Movie review - "Ski Fever" (1966) **

 European version of beach party/ski movies. Shot in Europe with Curt Siodmak as director! Martin Milner is a dull hero. Claudia Martin is pretty as an American at a ski lodge. There's some lecherous Europeans. The girl who had dream sequences were funny. Nice ski shots. Some songs. A pool scene.

Boook review - "Donovan's Brain" by Curt Siodmak (1942)

 Siodmak's riff on Frankenstein - a doctor doing experiments in the desert comes caross a dying millionaire, saves his brain, the brain takes him over. So it's a battle for possession really and it works in novel format because we're hearing the guy's thoughts and Donovan's thoughts. Told in diary form.

It's a lot of fun, gripping to read.

Movie review - "I Walked with a Zombie" (1943) **** (re-watching)

 Val Lewton whinged about his pulpy titles that RKO management assigned him - they are of course part of these film' charm. Some thoughts:

- so wonderfully creepy with gorgeous low budged cinematography and use of wind, cane fields, mute woman

- Jane Eyre is a great basis for a horror movie

- acting competent except Tom Conway who is superb - he brought so nuch to these films

- progressive in many ways for its time: sensible female doctor, black maid who is not an idiot

- great shocks like the appearance of the black guy.

A very classy movie.

Movie review - "Aloma of the South Seas" (1941) ***

 Jon Hall and Dorothy Lamour were a huge hit together in The Hurricane but she was at Paramount and he was with Goldwyn then Universal so they only made one other film together, this one. It's a cute story, with the duo playing a couple who were betrothed as kids and then reunite as grown ups, after he's been to America.

It hits all the tropes - there's frolicking in lagoons, waterfalls, sarongs, colour, native feasts, volcano, a wedding ceremony. Lamour chuckles about Hall threatening to punch her.

Hall and Lamour are an amiable couple - she was a better actor than Maria Montez, warm and sympathetic. The show is stolen by Philip Reed as Hall's jealous nephew who wants Lamour - in one scene he casually shoots a random to death to scare Lamour. Another scene Reed confronts Hall with a rifle and as Hall approaches the action cuts back to Hall as a kid (Scotty Beckett I think) taunting the Reed character.

Someone called Lynne Overman is the comic relief. Katherine de Mille (Cecil's daughter) is in love with Reed.

Solid melodrama, cast and production values. Not directed with particular verve but it ticks all the boxes.

In her memoirs, Lamour wrote that Hall's nickname was Casanova "because he was known to disappear from the set for a romantic fling with any lovely girl who came along."

Movie review - "Earth vs the Flying Saucers" (1956) **

Not a fan despite the involvement of Ray Harryhausen, Charles Schneer, and Sam Katzman. Too many 50s American military men and flying saucers and men standing around being 50s.

There's too much Hugh Marlowe, who I've never liked - smug, dull. For a moment it looked like his brain was taken over by aliens and I was hopeful but alas no he was being heroic. There's unpleasant romantic scenes which seem to feature in too many 50s sci fi. Joan Taylor is a regulation brunette, Donald Curtis returns from It Came from Beneath the Sea, there's lots of narration and scenes of people fleeing.

The effects are decent enough - it was Harryhausen.I liked monuments being blown up. But for me this lacked magic.  It started off promisingly but just got annoying. Maybe it was just the Marlowe factor.

Book review - "Bride of the Gorilla" by Tom Weaver

No one really likes(d) Bride of the Monster, not even the people who made it or John Landis who did the introduction to this book or even Tom Weaver who wrote this book. But it's such an engagingly silly piece it's hard not to feel some affection for it - at least, for those who like gorilla movies.

It was written and directed by Curt Siodmak, a major writer of horror films whose reputation as director is much less imposing. It has in interesting cast including Raymond Burr, Barbara Payton, Tom Conway, Woody Strode and Lon Chaney Jnr. It's also got a decent story which as Weaver points out is like an early draft of The Wolf Man.

This book packs a lot in for a slight movie - there's an account of the making, of course, and reviews etc... but also the script, a detailed look at the music, an account of the final days of Siodmak (the world of horror fans can be catty!), an interview with Tom Neal's son, a look at the life of Chaney, and much more.

The one debit of the book for me was Weaver make the occasional cheap crack at Payton, which felt mean. But the book was a lot of fun.

Movie review - "The Ape" (1940) **

In the 1996 thriller Extreme Measures Hugh Grant uncovers a plot where shady doctors and nurses are operating on homeless people to develop a technique to cure paralysis... fifty years before that Curt Siodmak came up with a junky film about kindly-but-mad Boris Karloff using spinal fluid to cure a crippled girl's paralysis.

That's a great motivation for a mad scientist and this throws in a killer gorilla as well.The gorilla knocks off someone useful for the experiments, so when the gorilla dies Karloff steps in Frankenstein-style putting on a gorilla outfit so he can kill people and use the serum.

That's a strong story, enough for a full length feature if developed properly, which this isn't at a little over 60 minutes. Maris Wrixon is likeable as the crippled girl and Karloff is always good; the rest of the support cast is not as strong. It's silly and fun though not really that good.

Movie review - "Beast with Five Fingers" (1946) ***

A rare horror film from Warner Bros but it was directed by Robert Florey, who had some experience in the genre, and written by Curt Siodmark, who had a lot. Andrea King is terrible and Robert Alda dull but the real stars are Peter Lorre, who is superb as the twitchy servant, and the severed hand.

Some of this is very good - the hand attacks especially. There is too much non horror, it takes a while to get going, J Carroll Naish's comic detective got on my nerves, but it is fun.

Script review – “I Walked with a Zombie” by Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray

Val Lewton’s take on Jane Eyre, set in the Caribbean – which makes total sense since Mrs Rochester in the book came from the West Indies. There have been some changes: the nurse (Betsy) is hired to look after the crazy wife, Jennifer. The brother (Wesley) is the Rochester figure’s brother. There’s also a mum – a missionary’s wife who’s becomes sympathetic to voodoo to get her work done.

 

Not an ounce of fat on it – maybe it could have done with more fat. Betsy falls in love with Paul (the apparently attractive brooding brother) very quickly – and we miss the big scene of Wesley refusing to pack Jennifer off to the insane asylum. 

 

I also feel we miss something in the character of the mother – when all’s said and done she’s a bit crazy to have turned her daughter-in-law into a zombie. And now I’m nitpicking we could have done more building up to Wesley’s (the brother’s) actions at the end, setting Jennifer free so he can kill her. Maybe this was more in the original script – I read a transcript. 

 

Still, highly intelligent and thoughtful, especially in it's treatment of voodoo, and enough walks by Betsy through windswept gardens and beaches at night to be scary even on the page.

TV review – “Tales of Frankenstein” (1958) **1/2

The success of Curse of Frankenstein saw many offers from the US for Hammer, including a possible TV show. This was the pilot for a series which never eventuated with Screen Gems (Columbia’s TV arm) and it’s fascinating viewing for the Hammer fan. It’s in black and white, unfortunately, and only runs 30 minutes, but the sets are fine and Anton Diffring is in good form as the Baron.

The plot concerns a couple who visit the Baron, asking for his help; he declines (busy with experimenting on his creature in the basement), and the husband dies. Then the Baron digs up the body, and puts it in the creature. Creature goes on rampage. The end. I guess that is your standard Frankenstein film at the end. This feels a bit more Universal horror than Hammer – the make up is similar to Universal, as are the sets (it was shot in Hollywood and directed and co-written by Curt Siodmak). There’s a good scene at the end where the wife tries talking to her husband in Frankenstein’s body.

Movie review – “The Climax” (1944) **

Universal wanted a sequel to Phantom of the Opera but Claude Rains didn’t want to repeat his role and Nelson Eddy wasn’t available, so instead they came up with this MAWB (may as well be) sequel. It reprises many of the same elements as that first film – there’s a mad person played by a distinguished horror actor (Boris Karloff), Susannah Foster singing opera, technicolour, gorgeous sets (including the opera house), a handsome leading man (Turhan Bey), an impressive support cast (including Gale Sondegaard); the plot involves a man being obsessed with Foster, who also has to battle a jealous primma donna.

But it doesn’t have the name recognition of the Phantom or the crashing chandelier – or the underlying feature of love. So the story is weak at the core. The Phantom wanted to do the best for Foster, to support her career; that’s what made him kill. But Karloff’s hypnotist wants to stop Foster singing. (Another influence on this is Trilby, which actually would have been ideal material for a Phantom follow up but presumably they couldn’t get the rights. It’s a shame because I think that would have solved the problem - Svengali wanted Trilby to sing.)

There are other story problems too – Karloff doesn’t really do anything villainous apart from kill the singer at the beginning, and try to stop Foster singing. He should have done a few nastier things. You keep waiting for him to kill someone, especially the nasty primma donna but no – she lives; everyone lives - he doesn’t even kill Sondegaard. To top things off, his death scene is unmemorable – a fire at his house (which doesn’t wreck the big performance).

Bey is a little irritating. During the first opera show, they keep cutting back to him chewing on his program – it’s like he or the director or whoever went “what a great bit of actor’s business” and kept putting it in the film. There are too many close ups of him looking mooningly at Foster, and he’s too much like a stage door Johnny, running around after this girl (he’s meant to be a great composer but we don’t see that much of it – and the way he carries on when Foster can’t sing it’s like “What’s your problem, Bey? Afraid your meal ticket won’t come through?”)

Gale Sondegaard is wasted – it would have been better had she been in cahoots with Karloff. Foster is likeable and very pretty, with that great voice – it’s a shame her subsequent life had so much tragedy (although she lived to a great age.) The sets are tremendous - Deanna Durbin must have seen all the money and colour that this got and wondered why she was never treated this way at Universal.

This film goes to show you can still have all the elements, but if you don’t put them in the right order it’s not going to work.

Movie review – Invisible #3 – “The Invisible Woman” (1941) ***

After two invisible man films, Universal decided to play it for comedy – this was based on a story by Kurt Siodmark and Joe May, but was rewritten by, among others, writers who later worked for Abbott and Costello.

The best known member of the cast is John Barrymore, who plays the professor who invents invisibility. Yet again Barrymore spoofs his boozing reputation – his first scene have him tippling in the lab - but he is fun to watch. Virgina Bruce plays the title role, a model who is dissatisfied with her humdrum life (1940s feminism!) who answers an ad to be invisible from Barrymore. She uses her powers to get revenge on her boss, and comes up against some comic gangsters.

The humour is quite risque – you never really think of Claude Rains and Price being naked in their invisible man movies (apart from references to being cold) but you’re very conscious Bruce is nude. She’s always stripping her clothes off, and she flirts with John Howard (fun as a playboy).

This movie is very similar to modern day fantasy romantic comedies like Just My Luck - likeable girl discovers something extraordinary and uses it to help beat baddies and get the man of her dreams. As such its one of Universal's most fascinating pictures. It's a bit creaky and perhaps there should have been at least one villain who was a serious threat rather than comic, but the cast give it there all and I enjoyed it a lot.

(NB Maria Montez is in it and has one line.)

Movie review – Tarzan#13 – “Tarzan’s Magic Fountain” (1949) **

Johnny Weismuller finally grew too old to play the Lord of the Jungle (though it would be fun to see an elderly Tarzan in at least one film), so producer Sol Lesser went looking for a replacement. He came up with Lex Barker, a handsome model type who has the physique for the part but doesn’t quite work; Weismuller bought a real dimension to Tarzan, a sense of child-like wonder and savagery – Barker just looks like this male model with well-groomed hair. So in a way it’s kind of appropriate he co-stars with the unmemorable Brenda Joyce as Jane, who also looks like a model stuck in the studio jungle.

I understand they wanted to give the series some continuity but it’s a shame they didn’t grab the opportunity to introduce a new Jane. Joyce was always going to be up against it following Maureen O’Sullivan, and she faced competition in her films from more interesting female characters – Amazons, Huntress, Mermaids, and in this one a female aviatrix who has discovered the secret of youth. But the fact is she’s not very good; she’s bland and nagging, too contemporary, and wears lots of clothes all the time so she can’t distract with her body. (Is this why all those films had strong female characters? Because of Joyce?)

The plot is at least a bit different (Curt Siodmark was a co-writer); Tarzan discovers the diary of a lost Amelia Earhart-like flier – apparently a man was blamed for said flyer’s murder, but she’s alive and living in eternal youth land… looking like Evelyn Ankers. Tarzan knew where she was all this time, without telling Jane – which leads one to surmise that he ducked over for a bit of nooky (like he presumably did with the Amazons). Ankers comes back to society, meaning that she will age… which is quite an emotionally powerful story, when you think about it – it sets up a good conflict between Jane (who wants to escort her back to eternal youth land) and Tarzan (who has promised to keep the land secret). Of course baddies go about tracking down the fountain of eternal youth and Tarzan has to stop them – so it’s not super different but at least there’s that eternal youth twist.

There’s a decent action finale, with Tarzan and Jane ducking fire arrows set off by more militant members of the lost civilisation (who, you know something, are perfectly justified – Tarzan has told a whole heap of people about their wold). And there are some actual black people in this too, as opposed to Arabs or Puerto Ricans. (Not playing members of the lost youthful civilisation though – they’re all as whitebread as they come.)

Movie review - "Bride of the Monster" (1951) ** 1/2

Curt Siodmark stepped behind the camera to direct this decent piece of jungle schlock, which seems to draw inspiration from The Letter and also Val Lewton films in that there may not be a monster.. Raymond Burr lusts after Barbara Payton so kills her husband after which he turns into a gorilla. Right on! Its silly but proceeds logically, the cast is a never ending delight - in addition to Burr there's Payton, who later became a hooker in real life and died mysteriousy, plus Lon Chaney as a native South American (!) and Tom Conway as a copper.

Movie review - "Son of Dracula" (1943) ***

Actually not the son but the man himself, whose moved to America to start a new life. Although Bela Lugosi was still around Universal decided to cast Lon Chaney Jnr, who they were building as a star - although Chaney was a brilliant wolfman and an OK Frankenstein's monster he's a very poor Dracula, this chubby mid-Westerner looking ill at ease as a suave European.

That's a shame since this film as so much else going for it: vampires totally fit in with the "world" of the American south where most of the action takes place (swamps, black servants, plantations, bayous, rich old men in wheelchairs), the central story is a good idea (Louise Allbritton wants to marry Dracula so he'll turn her into a vampire and can spend all eternity with her real boyfriend, Robert Paige), there's a great scene where Paige shoots at Dracula but the bullets go through him and his his fiancee, the Robert Paige character is pretty much emotionally destroyed by all the stuff he goes through in the film, Frank Craven and J Edgar Bromberg offer good character support.

Movie review - "The Wolf Man" (1941) ****

Excellent werewolf film with a top notch script from Curt Siodmark, that is beautifully structured and invented some werewolf mumbo jumbo that has since been taken as lore (esp the poem that is recited through the movie). Universal provided perhaps their best ever cast for a horror film: Lon Chaney Jnr, coming off Of Mice and Men, was being launched as a horror star and he is excellent as Larry Talbot, the kindly (if a bit lecherous and forceful when it comes to pursuing Evelyn Ankers) American who turns into the title character.

The great appeal of the story is that it is a tragedy, Chaney is a good man who gets bitten because he is brave (i.e. trying to rescue someone from a wolf attack), it's not his fault and there's nothing he can do about it - and Chaney's miserable, haunted face is perfect for the role. Claude Rains isn't believable for one second as Chaney's father, but he has class and presence to spare, and his acting is very good, and at the end very moving.

Ankers is lovely and makes a real character out of potentially a thankless role - in the looks dept she's totally out of Chaney's league but she makes her attraction to him believable (enough) (I think what's behind it is she's engaged to handsome but bland Patric Knowles and along comes this new interesting American with these haunted eyes and she likes the drama of it - even if he has the looks of, well, Lon Chaney Jnr).

Ralph Bellamy, Warren William and Knowles have little to do in their roles but offer more class; Bela Lugosi is highly effective in his one scene, and Maria Ouspensaka is the definitive creepy gypsy woman. There's not an ounce of fat on this - Chaney arrives, meets Ankers, is bitten, turns werewolf, meets a tragic end - it's beautifully done.

Well, mostly: why is Knowles cool with Chaney in one scene but friendly in the very next one? Why is Lugosi working as a fortune teller on the night of a full moon when he knows he's a werewolf? (Even if he doesn't know, his mum does). Why does Lugosi become a proper wolf but Chaney a man with makeup? And they might have been better hiding the make up instead of revealing it from the get go (it does make you laugh at times). But it looks great, is very well made and deservedly confirmed Chaney Jnr as a horror star.

Movie review - "I Walked with a Zombie" (1942) ****

Val Lewtown does Jane Eyre set on a terrifically atmospheric island. There is a catatonic wife, a brooding plantation owner, his alcoholic brother, seemingly normal mum, insolent locals, calypso, slave history and lots and lots of voodoo. Frances Dee goes for walks through the cane fields at night, with the wind blowing and stars lighting it up; is night time along deserted beaches, shanty townships. 

The performances are of a superior quality - B actors rising - and the technical qualities top notch. Tom Conway really sounds like his brother George Sanders here. And less than 70 minutes, too!