
Dr Jekyll (Perkins) has been working on an experiment to explore the human personality. To that end , he mixes unknown chemicals with cocaine and ether . The experiment seems to work, as he becomes a twisted , stringy haired paler faced version of himself who calls himself Edward Hyde. This new persona is also stronger, & no longer needs his walking stick ,though he makes other uses for it during the film.
Freed of his inhibitions, he goes down to the Whitechapel area of London. Hyde enjoys the pleasures of the bars & brothels ,too much so . His encounter with a prostitute result in him killing the woman. From then on, it is a sleazy mix of sex & violence.
Director Gerard Kikoine was better known for his soft porn & hardcore output . His work must have been stylish ( he did work with Radley Metzger, the auteur of soft & hardcore cinema ) since it caught the attention of Harry Alan Towers. Towers was a master of putting together international deals and getting recognizable names to appear in them. He collaborated again with the director & composer for the film BURIED ALIVE (21st Century, 1989), a film notable as the last film that John Carradine directly worked upon.
Mixing Jekyll & Hyde with Jack the Ripper is not new. During the actual Ripper Murder spree ( April to November 1888). actor Richard Mansfield was portraying the dual role of Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde . He began the role in 1887 in his own adaptation of the story just 1 year after the story was published.
Mansfield in his adaptation made many of the changes still carried over into most adaptations since his play, including adding women to the piece, Dr Jekyll being a sympathetic character , and increasing the presence and importance of the law in the character of Inspector Newcomen. The show was a huge hit in its initial Boston & New York performances . Mansfield took his production to the Lyceum Théâtre in London. It too was well received ,at first. Then the Ripper killings began. Mansfield’s onstage transformation into the murderous Mr. Hyde had several of the more gullible convinced that he could not be able to portray such a character unless he himself was a dual personality, and possibly the Ripper himself! The terrible comments affected the box office & Mansfield closed the production. He did continue to play the roles on & off for almost two decades , including several Broadway revivals. He died on August 30,1907 at age 50.
Hammer Films mixed the two stories of Jack with Jekyll & Hyde while throwing in some Burke & Hare in their gender swapping Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (Hammer/AIP ,1971). This could have been a disaster or poor sex farce but the clever script by Brian (tv’s Avengers series)Clemens, skillful direction by Roy Ward Baker, beautiful top notch production design and cinematography, and the wonderful performers make this a sadly neglected Hammer gem.
EDGE OF SANITY was not as well crafted. It received mixed to negative reviews. It really did not find its audience until its release to home media , first by Virgin Video then in ep speed by Video Treasures. Both were cropped & foggy looking, the latter with increased grain.
MGM released a much better print on DVD , which was cropped on one side of the disc, & widescreen on the other (did anyone ever watch the cropped copy on these DVDS willingly?).
Now , Arrow continues finding and restoring obscure films for rediscovery and reappraisal.
First , they went to the original 35mm (remember 35mm ?) camera negative , cleaned it up and gave it a brand new Hi Def 1080p restoration. The difference is quite evident when watched in comparison to the MGM DVD. There seems to be more screen image on the side of the frames (1.85:1) , and the clarity, sharpness and colors really are superior to the older release.
The sound is also superior to the older prints. Perkins at times whispers his lines when not taking the crazy to eleven, and you ended up adjusting the levels throughout. Now, even his lower spoken lines are clear and audible. LPCM 2.0 stereo.
Just in case, there are easy to read SDH English subtitles .
There is an informative running commentary by filmmakers David Flint & Seth Hogan .
Other extras on this disc include :
Over The Edge – new interview for this release with Stephen Thrower, author of NIGHTMARE USA (FAB PRESS,2007).
Jack, Jekyll, & Other Screen Psychos – a new interview for this release with Dr Clare Smith, who wrote JACK THE RIPPER IN FILM & CULTURE ( Palgrave/MacMillan,2016)
Both interviews compliment each other, one covering the film , the other the fascination we have with Jack The Ripper.
Not included with the review copy is the magnificent Graham Humphreys slipcover with reversible artwork.
Also not included with the review copy is film critic & film historian (Candyman (Auteur, 2018)) Jon Towlson’s illustrated collective booklet(included with first pressings only!)
I must admit watching this new release has given me a better appreciation of the film. For example, the score by Frederic Talgorn (it seems to have been his first) is lush and orchestral in a time when cheap synth scores were more the norm. Ditto too the cinematography by Tony Spratling is sharp and makes effective use of color in a style which hints at Argento. The costumes are good , though one character who plays a pimp looks like he just stepped out of a Culture Club music video . The Bucharest locations make the film look like a much bigger production than it really was .
Perkins sadly would pass away September 12, 1992, at age 60 . Perkins himself led a dual existence, having to hide his real personality ,and undergoing psychoanalysis to “cure” himself. He married actress Berry Berenson, had two sons , & were happy , though he could not deny who he was.
In 1990 , the sleazy National Enquirer gained access to a blood sample that Perkins had given in an unrelated test , and they sprayed the news ‘Psycho Star Has AIDS’. This is how the actor himself found out that he was infected. Before he passed , he issued this public statement :
“There are many who believe this disease is God’s vengeance. But I believe it was sent to teach people how to love and understand and have compassion for each other. I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS, than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life.”
Worth getting for fans of Anthony Perkins or / and the works of producer of Harry Alan Towers and those interested in Jack the Ripper, Jekyll & Hyde , and eighties horror.
Richard E. Cunha, the man who brought us GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN (see review ),MISSLE TO THE MOON, SHE-DEMONS , all Astor horror/sci fi films , tried his hand with adding a new family (dis)member to the Frankenstein line.
The year prior, Hammer /WB and AIP both experienced boffo box office by reviving the creation from the mind of Mary Shelley. Both had small budgets (£ 65,000, or approximately $270,000 for CURSE OFFRANKENSTEIN, with I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN costing about half of that amount).
Astor wanted in , and with a budget of around $60 grand & a tight six- day shoot, FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER was born. This was Cunha’s longest film(his other clock in usually at 77-78 minutes) but the gonzo goings-on make it seem one of his fastest paced films.
Boris would like a word
Oliver Frank (Donald Murphy ,who played Virgil Earp in the William Castle directed MASTERSON OF KANSAS, Columbia, 1954) works for elderly Dr Morton (Swiss born Felix Locher, who was the real-life father of Jon Hall, but who himself didn’t start acting himself until he was 73 in HELL SHIP MUTINY, Republic, 1957). Oliver Frank, it is revealed is the grandson of the original Dr Frankenstein (oddly, REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN ,Columbia ,1958, ends with the doctor using the alias of Dr Frank). However, the title Grandson of Frankenstein is a bit clunky, so it is his creation the film’s title refers.
Oliver has been experimenting on Trudy Morton (Sandra Knight, who later married & divorced her later costar Jack Nicholson whom she met on THE TERROR, AIP,1963, before she switched to being a painter https://www.sandraknight.com/# ), slipping her experimental drugs that make her change into hideous creature (that resembles Frida Kahlo with a nasty overbite )to roam the streets at night . She of course , thinks that she only is having nightmares .
Oliver’s big wish , however, is to create life from scratch, or stiches, just like grandpa did . Trudy’s friend (Sally Todd, the Feb 1957 Playmate of the Month)has the misfortune to be run over by Oliver , who truly only wants her for her brains.
Frank was truly mad….
“We’re aware the female mind is conditioned to a man’s world. It therefore takes orders, where the other ones didn’t.”
Mad & misogynist Olivier Frank places the brain into his creation, & with the assist of Elsu the gardener (Wolfe Barzell ,who mostly appeared in small roles on TV) ,he creates …what is supposed to have been a female creation.
Oddly , no one seemed to have told casting or makeup artist Harry Thomas ,for the monster was portrayed by Harry Wilson. Besides playing character parts in films like ONE MILLION B.C.(Roach, 1940),the British born Wilson ,who ,like Rondo Hatton, was afflicted with acromegaly , also had a career as Wallace Beery’s stand in & double . Here, the ex-wrestler has work that resembles the half-melted face TorJohnson had in Ed Wood’s NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (Atomic ,1959),which also had makeup by HarryThomas. When they discovered the gender of the creature, a bit of lipstick was added. Still , the makeup is effective, especially with work created from only the contents of a make-up case.
Throw in a rather bland John Ashley as Johnny ,who’s acting grew MORE bored as the decades went on , Page Cavanaughand His Trio performed the song “Special Date” with Harold Lloyd Jr. singing , & 2 rather ineffectual police officers and you have most of the people in this flick. Poor Harold Lloyd Jr lived in the shadow of his famous father, and he was alcoholic from an early age. Plus, he was a homosexual when it was socially unacceptable. He did have a singing career, which was interupted when he had a stroke in 1965, from which he never fully recovered, dying just 3 months after his father in 1971.
The film continues on its gonzo way, with Trudy transforming & getting bug eyes for a while, Elsu massaged on the shoulders to death, John Ashley fighting the monster, throwing Acid ,missing the creature but hitting Oliver(oops), giving him a melted face (the make up here is very effective , and better served by only showing it for a moment) ,then the poor creature ignites itself ,resulting in self-immolation(Oops!).
The film ends on a return to “normalcy,” with Johnny & Trudy swimming ,Johnny telling Trudy the wedding vows, emphasizing “OBEY!” Has Trudy avoided one man controlling her (albeit in a stitched together body) for another man expecting her servitude? We don’t get much time to think on this , as Johnny pushes Harold Lloyd Jr into the pool, and everyone laughs. THE END.
The funny thing is, I rather enjoyed this film because of its craziness . Trudy feels that she is dreaming, & perhaps she is ,bringing us along. It is like it is a cinematic haunted house ride , twisting & turning with various things happening as it clatters along . A guilty pleasure ,perhaps, but still a pleasure, hopelessly misogynistic as it is.
This film & indeed many of the Astor Studio releases have passed into public domain. The quality ,or lack thereof ,on late night tv or cheap vhs tapes made these films look less competently made then they were .
The print that they use is from an original camera negative and given the 4K restoration treatment. The resulting image is sharp with nice gray scales and deep black tones. I do not recall any film damage or speckling upon the image.
The DTS-HD dual mono sound is crisp and clear.
Optional Easy to read subtitles are available in English & Spanish.
Extras include: –a running commentary track .
–RICHARD E CUNHA: FILMMAKER OF THE UNKNOWN –Ballyhoo Motion Pictures creates another wonderful mini documentary , which includes footage of director Richard Cunha ( March 4, 1922 – September 18, 2005) himself commenting upon his work and career.
–JOHN ASHLEY : MAN FROM THE B’s – Film historian and writer /director C. Courtney Joyner (LURKING FEAR , Full Moon, 1994) comments upon the career of actor/singer/producer John Ashley (December 25, 1934 – October 3, 1997). A chance encounter with John Wayne led to his acting career starting in 1957, to becoming a producer in 1971, leading to him becoming one of the producers of the major tv hit ,THE A TEAM (Universal, 1983-87).
Is FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER a classic ? Heck no. Is it a fun film you will go back to again & again ? I would think so !
THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW (1983) (MVD Rewind Blu-ray S.E.) – Color. 91 mins. R. Regions A, B, C. $29.95 s.r.p.
THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW (Film Ventures) came out during the height of the slasher films of the 1980s. First time writer director Mark Rosman was partially inspired by the French Classic LES DIABOLIQUES (Cinedis,1955), though the killer was obviously inspired by the one in the successful FRIDAY THE 13th (Paramount ,1980). Originally titled Seven Sisters, it was shot in Pikesville Maryland in the summer of 1980, with additional photography taking place in Los Angeles.
Given a limited release at first in late 1982, the distributor expanded it in January ,1983, where it reached Number One at the box office, earning $10.6 million at the box office, not to mention various video releases and cable showings. Not bad for a film that cost less than half a million to make.
The 2009 remake (Summit, the people who gave us the TWILIGHT films, need I say more?) was one of those films that was almost instantly forgettable WHILE you watched it. The original, though not perfect, is worth revisiting over and over.
The plot has 7 sorority sisters who, while celebrating their graduation, accidentally kill their house mother DorothySlater (Lois Marie Kelso, making her screen debut at age 53) when a prank goes wrong and she ends up dead in their pool.
While they decide what to do next, someone else is going around killing people. Can the women hide the crime, and uncover who is going around killing people, including whittling down the members of their society?
As stated, THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW has been available on Home Video in the U.S. from Vestron (VHS), DVD from Elite, then a 2- disc set from Scorpion, who then released the title on Blu Ray in 2018.
This new MVD REWINDBlu Ray release is markedly superior to the old Elite DVD (I do not have the Scorpion release for comparison). The picture is infinitely sharper with brighter colors. Flesh tones are superior in the new release, and the sound is ultra-sharp, with the dialogue, sound effects, and score by Richard Band coming through cleanly & hiss free.
The print used was given a good cleaning and a hi-def (1080p) release, in 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The film’s sound is available in LPCM 2.0 stereo, and an alternate version of the film presented in mono audio, with a new director approved pre credit sequence that was more to Roseman’s original vision.
Other extras are :
Audio Commentary with director Mark Rosman (still active, working on various tv productions), who gives an informative and honest history of the film.
A second commentary track with the director joined with two of the stars, Eileen Davidson (now a mainstay on the daytime soap opera THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, CBS, since 1984) and Kathryn McNeil (recently seen in the powerful mini-series THEM, Amazon,2021).
Get the Pool skimmer.
Short interviews with Roseman, Davidson, McNeil ,and fellow actress Jane Kozak ( recently on THE SHOW MUST GOONLINE ,where actors from around the world did readings of Shakespeare’s plays in the order they are believed to have been written ),composer Band(still composing ,with DON’T LET HER IN just having been released by Full Moon in 2021) and producer Igo Kantor (who passed away in October ,2019 , having produced such films as MUTANT, Film Ventures,1984 where he replaced original director Rosman with John “Bud” Cardos , and KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, Dimension ,1977 ) .
Also available are storyboards with an alternate ending
The original theatrical trailer and tv spots.
Optional English subtitles.
Reversible cover art .
If you do not have this thriller in your collection, I suggest you may wish to add this Special Edition to your horror blu- ray library.
Recommended .
-Kevin G Shinnick
If you would like to contribute to SCARLET THE FILM MAGAZINE,
FLIGHT TO MARS (1951) was one of the first science fiction films to deal with interplanetary travel that was not a serial. That said, with its alien civilization where they speak perfect English subplot, it is not too far removed from the Flash Gordon episodes that had gone before.
It was an expensive production for Monogram Pictures, better known for Bowery Boys and inexpensive programmers. Luckily, the year prior, ROCKETSHIP X-M (Lippert,1950) and DESTINATION MOON (Paramount,1950) proved that there was an audience for these kinds of adventures.
Monogram was beginning to try and transition into more expensive pictures and began to use color in their films. Cinecolor was a two-color process, rather than the pricier three strip Technicolor or the Ansco Color favored by MGM on several films before LUST FOR LIFE (MGM,1956) became the last in that process.
Even though it was an expensive project for the studio, a lot of material from other studios was repurposed or rented for the production, including sets and props from ROCKETSHIP-XM, as well as leftover military surplus, like the leather flight jackets and helmets.
Still, there are a lot of original costumes, sets, and props, as well as the several special effects shots, making this film more impressive when you learn that, according to the late star Cameron Mitchell, the actors completed their work in only five days!
Though the effects are attributed to Jack Cosgrove, who had worked on GONE WITH THE WIND (MGM,1939), it seems most of the work was done by the uncredited effects team of Jack Rabin, Louis DeWitt, and Irving Block. Some of the work they did on this film was echoed on the later FORBIDDEN PLANET (MGM,1956).
FLIGHT TO MARSFORBIDDEN PLANET
The film was directed by Lesley Selander, an odd choice, as he had directed mostly westerns, though he had directed with great style one of Republic’s few horror features, THE VAMPIRE’S GHOST (1945). The short shooting schedule of this film would allow little in the way of directorial flourishes, but he kept the story going in a clear manner.
Screenwriter Arthur Strawn had written the 1944 Broadway farce SLEEP NO MORE (that played all of seven performances!) but had been writing screenplays since the 1930s, including the classic Karloff thriller THE BLACK ROOM (Columbia, 1935).
The first earth expedition to Mars is made up of reporter Steve Abbott (Cameron Mitchell, who was coming off a Theatre World Award winning performance as Biff in the original production of DEATH OF A SALESMAN on Broadway as well as recreating his role in the 1951 Columbia film),who is their to record the historic event ,the expedition leader Dr. Lane (John Litel, who in real life had enlisted in the French Army during WWI because he didn’t want to wait for the U.S. to enter the fray, and he was twice decorated for bravery!) ,Professor Jackson(Richard Gaines, who appeared that same year in Billy Wilder‘s ACE IN THE HOLE , Paramount), engineer Jim Barker (Arthur Franz ,BUD ABBOTT & LOU COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN ,Universal, 1951) and Carol , his assistant (Virginia Huston, FLAMINGO ROAD,W.B.,1949).
There is talk about the dangers of the voyage, knowing that any number of things could happen that would result in their deaths (someone must have seen ROCKETSHIP -XM). Sure enough, they encounter a meteor that damages some of their equipment, including their radio and landing gear. The Professor crash lands the ship, still hoping to collect data that they can send back, even though they themselves may never return to earth.
Donning outfits better suited for a B-25 than an extraterrestrial expedition, they discover that there are intricate structures created by an advanced civilization. Sure enough, they are met by a group of Martians in colorful space suits and helmets. Ikron (Morris Ankrum, who switched sides, as he had been Dr Fleming in ROCKETSHIP X-M!) informs the earthlings that they have been monitoring Earth transmissions and thus have learned their languages, keeping the film moving rather than a long time figuring out how to communicate. Kiron is the current President of the Martian PlanetaryCouncil, and he invites the visitors to see their vast underground city.
The Martian civilization is advanced in many ways, though it seems all the women are incredibly young and wear miniskirts (well, STAR TREK,Paramount TV, 1966-69 did the same) while most of the men seem middle aged or older. Seeing the scientific advances, the earth crew asks for help with repairing their spaceship, to which the Martians eagerly agree. We find out that the Martians an atmosphere by use of a material called Corium . We soon learn that their supply of the mineral is depleted.
Ikron and the council plan to fix the ship, copying it and using this new fleet to make a mass exodus to earth. Alita (Marguerite Chapman, later in Hammer’s THE LAST PAGE /MAN BAIT ,1952 directed by Terence Fisher), one of the Martian scientists, helps with the repairs, unaware of the plans of the council. Also helping is Terris (Lucille Barkley, who appeared in the 1951 Universal surprise hit, BEDTIME FOR BONZO). Terris is spying upon the visitors and the progress of the repairs, reporting back to Ikron.
Jim begins to suspect what the Martians are up to and fakes an explosion. He then informs the other crew members that the ship is really ready and will take off the next day , with the addition of Alita and Tillamar (Robert Barrat, who had been acting on Broadway as far back as 1918,and who in 1950 played the Judge in the Sam Fuller picture BARON OF ARIZONA, Lippert ,1950),a former Council President who is sympathetic to the humans.
There is a desperate getaway attempt after Terris reports her suspicions to the council, but the ship takes off, bound back for earth.
The film is a fun pulpy science fiction film that exhibits the mindset of the times in which it was made (when asked what she would like to see in the Martian Civilization, Carol first wants to see- a kitchen!!).
Long available in blurry prints, FILM DETECTIVE has sourced their new 4K restoration copy from an original 35MM Cinecolor Separation Negative, giving us a much clearer idea of how great the film must have looked when it was first released. The copy is superbly clean, and the mono sound is reproduced cleanly.
There are also optional subtitles in either English or Spanish.
Other extras include :
A running commentary by film historian Justin Humphreys (co -author with William Goldstein of THE DR PHIBES COMPANION, Bear Manor ,2020). Justin is not afraid to point out the flaws of the film but is also quick to defend its entertainment value as well, and the difficulty of doing a color science fiction film back in the early 1950s with a low budget.
WALTER MIRISCH: FROM BOMBA TO BODY SNATCHERS– a new documentary about the producer who helped Monogram evolve into Allied Artists, while attracting bigger names and better productions to the studio, before he left and formed his own production company, producing some of the biggest hits in the 1960s like WEST SIDE STORY (UA,1960). Being a Ballyhoo documentary, you know that it is informative and very well done, hosted by filmmaker C. Courtney Joyner (screenwriter of PRISON, Empire,1987).
Interstellar Travelogues: Cinema’s First Space Race – a celebration of sci fi space race films hosted by Hugo winning artist historian Vincent Di Fate. It examines the importance of the earlier German film Frau im Mond (DEFA,1929) and moves forward to cover a few other films that dealt with interplanetary flight that followed. Oddly, it ignores Himmelskibet (Denmark ,Nordisk Films,1918) ,which was probably the first film to have a space exploration of Mars.
Himmelskibet
The documentary was an interesting idea, and I wish it had been expanded to go into greater depth of that film and those that followed, like PROJECT MOONBASE (Lippert 1953) and CONQUEST OF SPACE (Paramount ,1955). The recording of Di Fate sounds like it was from an older tape recording or a phone call, being a bit echoey. Still the information is fascinating to hear.
Inside the slipcover is a small booklet that has an essay by Don Stradley that covers the production of FLIGHT TO MARS as well as other films that visited the Red Planet.
If you are a fan of pulpy science fiction films, I can recommend that you pick up The Film Detective’s release of FLIGHTTO MARS.
-Kevin G Shinnick
FLIGHT TO MARS on Blu Ray and DVD is available on Amazon and other fine DVD/Blu Ray dealers.
If you would like to contribute to SCARLET THE FILM MAGAZINE,
Arrow Films is truly coming out with some remarkable foreign films, especially in the fantasy genre from Japan. Most of these gems from Japan come from Daiei Films .
Not only are these amazingly sharp and beautiful prints, they also come with a lot more extras and knowledgeable commentaries than you might expect .
Now ,added to this must have collection of the Daiei fantasy films is the magnificent DAIMAJIN trilogy . The three films all were released it seems in quick succession in the year 1966 and then no further films followed . The film was perhaps harder to sell overseas and thus was a subject more focused upon the home market . The films did have some tv sales ( AIP-TV bought two of the films , retitling DAIMAJIN as MAJIN, MONSTER OF TERROR and DAINAJIN IKARU as RETURN OF GIANT MAJIN . They were dubbed into English by Titan Productions ,but in cropped and scanned prints .One wonders why AIP didn’t buy and release all three?
Retromedia released a DVD of these dubbed prints so you can judge for yourselves).
The films do not fit into the usual Kaiju (giant monster) films ,in that the title character doesn’t usually become active until the last third of the film, acting as the ultimate Deus ex machina , in which the gigantic stone god comes to life and rights wrongs, before returning to immobile stone.
Daiei Studios, founded in 1942 and producing war propaganda films ,in 1949 they revamped themselves and made their product internationally received with the likes of Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON (1950) .as well as the artistic haunting ghost story UGETSU (1953). The studio made films for both arthouse and fantasy films (the second film by the revamped studio was THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS,1949). Alternating between historical and fantasy films, they often combined the two with great success. The popularity of their Gamera films (starting in 1965, with two films in 1966 ,also available on Blu Ray from Arrow Films ) set the stage for the Daimajin films.
DAIMAJIN : In 18th Century Feudal Japan ,A cruel lord overthrows the rightful ruler . The children of the ruler escape . Years later, they encounter the vicious lord, who has been extreme in his cruelty to the people Capturing the two young people, he ties them upon crosses for execution . However, prayers to the stone idol Daimajin ,whom we earlier being worshipped and appeased after some natural disasters, now comes to life ,frees the two young people and goes on a rampage of destruction against the evil lord (who is killed in a very satisfying fashion) before a villager pleads for the destruction to end cries and the tears fall upon the giant’s feet . The rioting ends, and the giant returns to stone, before crumbling away.
RETURN OF DAIMAJIN (1966): Another evil warlord pops up (Japan seems rife with them) .This time he chases villagers to an island where there is a giant statue of the god. Is it the same one reassembled, or another one, like the giant stone heads of Easter Island , it is never made clear. The warlord must have seen the previous film, and orders the statue to be blown up. However, the pieces end up in the lake and the giant arises again to seek vengeance and chew Amonoya, and it is all out of Amonoya .Tears again summon the god and lay it to rest. This time ,it turns to water at the end of its mission .
Amonoya
DAIMAJIN STRIKES AGAIN-this time the story is set in a snowy mountain valley, where the statue is buried in snow (is it the same statue ,or are their several of these dumped around Japan?). Once again, Daimajin is summoned, the god rising from the layers of snow to defeat another evil Lord who is mistreating the people who the Lord almost dumps into a sulfur pit ,before he and his minions are disposed of . The god, his work finished now, his life force leaves him as he turns first to stone before he then turns to snow and blowing away
The three films use the elements of stone, water , and wind , making one wonder if a fourth film had happened, would he have turned to fire? Mind you ,I have not seen the 2010 tv series (DAIMAJIN KANON, 26 episodes, TV Tokyo) which retold the story ,only with it being set present day so I am unsure if they used that element .
The one other thing that struck me watching all three back to back was that it reminded me of the legend of the Golem , best known as the Jewish legend of a man of clay brought to life to avenge .
This Arrow Films Blu Ray release is a real treat. A limited edition (order yours now), this beautiful collection has all three films in a sharp colorful 1080p High Definition restoration.
Original Japanese print with clear sharp optional subtitles.
A new intro to the first film by fantasy cinema expert Kim Newman (also author of the must have horror series ANNODRACULA)
Brand new commentaries by Japanese film expert Stuart Galbraith IV (The Toho Studios Story ,The Japanese CinemaBook, many others), Tom Mes, Jasper Sharp .and Jonathan Sharp .
These full-length running commentaries are fact filled but never overwhelming as he explores the films, it’s players, and their histories.
Original trailers.
Alternate tv credits for Majin-the Monster of Terror (TV title for the AIP release).
An interview with cinematographer Fujio Morita ( 1927-2014),who talks about his long career ,working at DAIEI STUDIOS on such films as RASHOMON ,and especially the Daimajin films. Morita worked as a cinematographer from 1950 to 1995 . His beautiful use of color makes these films stand out , as well as some wonderful compositions that make the effects even more impressive.
Image Galleries.
A plethora of new documentaries for this release :
MY SUMMER WITHDAIMJIN -film Professor Yoneo Ota talks about his summer job working on making the original film .
FROM STORYBOARD TO SCREEN-compares storyboards to actual scenes in the film RETURN OF DAIMAJIN .
BRINGING THE AVENGING GOD TO LIFE– a superlative explanation of how the still dazzling special effects were done on these movies, by Japanese film historian Ed Godziszewski .
Not included with the review discs but in the actual box set will be
Illustrated collector’s 100 page book featuring new essays by Jonathan Clements, Keith Aiken, Ed Godziszewski, Raffael Coronelli, Erik Homenick, Robin Gatto and Kevin Derendorf
Postcards featuring the original Japanese artwork for all three films
Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Frank
Some fans of kaiju films may feel that these films are too slow and not enough stomping , but for those who want to see a beautiful series that is a bit different from the average stomp Tokyo films, I highly recommend this series.
–Kevin G Shinnick
ARROW FILMS Highly Recommended
DAIMAJIN TRILOGY THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS GAMERA COLLECTION
All available on Amazon and other fine Blu Ray dealers.
If you would like to contribute to SCARLET THE FILM MAGAZINE,
We are pleased to present another chapter from the now just released new book covering the classic Universal monster films, going from THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS ,1940 ( see our preview : https://tinyurl.com/udjxvcw )to 1948’s ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEETS FRANKENSTEIN.
One point that I would like to make. There are certain toxic members of fandom who feel that they PERSONALLY own the classic films and make snarky comments about others who dare to cover the genre . These people need to realize that others love these films and have the right to write about the movies . The “toxics” can of course voice an opinion , but they need to review the work itself and not make lame childish swipes to make themselves feel superior . Fan was derived from “fanatic” , and the toxics bring negativity to what is supposed to be an enjoyable exchange of ideas on a subject that we all enjoy .
Now , with that out of the way , SCARLET is glad to share another chapter of this new book . This chapter : THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN:
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Synopsis: We open in the village of Frankenstein, as the villagers receive the mayor’s permission to blow up the remains of Castle Frankenstein, which they see as the cause of all the misfortune that has befallen them. This proves to be harder than anticipated, for Ygor – the broken-necked, vengeful blacksmith from Son of Frankenstein – is not above tossing a few rocks at them from a parapet. Fleeing to the castle’s nether-regions for safety, Ygor espies a hand sticking out of the now-hardened sulfur pit. Digging in, he is astonished to see that the hand belongs to the arm of the Frankenstein Monster who – albeit somewhat the worse for wear – is still alive. Freeing his “friend,” Ygor leads the Monster off into the nearby woods.
A thunderstorm rises suddenly, and the Monster is struck by lightning; remarkably, rather than destroying him, the lightning restores his strength. Putting two and two together, Ygor leads his friend off to Vasaria, wherein dwells Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein, younger son of the mad scientist who first cried out, “It’s alive!” Somehow, despite his bearing one of the most unique and infamous surnames in all of Germania, Ludwig has avoided being associated with his father’s woeful experiments by everyone in the vicinity – and that includes his daughter, Elsa. While Ygor is putting the arm on Ludwig, the Monster has killed one of the locals and is now in police custody. Only after Ygor threatens to spill the beans about Ludwig’s patronymic does the good doctor head down to the courthouse to see about the Monster. The Monster, possibly seeing a family resemblance and sensing an ally, is nonetheless enraged when Ludwig denies knowing anything about him, and bursting his chains, runs off to the hills again, accompanied by Ygor.
Come nightfall, the pair make for the castle Frankenstein, where the Monster tears through the doctor’s laboratory in an effort to carry off Elsa, killing assistant Dr. Kettering in the process. Both Monster and Ygor are overcome by gas pumped in through the air ducts, and Ludwig – determined to disassemble the Monster piece by piece – asks Dr. Bohmer for advice and assistance. Bohmer talks Ludwig out of the dissection and suggests that the placement of a normal brain inside the Monster’s body might result in a creature who is an actual boon to mankind. Seeing as he has Kettering’s brain on hand, Ludwig agrees and prepares for the operation. Bohmer, looking to regain his professional reputation (tarnished by past experiments-gone-wrong), conspires with Ygor to place the blacksmith’s brain in the Monster’s skull instead of Kettering’s. In the meanwhile, the Monster has kidnapped young Cloestine – a child who has acted in a friendly fashion toward him – and brings her to the laboratory, insisting that her brain go into his head. Ludwig straightens things out (in the course of which Ygor is crushed behind a sturdy door by his erstwhile “friend”), preps the Monster for the transplant, and then – unbeknownst to him – connects Ygor’s brain to the Monster’s circuitry, thanks to Bohmer.
Back at the village, everyone is frantic about the Monster having vanished and the sudden disappearance of Cloestine. As they prepare to storm the castle, Elsa’s boyfriend, Erik Ernst, confers with Ludwig, who informs him that – the operation having been quite successful – the Monster’s personality is now that of the gentle Dr. Kettering. All – except for Dr. Bohmer – are shocked when the Monster, now speaking with Ygor’s voice, boasts that with his newly recovered strength he will rule the world! Moments later, though, the Monster is apparently going blind, due to incompatibility of blood types. While the angry mob breaks into the castle, the Monster, raging about the laboratory sends Bohmer crashing to his death into an electric panel. Thrashing about wildly, he knocks chemicals onto the floor, where they combine to set the place afire. Erik and Elsa escape with their lives, but Ludwig and the Monster perish in the flames .
Much of the fun one has with Universal’s Frankenstein series, of course, is to be found in marveling over nomenclature and inconsistencies. The 1931 Frankenstein originally keyed in on the epic missteps taken by Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein in an abandoned watchtower high in the hills above the village of Goldstadt. “Missteps” is a moral evaluation of Henry’s purposeful experiments, which suffered also from muck-ups, like the breaking of the neck of the cadaver cut down from the gibbet, and the deceitful substitution by Fritz of an abnormal brain for the good one he dropped, having been startled by the dramatically inexplicable sounding of a gong at Goldstadt Medical College. (Said college is doubtless part of the larger Goldstadt University from which Dr. Pretorius will admit to having been “booted” in Bride.) Lying somewhere between missteps and muck-ups are also mysteries, such as why Henry is disturbed when Dr. Waldman informs him that the brain Fritz – Dwight Frye, enacting his second straight tormented sidekick for Universal – had filched had belonged to a criminal, when the first place Frankenstein had ventured in search of a brain was the body of someone publicly hanged by the neck (and presumably not for acts of charity). Or what was the logic behind issuing the new creation a pair of black platform shoes? Were these – like what would become the Monster’s trademark black suit – found in a cupboard someplace? Despite all this, we had our iconic “Frankenstein Monster.”
With Frankenstein a hit, Junior Laemmle’s production team had begun readying the world for The Return of Frankenstein – the sequel to the earlier sensation and the film that marked the reunion of James Whale and MaryShelley’s legacy – in 1933. Soon enough, the project was retitled Bride of Frankenstein, and it was bandied about by the publicity department that a “search” was underway for just the right actress to portray the titular bride. Although Colin Clive had reportedly been disappointed that his much-anticipated death scene at the end of the 1931 classic had been supplanted by Frederick Kerr’s toast to an heir for the “House of Frankenstein” and the need for his character to survive to experiment another day, he was happy to be involved in the sequel, which would open with his Henry and the Elizabeth of
… ummm… Mae Clarke? making good on the old baron’s toast. Okay. While Clarke would soon appear again at Universal with the increasingly popular Boris Karloff (Night World, 1932), she was either unavailable, unwilling, or unasked to come to the signing of contracts a couple of years later. For all the good-natured folderol of the supposed search for one bride or the other, there was little mystery as to with whom said “bride” would be paired. Only had Elizabeth’s heart been used to power up the female creature the Monster would briefly woo – as plotted in the original script – would anyone have paid a brass farthing to witness the goings-on of Valerie Hobson.
Although little flower-tossing Maria had ended up in the drink as she was bonding with the Monster in the 1931 original, the next time the Monster was a total emotional mess had to be when O.P. Heggie’s blind hermit sawed away at the “Ave Maria” in his cottage (a musical hommage to the Monster’s first, inadvertent victim?). In fact, following the clever opening badinage between Byron and the Shelleys, Bride gets underway as Maria’s dad, Hans (Reginald Barlow), spews righteous anger over his daughter’s death, a moment that allows the audience to recall the scene in which Maria’s dad, Ludwig (Michael Mark), had carried her lifeless body through the streets of Goldstadt in the earlier film. Hey, if Elizabeth can undergo such an amazing transformation (for the better, many argue), why not old Hans… errr… Ludwig?
And why can’t the torch- and whip-wielding Fritz metamorphose into the near-imbecilic Karl, in what would be DwightFrye’s third straight take on a half-wit at Universal? (Please recall that Frye’s appearance as a cogent, articulate reporter in Whale’s The Invisible Man [1933] was uncredited.) In his seminal It’s Alive: The Classic Cinema Saga of Frankenstein, film historian Gregory William Mank explains the hemi-demi-semi-nature of Frankenstein’s latest assistant:
To showcase Frye’s talents at lunacy and comedy, Whale combined two separate roles of the original script: Karl, ‘a bit of a village idiot,’ quoth the script, and Fritz, the ‘first ghoul’ who assists Pretorius, into simply Karl, who became both a village idiot and a ghoul and one of Frye’s most memorable performances .
Frankenstein’s Monster also became simply “Frankenstein” a lot sooner than it took the studio to acknowledge the maneuver via Basil Rathbone at the town railway station (please note: town also now apparently yclept “Frankenstein”) four years later. No one (that I’ve ever met, at any rate) ever raised an eyebrow over Henry Frankenstein’s having miraculously survived the climactic laboratory detonation that was set off by the jilted Monster (please ignore the long-shot to the contrary that somehow survived the final edit), or his subsequently making an honest woman of Elizabeth, or her bearing him a couple of sons, or his ending up a baron (the original script for the 1931 film had called for Frederick Kerr’s character to die of shock, thus passing the title down to Henry), or even that the “Henry” of the first two features turned out to be the “Heinrich” of the third .
Come that third – the Whale-less Son of Frankenstein of 1939 – and we learn that Heinrich und Elizabeth had a son, Wolf, who at some point married a redhead named Elsa, moved to the USA to teach at an American college, and had his own son, Peter. (The order in which these events occurred is of no importance.) Unlike his dad and grandfather (called plain old “Baron Frankenstein” in the 1931 film), Wolf goes by von Frankenstein, which can be translated of or from Frankenstein. Per our colleague, AllMovies.com reviewer Hans Wollstein, there’s a method to this morass:
If dear old Frederick Kerr’s character was a baron, then his son’s name should have been Heinrich, Baron von Frankenstein all along. Heinrich/Henry would have had his father’s family surname – which might well have been Müller or Schmidt – when he was CREATED Baron Frankenstein, at which point the “von” would then have been applied when spelled out. The title would have been awarded by the emperor, Wilhelm I, or his chancellor, Prince von Bismarck, and it would be in evidence from the costumes and setting.
Thus, God only knows what the family name of the baron and his progeny and their issue was “in reality.” If the men insisted on bearing the title that was evidently handed down from one generation to the next, they could wander about known only by it and their Christian name (Guten Tag!Ich bin Heinrich, Baron von Frankenstein!) Wolf either took a pass on the title (his brother, Ludwig – who gets embroiled in this mess in Ghost – didn’t toss his being a baron in anyone’s face, either) or adopted this short-cut en route to assimilating into the USA. A tempest in a teapot? Yessiree!, but we learn from that conductor’s timely interruption of Wolf’s diatribe that the eponymous terrain on which stand the family castle and old watch tower is a village large enough to be worthy of its own train station, grumbling populace, and hair-splitting Burgomeister: “We come to meet you, not to greet you!”
Again, there’s that bit of nonsense about just who is being touted in the picture’s title. Wolf is, of course, the son of Heinrich, “Maker of Monsters” (per the torch-inscribed snarl that someone managed to sneak in and scrawl onto his tomb); little Peter is the son of Wolf, and it is Peter’s precarious position (under the platform-shoe’d foot of the Monster) that leads his father to finally do something more action-oriented than playing darts. As for the Monster… well, Ygor’s intriguing insistence to Wolf that “Your father made him, and Heinrich Frankenstein was your father, too!” does little more than once again poke those viewers who had chuckled their way through the “Bride” kerfuffle some years earlier. (One of the kids with whom I formed a monster club a lifetime ago argued at the time – seriously, and not a little persuasively – that Karloff’s Monster in Son was the offspring of Karloff’s Monster from Bride, as the 1939 iteration was “not dressed” up in his trademark black suit, but instead “wore a sweatshirt.” So how, my old friend continued, could that Monster – the one kicked into the sulfur pit whilst accoutered in something akin to what we would now call a “fleece”-be the same Monster who was resurrected from the pit in The Ghost of Frankenstein ? We weren’t familiar with technical terms like “continuity in those days …)
Anyhow, with The Ghost of Frankenstein (why the “The” and why now?), we’re back at it; the ambiguity has returned with this, the first ‘40s execution of a radically ‘30s concept. Ghost-wise, one might opt for the ethereal Sir Cedric Hardwicke (transparent of figure and naked of scalp as Henry/Heinrich) as he lays a guilt trip on the corporeal Sir Cedric Hardwicke (who is weighted down with hair appliances) as Ludwig (no “von”) Frankenstein. Or one might take the low road and claim that Chaney’s initial appearance onscreen as the Monster – covered with “dried sulfur” and as white as any flour-dredged apparition in a Mantan Moreland comedy – gave him dibs on the meaning behind the title. Discussions like this one are always fun, even if they seldom matter; as neat a shot as the erstwhile House That Carl Built took in 1942, it was the very “Frankenstein” franchise that was but a shade of its former self .
James Whale had bailed after the first sequel – and he hadn’t much wanted to do that one until he was given assurance that his stylistic approach to the rest of Mary Shelley’s screed would be welcomed – and fama erat it was he who had contrived to have the Monster blown to atoms to save himself (and others) the trouble of yet another follow-up. Karloff had jumped ship after the second sequel; in his opinion, his beloved Monster was rapidly becoming a stooge, a henchman. Although only three films – quality outings, all – had been made, Boris felt that the integrity of the original concept was being sacrificed to Mammon. The gentle Briton was enough of a realist to understand that the undying Monster’s immortality was due to profitability, rather than to electricity or lightning, but enough of an idealist to quit while he – and his immortal alter-ego – was ahead of the game.
For a while, the actor had gone AWOL from the industry itself. While the boys at Universal’s publicity department were stirring up enough pap on the impending production to keep the trades and the dailies happy, the Great White Way had taken Boris Karloff and all his boogeyman baggage to its heart. Arsenic and Old Lace proved to be everything for the ‘40s-vintage actor that Frankenstein had been for his younger self. Boris found that his reputation had preceded him, and that he could bring down the house night after night by chalking up his latest murder to the victim’s unfortunate choice of words: “He said that I looked like Boris Karloff!” The word was out that the actor did not mind guying himself and was not at all upset about publicity pieces highlighting Jack Pierce’s famed makeup, those asphalt-spreaders boots, and/or even the unseen five-pound steel “spine” that the first film’s publicity campaign claimed was “the rod which conveys the current up to the Monster’s brain.”
Back at the studio, of course, the bullshit was flying fast and furious. A glance at the stuff that Universal’s PR staff cranked out for The Ghost of Frankenstein makes one doubt – if not outright disbelieve – anything he/she has ever heard about any of these films. The baloney stretched from the news of the “search” (Zounds! Déjà vu, all over again!) for a successor to Karloff to Greg Mank’s revelation of a “studio policy” that dictated which actors would always be seen in Frankenstein movies: uncredited, perhaps, but still Lawrence Grant’s Burgomeister was back, as were Michael Mark and Lionel Belmore as town councillors [sic] (despite their having been killed by the Monster in Son), Dwight Frye as a villager, and even Colin Clive, via stock footage – he had died of a combination of tuberculosis and alcoholism some five years earlier – as Henry/Heinrich Frankenstein’s younger/handsomer self. In on the never-ending stream of absurdity came prefab and ludicrously headlined pressbook articles like “Lon Chaney Appears as Monster in Horror Film” (as opposed to his appearing as a monster in a comedy of manners or a Civil War drama). With the nonstop peddling of blarney such as this, one might readily have come to the conclusion that Universal not only thought ten or so to be the age of the average horror moviegoer, but also that ten might be on the high side of that movie fan’s I.Q.
There’s probably more truth to that than any of us would care to admit. How old were my colleagues and I – and I’d venture to ask the same of many of the readership – when we first fell under the spell cast by Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, or any of the old horror movies we still embrace so passionately? The TV fodder introduced by “Shock Theater” or “Son of Shock” at the end of the ‘50s had, in the ‘30s, been pitched to grownups; they offered offbeat takes on adult themes – life after death, medical ethics, forbidden love, etc., etc., – and served them up in the company of grotesques perfectly capable of scaring the drawers off the patrons. Come the ‘40s, and half the population was either overseas fighting the war, or involved in the home front outfitting the war. No one needed “adult” themes shoved down his or her throat, even if they were couched in greasepaint and putty; wartime anxiety, death, and deprivation provided enough unwelcome fodder without any help from Hollywood. Moviegoers were looking for escapism, and the grownups and the kids sought a breather from Hitler and Hirohito in the company of Kharis and Frankenstein.
And The Ghost of Frankenstein didn’t just fill the bill back in April of ’42, it was – critics be damned – a hit. Wartime ticket-buyers were a different breed than the seat-warming populace looking for a bit of relief from the Great Depression. The formula for most “B”-movies (please, let’s not get unrealistic about Ghost) seemed to be that mood was fine and the plot important, but pacing was everything. Especially in cases like this one – where most regular moviegoers knew the ongoing details of the story backwards, forwards, and inside out – the picture could forego footage usually devoted to exposition and cut right to the chase. (Would that the Son of Dracula crew had shared a beer with Ghost of Frankenstein’s.)
Many fans regard this picture as being the last “solo” appearance of the Monster. Heck, I maintain that that pitiable giant figure was never able to get by without his support system of mad scientists, deformed/demented assistants, and the like – all of whom would be in on the official count of monsters come the publicity campaigns for the House(s) ofFrankenstein and Dracula a couple of years down the road. The box office receipts in 1931 had assured that Henry Frankenstein’s problem child would become far too profitable for him to handle only once and far too risky for him to handle alone. Still, as the Monster returned for each successive misadventure, he became encumbered with extra weight that may have added dimension to the ongoing saga, but also robbed it of its innocence and purity.
Ghost was hardly a solo venture. Beginning with Son of Frankenstein, the Monster had been terrorizing the countryside, so to speak, under the influence of an evil genius – Ygor. In the first two films, Whale and Karloff crafted a Monster who was adept enough to tell right from wrong, to rescue an innocent from drowning after having inadvertently drowned another, to relish the moments of friendship and camaraderie with a person unable to judge a book by its cover, and so on and so forth. In Son, the Monster came to rely, almost blindly, on his broken-necked friend and to lash out at the most innocent of the assemblage (Peter) following Ygor’s death. Here, Chaney’s Monster – whose capacity for recognition (Ludwig at first, Cloestine later) is the most human of his virtues and for whom loyalty and friendship ultimately play no part – ignores, betrays, and finally kills his broken-necked comrade. With Lon under the makeup, no spark that might temper the supercharged Monster can be seen; none of the sensitivity of his predecessor – the originator of the role – survived the transition. While Ghost’s Monster latched onto a child, there was none of the childlike spark that permeated his predecessor’s take on the role. Karloff, by far the more cerebral of the two actors, gave us presence; Chaney, by far the more physical of the two, gave us volume.
Universal Horrors does a grand job of summing up the early aberrations of the script which the eponymous MagicImage Film Book volume includes in toto, so there’s little point into going into that here. Yet for all the effort at innovation – its new Monster, the new Frankensteins, and (save for the Messrs. Grant,Mark,Belmore,et al) the new villagers- Ghost is mired in a lot of same old same old.
Take the “fly in the ointment” wrinkle: from its inception, the cinematic Frankenstein success story included an element of surprise, both logical and unpredictable, which had led to a cocking up of the initial game plan. In 1931, the fly had been Fritz’s sneaky-ass substitution of the abnormal brain for the good one; this, (we were told) led to the Monster’s propensity to lash out violently whenever he was being whipped or seared with a torch. Bride’s fly was the woman; if the rallying cry of most men is “You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them,” just who did the Monster think he was? More importantly, why would Henry Frankenstein imagine even for a moment that an old queen like Pretorius could concoct a female who would soothe the Monster’s troubled breast? In Son, Wolf (like the Monster) falls victim to Ygor’s mind-games and the loopy grandeur of the family residence; the resultant misguided drive to restore his father’s good name leads to his firing up the furnaces once again. (By comparison, the incredible 180 Frank Mannering pulls in 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is a total misfire. Even though his veins are completely free of Frankenstein blood, and he’s strengthened by the resolve of yet another [and curvier] Elsa [who’s standing close by his side], Mannering opts for the dark side only because, if someone doesn’t do something fast, the bell will ring and the audience will have to go home.)
Here, we have more wrinkles than Ayesha after that second fire. The Monster’s all for the transplant, but wants the brain of Cloestine (where do they get these names?) to sleep over forever. Ygor, the sly devil, plots to have his own noodle plopped into that square skull, as he can see where this would ease his way into prestige, power, and some real money. Dr. Bohmer, who at first doesn’t seem to do much other than hang around in his smock and suffer Ludwig Frankenstein’s thoughtless and insensitive comments, is lulled as much by a desire to marry his fist to Ludwig’s stiff upper lip as he is by Ygor’s silver tongue. Even with all this slumgullion boiling on the fire, one knows that the chances of Dr. Kettering’s brain making it into the Monster’s rigging start at zero and go down from there.
<The Monster wonders how someone else got Wolf Frankenstein’s jacket >
Another leftover from earlier installments has already been brought up for consideration: the Monster’s best suit. This – the absence of which in Son had sent Boris Karloff into rounds of kvetching (about “furs and muck”) that were not at all like him – was accepted with not so much as the blink of an eye upon its reappearance. Karloff had been right; the Monster’s Sunday best was part of the larger picture, as closely interwoven in the Frankenstein mythos as the Wolf Man’s work clothes and Dracula’s ever-crisp soup and fish were essential to their respective personas. The restoration of the basic black ensemble and its presence throughout the rest of the Universal canon only made the furry miscalculation in Son seem more of a head-scratcher than it had been originally.
Bela’s Ygor is a sight for sore eyes. Happily as resistant to small-arms fire as had been George Zucco’s Andoheb, the remarkably resilient high priest in the Kharis series, Ygor is hale, hearty, and – if an apparent good scrubbing and the periodontal work is any indication – in better shape than he was in the earlier feature. Along with his appearance, Ygor’s goals have been ratcheted up; ridding the village of old nuisances is no longer a pastime worthy of his attention. The crafty old blacksmith’s master plan now encompasses taking over the entire country! While this might be biting off more than any one man (or Monster) can chew, Ygor’s yodeling away that he now possesses “the strength of a hundred men” is a picture of megalomania unrivaled since Boris Karloff’s less exuberant but equally daft claims in Mask of Fu Manchu.
(And yet you have to wonder if, indeed, the Monster did grow stronger with each successive picture. In the first, Heinrich and the elderly Dr. Waldman [along with a hypodermic needle and a bludgeon] managed to wrestle him to the floor. Bride witnessed him being tied down and carried off – semi-crucified – by a mere dozen or so yokels, while in Son, a bit of momentum behind a well-placed kick was all it took to topple the Monster from his pins. Still, this sudden blossoming of superhuman power in the Monster’s mighty arms may exist only in Ygor’s feverish [and transplanted] mind; the only other times we hear of such outlandish claims are in the excised scenes between a gabby Ygor-cum-Monster and Larry Talbot in Ghost’s own son, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.)
Ghost marks the first time since Frankenstein that brains are bandied about like wholesale commodities, but the idea here seems particularly apt. You could watch any of Karloff’s three performances and see his Monster turning over thoughts and ideas in his mind. Even in Son (wherein Ygor does most of the mental heavy-lifting for the pair), his acceding to his partner’s decisions is visible. With the vintage-1942 Monster bearing inscrutable and near-frozen features, there is very little indication as to whether the lights are on upstairs and if, indeed, anyone is home. A new brain is clearly called for, but the plethora of available raw materials not only skirts the edge of risibility, but also foreshadows the “monster rally” sequels wherein frenetic brain-swapping would prove a plague on both houses.
So long as you don’t require much humanity amid the horrors and can get past his perpetual squint and scowl, Lon Chaney is not too bad as the Monster. His attachment to Cloestine is obviously meant to reflect the Karloffian viewpoint where children were concerned, but no more perfect image of the depths to which this concept had sunk can be had than the still whereon a stiff-limbed Eddie Parker (doubling for Chaney), clutching a wooden stand-in for Janet Ann Gallow, has just sent a buttocks-grabbing stuntman plunging to his out-of-frame mats. The childlike confusion on the Monster’s part that resulted in little Maria’s being tossed into the river had given way to slick contrivance. And again, as Chaney’s Monster offers no other sign of fidelity and is evidently capable of turning his rage toward anyone who stands in his way (including his old goombah, Ygor), no assurance is had that the brute might not dropkick the little girl 100 yards or so down the road if someone else were to become the apple of his eye. After all, Dr. Kettering is killed without so much as a second – or any – thought (although the impulsive action does free up a brain for future use); killing is what monsters do best, and Chaney’s giant is – first, last, and always – a monster.
The rest of the dramatis personae are fine – they almost always are in the Frankenstein series. Sir Cedric Hardwicke’s cool and imperturbable Ludwig is an interesting sibling to Basil Rathbone’s near-frantic Wolf, albeit the latter’s fairly constant state of near-hysteria makes him much more a chip off the old Heinrich than his younger brother. Ralph Bellamy does better by Erik Ernst than he did by Captain Montford in The Wolf Man, but this may be due to W. Scott Darling and Eric Taylor’s screenplay providing him with a more well-delineated part; said screenplay also gives the delectable Evelyn Ankers to him this time ‘round. Miss Ankers, in a role that’s essentially interchangeable with that of Gwen Conliffe in The Wolf Man, takes another step toward her accession of the title of ’40s Scream Queen. And Lionel Atwill is as enjoyable in his quieter moments (as when he’s glaring daggers while Ludwig runs off at the mouth at Bohmer’s expense) as he is in his premature snarl of triumph in the last reel.
Having all but snatched Son of Frankenstein away from Boris and Basil a couple of years earlier, Bela’s copping the honors in Ghost must have been a walk in the park for him. With Chaney portraying an unpredictable automaton, Bela runs the show, not realizing – until it’s too late – that although the Monster can recognize Ludwig Frankenstein (whom he has never met), he will fail to consider Ygor’s place in his heart while crushing the old boy behind the laboratory door. More so here than in Son, Lugosi’s blacksmith has to shift gears constantly; here, he goes from being the guy in the driver’s seat to the victim of his erstwhile friend’s petulance before being back (albeit quite briefly) on top of the world. Performance-wise, Bela is in command every step of the way, and had Chaney happened to glance sideways even once through those slits he used for eyes, he’d have learned more in a moment from Lugosi than he’d cadged from Erle C. Kenton during the entire 25-day shoot.
dir Earle C Kenton
Not up to the snuff introduced back in the ‘30s, The Ghost of Frankenstein was just fine, thank you, for the tastes of the next decade. Hans J. Salter’s pulsating score keyed the film’s more ominous moments, and both Woody Bredell and Milton Krasner performed the kind of visual magic in which Universal’s cinematographers were known to excel. (If the puffs in their respective press-books were meant to be taken – ahem! – at face value, the 1931 Monster stood seven feet tall, while Chaney’s goblin was merely six foot, nine. Nonetheless, this very minor discrepancy might explain why James Whale had Arthur Edeson’s camera capture the Monster head-on, while Erle C. Kenton had Krasner and Bredell constantly aim the lens up at the shorter of the giants. The following year, George Robinson – tasked with making Lugosi’s Monster as threatening as Eddie Parker’s [or even Gil Perkins’] in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, had to contend with changes in perspective in almost every scene.)
The New York Times’s Bosley Crowther – who never seemed to like much very much – ended his rather tepid review with an act of prognostication that was hardly a foregone conclusion in 1942: To be sure, the replenished monster is being consumed by fire when we see him last, but the thought that he may yet return for further adventures with his body and Lugosi’s sconce fills us with mortal terror. That is the most fearful prospect which the picture manages to convey. -4 April, 1942
Richard L. Coe, assigned the picture as part of his responsibilities at The Washington Post, took a somewhat unusual approach to informing his readership of the film’s story line: This morning we will discuss the love life of your old friend ‘Frankenstein,’ the monster who’s assumed, in the course of years, the name of his creator. This titivating subject has been raised on the Pix screen of ‘The Ghost of Frankenstein,’ a yarn employing, uh, should we say, talents of Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Lon Chaney, Jr., Lionel Atwill, and Bela Lugosi. But, of course, by now you’re palpitating for further details of this beguiling passion – what’s she like, is she pretty, how big is she?
The “beguiling passion” mentioned in this 1 May 1942 appreciation of the picture turns out to be Janet Ann Gallow’s Cloestine, and Coe – after averring that “Bela Lugosi becomes the town’s philosopher, a sort of perverted Frank Craven” – concludes with “… there are other things you can read in this morning’s paper, so we’ll let you go now.” Earlier that year, on the 25 March, the Los Angeles Times’ Philip K. Scheuer tersely opined that “It’s a spooky movie, all right, in the best Universal manner and fairly ingenious. At the close the monster goes down in flames again – but that doesn’t fool us for a minute. He’ll be back, girls; he’ll be back. Grr.” Yet another prediction, but one that was ultimately less impressive than Bosley Crowther’s.
A fast paced, atmospheric romp through familiar countryside, The Ghost of Frankenstein might well be the next logical step to Boris Karloff’s well-stated fear: the Monster as henchman. Pretty much a callow bully here, he had moved from a date that went tragically wrong to finding a homey with whom to hang to palling around with little kids, all the while being manipulated by those who claimed to act in his – and science’s – best interests. No offense is intended in calling the picture an excellent journeyman effort, albeit the lack of a master’s touch is obvious and lamentable. The Monster and the franchise could – and would – do worse.
The Ghost of Frankenstein – 13 March 1942 – 67 minutes (SoS) CAST: Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein; Lon Chaney as The Monster; Ralph Bellamy as Erik Ernst; Lionel Atwill as Dr. Theodor Bohmer; Bela Lugosi as Ygor; Evelyn Ankers as Elsa Frankenstein; Janet Ann Gallow as Cloestine Hussman; Barton Yarborough as Dr. Kettering; Olaf Hytten as Hussman; Doris Lloyd as Martha; Leyland Hodgson as Chief Constable; Holmes Herbert as Magistrate; Lawrence Grant as Mayor; Brandon Hurst as Hans; Otto Hoffman & Dwight Frye as Villagers; Julius Tannen as Sektal; Lionel Belmore & Michael Mark as Councillors; Harry Cording as Frone; Dick Alexander as Vision; Ernie Stanton & George Eldredge as Constables; Jimmy Phillips as Indian; Eddie Parker – stunts
CREDITS: Producer: George Waggner; Director: Erle C. Kenton; Screenplay: W. Scott Darling; Original Story by Eric Taylor; Directors of Photography: Milton Krasner and Elwood Bredell; Art Director: Jack Otterson; Associate Art Director: Harold H. MacArthur; Film Editor: Ted Kent; Musical Director: Hans J. Salter; Set Decoration: Russell A. Gausman; Sound Director: Bernard B. Brown; Technician: Charles Carroll; Assistant Director: Charles S. Gould; Makeup: Jack P. Pierce; Gowns: Vera West
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MORGUE Synopsis : After a harrowing accident, the perpetually down-on-his-luck Diego Martinez accepts a gig as a security guard at the local morgue. He thought he’d had a lucky break, but as the night wears on, eerie occurrences and the suddenly not-quite-lifeless body of the victim leave him to wonder: how much otherworldly rage does it take to wake the dead?
The best Paraguayan horror film. –Cinéfiloz
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Aspect Ratio : 2.35:1
Not rated
Director : Hugo Cardozo
Media Format : Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, Surround Sound. color
Run time : 1 hour and 21 minutes
Release date : May 11, 2021
Actors : Francisco Ayala, Maria del Mar Fernandez, Abel Martinez, Pablo Martinez, Raul Rotela
Subtitles: : English
Language : English (DTS 5.1), Spanish (DTS 5.1)
Studio : Well Go Usa
Number of discs : 1
$29.98 S.R.P.
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