skjam

The Black Cat (1934) dir. Edgar G. Ulmer

Mystery writer Paul Alison (David Manners) and his bride Joan (Julie Bishop) are spending their honeymoon in Hungary, starting with a private compartment on the Orient Express. As so often happens, the railway company accidentally double-booked their compartment with a courtly but somewhat sinister-seeming middle-aged gentleman. This is Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi), who is returning to Hungary to visit a friend after spending fifteen years in a Russian prisoner of war camp, and then some years traveling. Since it will only be a few hours, the Alisons agree to share their space.

At their stop, it's raining heavily and the Alisons board a bus for the Hotel Hungaria, which Dr. Werdegast is also planning to stay at. The driver explains a bit of the local history. The location they're traveling through was the site of a fierce battle during World War One, during which the fort defending the area was taken and destroyed by the Russians. On the ruins of the fort has been built the modern house of engineer/architect Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). In the heavy storm, the bus crashes, killing the driver and wounding Joan.

There's nothing for it but to head to Engineer Poelzig's house, which is convenient for Dr. Werdegast as the architect is the old friend he was coming to visit. The word "friend" is perhaps a bit generous. Hjalmar was in charge of the fort during the battle, and Vitus believes that he sold out to the Russians, resulting in the fall of the stronghold and Vitus' capture. It would explain how Hjalmar escaped unscathed and had plenty of money afterwards. What the architect definitely did do, though, was lie to Vitus' wife Karen that her husband had died. He then bigamously married her and took Karen and her daughter (also named Karen) to America. And then to several other countries before circling back to Hungary, buying the site of the old fort and building his new house there.

Poelzig, despite his own sinister appearance, is not so bad a host that he'd turn away stranded travelers, so the Alisons are allowed to stay while Joan recovers. Also, he finds Joan striking in a way that reminds him of Karen, as did Werdegast. Hjalmar claims to Vitus that both Karens are long dead, but that's not entirely true. Dark deeds are afoot as the new moon and a Satanic Mass approach!

This movie was the first time Karloff and Lugosi had appeared together, and they have good chemistry which explains why they were so often matched in other films. The best parts of the film are them playing the game of being polite and friendly while trying to outmaneuver each other mentally and being charmingly sinister.

The set design is excellent, the modernistic house with its tricks, above the remaining caverns of the old fort with their dark secrets. There's also a nice soundtrack with classical pipe organ music. 

The Alisons are...okay for their roles. They're the ordinary folks who have stumbled into a decades long feud and have no context for what's going on. Joan's actress does get to stretch her acting muscles a bit during a sequence where's she's been drugged and severely out of character.

As expected by the title, there is a cat. However, since the title was chosen first for the Edgar Allen Poe spooky cred, but not any story ideas, it's not a central character. Dr. Werdegast is violently ailurophobic, and attempts to kill Engineer Poelzig's pet cat. (There's a yowl offstage and the cat is claimed to have been killed.) There's some discussion of the possible Satanic connections of black cats and the notion that cats have nine lives, and later the cat shows up alive and well without even a bandage. It plays no part in the climax, and as far as we know survives the ending.

The cultists who show up late in the movie for the Black Mass are a little disappointing; they're extras there to fill up space and remarkably passive. One of them at least gets to play the organ.

There's a couple of actual humor bits to lighten the tone. Two gendarmes with very strong views about which of their home towns are the most tourist friendly, the actual words of the Black Mass (but for that you need to know Latin) and a bit at the end where Mr. Alison reads a review of one of his books that criticizes unbelievable plots.

Content note: Murder, lesser violence, no blood. Poelzig keeps his previous victims on display. Also, he married his stepdaughter and is an overcontrolling husband. Peril to a cat. Younger viewers may need some guidance.

This is a must-see movie for both Karloff and Lugosi fans as they're true co-stars here. It's just over an hour long, so would make a good double feature for family scary movie night.

The Ape Man (1943) dir. William Beaudine

Jefferson Carter (Wallace Ford), wise-cracking reporter, is waiting at the docks for a ship to come in. A mysterious fellow (Ralph Littlefield) tips him off that one of the people waiting is Dr. George Randall (Henry Hall), who recently reported his research partner Dr. James Brewster (Bela Lugosi) missing. Dr. Randall is there to meet Dr. Brewster's sister, Agatha Brewster (Minerva Urecal), a noted Spiritualist who was trapped in Europe when the war began. Dr. Randall advises Agatha that her brother is not missing, as such, but before he can go into more detail, Jeff and his fellow reporters try to get an interview with her. Only promising a later appointment gets them to back off.

At the Brewster house, in the secret laboratory, we learn that Dr. Brewster foolishly insisted on being the first to test the scientists' latest breakthrough. As a result he's turned himself into an "ape man" with stooped posture, hirsutism, and lowered impulse control. He's taken to locking himself in a cage with a gorilla (Emil van Horn) when he fears losing control altogether. Dr. Brewster has a hypothesis for a cure for ape man syndrome, but Dr. Randall refuses to cooperate. You see, it would require an injection of fresh human spinal fluid, the harvesting of which would kill the donor.

Meanwhile, Jeff is teamed up with rookie photographer Billie Mason (Louise Currie) to get the interview with Agatha Brewster. Their subject evades the question of strange noises in the house by playing a record of a Scots ghost, but Jeff's suspicions are aroused, especially when it turns out Billie accidentally caught a blurry image of Dr. Brewster in the background of one of her photos. (They don't know, of course, that this simian looking image is itself Dr. Brewster.)

Dr. Brewster eventually finds a source for one dose of spinal fluid, and since it's a fait accompli, Dr. Randall performs the injection, then cuts ties. The injection eases Dr. Brewster's symptoms, but only for a short time. He's going to need more spinal fluid, which means many donors. Murder ensues.

Stay tuned for the twist ending involving the mysterious man who's been popping up throughout the story.

This movie immediately invites comparison to The Ape given they both involve gorillas and spinal fluid. But where Dr. Adrien was a high-minded fellow whose motivations are at heart altruistic, Dr. Brewster is entirely selfish. We don't learn precisely what his original formula was supposed to accomplish, but it must have been tempting enough to make him want to dose himself. And he seems to show not the slightest qualms about sacrificing other people's lives to make his own more comfortable, even before he resorts to murder. His lowered inhibitions don't drive him to murder, they just give him an excuse. Also, the story gives us no chance to know who he was before his transformation.

World War Two is a background event, Billie is hired because Jeff's previous photographer was drafted, and Jeff himself will be in the Navy in thirty days, so he feels some urgency to wrap up the story. The newspaper people trade banter in the Forties tradition, with Jeff's sexism getting more prominent as the story progresses. Billie does break one of the photojournalism rules by not bringing her camera along when she breaks into the Brewster place later. True, it wouldn't have mattered when she was captured, but it's the thought that counts.

This is very much a low budget flick churned out in a few days because everyone involved needed to eat. As for the writing, the twist ending retroactively changes the tone of the whole story. And not in a good way.

Still, it's a Bela Lugosi movie, and it's got some charming bits. It's short, so maybe a themed double feature with The Ape for buddy movie night?

White Zombie (1932) dir. by Victor Halperin

Madeleine Short has come to Haiti to join her fiance Neil Parker. On the ship over, she met plantation owner Charles Beaumont, who shortly became her very good friend. Mr. Beaumont offers his fancy mansion as the site of the young couple's wedding, and is so taken with Neil that he offers to appoint the young man as his agent in New York City. What a nice man! Of course, if you've seen any of the advertising for this film, you know it's a horror movie so something must be wrong.

Neil hasn't been at his bank job in Port au Prince very long, so he's not conversant with the native customs. He and Madeleine are baffled when their coach has to stop for a burial ceremony being performed in the middle of the road. A bit later, the driver stops to ask directions of a man with intense eyes (Bela Lugosi), who grasps Madeleine's scarf. When the driver sees who's with the man, he immediately starts the coach rolling again. He warns the young couple of the living dead. "Zombies!" The driver dumps them at the Beaumont plantation entrance.

The couple are startled by a figure coming out of the dark, but it is only Dr. Bruner, a local missionary who's been summoned to perform the wedding ceremony. Dr. Bruner may be a little scatter-brained, but he knows Beaumont is not the type to be so generous to strangers, and wonders what the catch is.

The catch is that Charles Beaumont has fallen in love with Madeleine himself, and is determined to have her. Thus he is willing to make a cruel bargain with "Murder" Legendre, the man with the intense eyes and owner of the local sugar mill. Beaumont's initial plan is to turn Neil over to Legendre to make vanish, on the assumption that he will then be able to seduce Madeleine. Legendre, who claims the ability to read people's minds by looking in their eyes, assures Beaumont that this plan will not work. He counter-proposes turning Madeleine into an obedient zombie who will possess all her beauty but none of that pesky free will.

Beaumont tries one last time to change Madeleine's mind, but in the end feels he has to administer a drug that in combination with Legendre's voodoo powers will put her in a cataleptic trance. Once Neil is convinced his wife is dead, Legendre can raise the woman to be Beaumont's lover.

This was the first feature-length Hollywood zombie movie, loosely inspired by a 1929 book about Haiti's customs and superstitions. As such, it became influential in how Haiti, voodoo and zombies were depicted for years. Pity that it didn't try very hard for accuracy on that first one.

Good: Legendre gets just enough exploration that we can get a feel for where he's coming from without ever losing track of the fact that he's a villain. "Murder" is a man of humble origins who has used cleverness, treachery and uncanny abilities to turn his enemies into his slaves and assume a position of relative wealth and power. He enjoys humbling those who have looked down on him. Despite some handwaving about the drug used to induce catalepsy, it's clear that Legendre has actual supernatural powers of some sort, being able to open doors without touching them, and direct the zombies without verbal or physical commands.

By comparison, Beaumont is just a privileged white dude who thinks his wants are actual needs.

The most horrifying scene is early on, as one of the sugar mill workers stumbles into the grinder and is (offscreen) ground up, without a sound or reaction from any of the other workers, because they're all zombies.

Less good: The director wasn't used to the new sound era, and some of the cinematography shows this, with odd wipes and staging. And of course there's the whole thing with stereotyping Haitians. Some bits of the plot get a bit incoherent (like, how did the two maids get from Beaumont's house to Legendre's?)

Content notes: This is a pre-Code film, and there's a naughty shot of the bride to be in her lingerie. Also Beaumont is at one point reasonably willing to have non-consensual sex with Madeleine, but changes his mind after she's been zombified.

Overall: A bit creaky and showing its age, but a fine performance by Lugosi and at a little over an hour won't feel like a waste of time, excellent for double features!