MovieFrightFare: House of Terror-ific Trivia

I'm a huge Lewton fan (I think everyone who buys the Lewton set becomes one as well as possibly for the directors Robert Wise and Jacques Tourneur).

I love lists (video or print) like this because it gets me to search out and watch other films. For fun got to watch Dr.Cyclops for the first time this weekend. Great print that is available and the technicolor looks fabulous with some bleeding here and there. There are so many great horror/sci-fi sets out there that one can see so many great films with only a (relatively) few DVD purchases.

Quick note: don't you hate when you post a comment and you notice later you made mistakes . I meant the only films in my top 1940s horror list that is not on your video is ... (argh).

Anyways here is my top 10 (plus one):

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948: Charles Barton): The most famous horror/comedy of its time with the monsters playing it straight.

The Lodger (1944: John Brahm): Beautifully directed remake of a Hitchcock film by German expressionist influenced John Brahm. Laird Cregar as the lead is quite good as a heavy-set doctor who could quite possibly be (or not) Jack The Ripper. Cregar reminds me a bit like Vincent Price (Price delivered his eulogy when Cregar died a little after his next picture) with a soft lisp and particular demeanor. There are some plot problems, but one of the top horror films of the 40s.

Hangover Square (1945: John Brahm): Another exquisitely sublimely directed film by John Brahm whose movies all bear a German expressionist flair that works quite well with suspense and horror. Laird Cregar’s (Criterion fans should recognize him as the devil in Heaven Can Wait) last role as he would shortly die from a heart attack in his early 30s because of a crash diet he undertook to become more attractive and possibly a leading man. His performance is quite good (not as daring as The Lodger, but probably a more excellent performance). Cregar plays a tormented composer whose mental blackouts might mask murderous rampages by his schizophrenic self. This film is almost a remake of The Lodger (1944) where Cregar is the lead and George Sanders returns playing Dr. Allan Middleton who is quite concerned with the health of Creagar who had fallen for the a showgirl who is taking advantage of his song writing capability.

The Wolf Man (1941: George Waggner): The pathos of the everyman character Lon Chaney Jr. makes a memorable tragic character. The Wolf Man is a very influential fun horror film that even has the original Invisible Man (Claude Rains) and Bela Lugosi.

Cat People (1942: Jacques Tourneur): An excellent psychological horror drama about a woman who won't kiss her husband.

Body Snatcher (1945: Robert Wise): Such an excellent Boris Karloff performance (his best since The Black Room (1935)) in this underrated 40s horror film. Actually I feel Robert Wise is underrated as a director as well. I had so much fun with this film. Boris and Bela are absolutely awesome in this.

Curse of the Cat People (1944: Rober Wise, Gunther von Fritsch): An effective and brilliant psychological drama with a touch of horror. It builds off the original with many of the same actors but the center of the story is an imaginative if slightly disturbed solitary child Amy (Ann Carter) of the Reeds (same characters from the original Cat People) whom her father Oliver frets that has somehow inherited traits from his first wife the tragic Cat Person Irena (Simone Simon). Amy has always had a wild imagination, but after she received a “wishing ring” from a mad aristocratic ex-actress Julia Farren (who lives in the spooky house down the block and has some similarities to Norma Desmond) she wishes and gets a new “imaginary” friend in Irena. The movie works well showing the loneliness of childhood and uses broken relationships in the Farren family to counterpoint true exclusion to the child’s unhappiness.

Leopard Man, The (1943: Jacques Tourneur): The blood running through the door is one of the better horror sequences out there.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943: Jacques Tourneur): Spooky. Hmm Val Lewton sure seems to dominate this list. I could probably interchange several of his films with the ones on this list. To those who do not have the box set, get it.

Night Monster (1942: Ford Beebe): The plot: Dr. Lynne Harper gets summoned to Ingston Mansion to help the daughter of the invalid owner (Kurt Ingston) Margaret Ingston who thinks she is going insane because of what she sees, the murders near the house and the fact that the maid keeps cleaning up blood spots. Meanwhile three doctors have been invited also to witness the improvement of Kurt who was left crippled because of an operation by the three (though it was not necessarily their fault). Kurt has been using the help of a fakir Agor Singh who is tapped into the spiritual power. Also visiting is Dick Baldwin (the protagonist) a writer who is friends with Kurt. Soon more killings happen in the household. Could it be the fakir, the butler Rolf (Bela Lugosi and we know the butler always does it, or does he), the misogynistic chauffer, the owner or the crazed daughter? Night Monster is an effectively directed film by Ford Beebee (director of the Bomba series and lots of sci-fi/horror ‘B’ films) that works well for most of the movie but fails at the very end. This is because it is obvious who the culprit is and the special effects are a bit of a let down too. However, there are enough suspects at the beginning to keep it interesting; though, there is the age old problem that when there are murders about it would be best to leave the house.

There are tons that are close to top 10. Films like The Seventh Victim are worth watching to fans of 1940s (not just horror).

And here is one extra of a film I like:

The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942: ***/****): Here is an early comedic/horror spoof on the Mad Doctor genre with the consummate Mad Doctor himself Boris Karloff. He is trying to create a super-race of superman; unfortunately, the experimental subjects keep dropping dead. He has an additional problem of owing lots of money to the local lender/sheriff/coroner/many more jobs (Peter Lorre) who takes his Siamese kitten wherever he goes. Luckily for Karloff this is solved by a nutty young lady (Jean Marie Donnell) who offers to buy the decrepit house so she can create an inn though there is a caveat that the Doctor gets to keep working on his experiments until he finishes them along with keeping his elder companions: an elder lady who wants chickens and an elder man who is quite proud of his pigs.

Add a traveling dance choreographer, a jealous ex-husband of the nutty young lady and a couple of unexplained murders (besides the bodies in the basement) and then the plot starts to get interesting.

This film has the second pairing of Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff (the first is “You’ll Find Out” which also has Bela Lugosi and the movie is not on DVD nor laserdisc and they would not be paired in a film until 1963’s “The Raven”) and the two act so well together that you wish everyone else was as devilishly delightful as this pair. If more time had been spent on making this film, fixing dropped plot points, better ending (except for a great line by Lorre) then this film could have been a brilliant parody. However, it is still a fun film that will please fans of Karloff and Lorre though might disappoint others. I enjoyed it -- well that is all that matters.

Now who is the Boogie Man?

That's a good set. "The Black Room" is one of my favorites of the 1930s horror which is probably my favorite decade for horror. Uncanny's performance in that is quite extraordinary and I feel one of his best (I recently saw an interesting performance of his in a non-horror JOhn Ford's The Lost Patrol).

I'm going to look at the silent era post later today.

The above posting of mine was pretty much a test to see how much I could post in a comment . Anyways now the most important horror films I have not seen from the 40s decade is Picture of Dorian Gray (yes embarassing). I will hopefully purchase it soon.