Movie review – “Tower of London” (1939) ***

Shakespeare’s genius is such that is that his work is adaptable into all sorts of cinema genres – they’ve been turned into teen films, soggy family melodramas, gangster epics. Here Richard III becomes a medieval horror film. It starts with a bang – impressive production values of castles and a terrific dungeon, Boris Karloff as a bald menacing hangman, blubbering Henry VI, a pike duel between Richard and his brother (Ian Hunter).

The cast is mostly top notch – in Rathbone, Karloff and Price, the film has one of the three top horror stars of all time. There’s also Ian Hunter and Leo G Carroll in support. The exception is John Sutton as the romantic male lead – extremely wet and every time he speaks a line of dialogue you want to laugh. Ralph Forbes is pretty laughable too as Henry Tudor and the woman who plays Edward IV’s queen really falters in the second half of the film.
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As long as the film focuses on its excellent actors this is entertaining. Rathbone has dash and drive, if not a lot of depth or complexity (or even much of a hunchback), and he gets to fence a few times. Price is whiny fun, Hunter makes a shrewd monarch, and Karloff is brilliant. Karloff’s known for his gentle monsters but there’s nothing too gentle about Mord here – he’s a complete badass, fanatically devoted to Rathbone’s king, desperate to fight in battle, happy to nail Price into a vat of wine or to arrange the murder of the two princes (quite a startling scene – a gang of cut throats ascend on two whining brats and Karloff throws a blanket over them).

However there’s no denying it gets flat in places, particularly whenever we cross to Sutton or the Queen. At least Sutton is captured and tortured – he’s so annoying this is an enjoyable sequence – but then he escapes. Presumably this is meant to make us happy, as is when he fights and kills Karloff at Bosworth; it’s a shame he couldn’t be a martyr to the cause.

But many enjoyable sequences: Karloff telling Rathbone how much he loves him, the murder of Price, the killing of the princes, (actually everything involving Karloff is memorable), the fencing scenes, the marriage of the five year old prince, Sutton’s girlfriend coming to rescue him disguised as a chimney sweep and showing a lot of leg as she climbs up the chimney. Good fun.