The Phantom Creeps (1939, Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind), Chapter 4: Invisible Terror

I suppose Invisible Terror, which doesn’t feature much invisible terror, is an improvement over the previous chapter. Terror does have Edward Van Sloan in a full flight suit waving a gun around threateningly. Not many opportunities to see such a thing.

The story continues to be Feds versus gangsters with Bela Lugosi (still thought dead) on the sidelines. Even when he uses his invisibility device to infiltrate the Feds’ headquarters–Edwin Stanley’s home lab. Stanley has an extremely dangerous substance and Robert Kent decides it’d be better to have it in a residential area than the government building in case it blows.

Priorities.

Kent–and lead sidekick Regis Toomey–can’t really get their heads around the case. For example, they think Jack C. Smith is one of the foreign agents, not Igoring for Lugosi. Kent once again shoots Smith multiple times–to get him to drop something–but it turns out okay because Lugosi can heal wounds with a ray.

It’s only the fourth chapter and the screenwriters have already given up on trying with the plot contrivances (maybe they did in the first and I’m blocking it). Dorothy Arnold just inserts herself into every situation, whether it makes sense or not.

The cliffhanger sequence is competently done, which is something. It’s not compelling because who cares, it doesn’t involve Lugosi and he’s all Creeps has got, but it is competently executed. Not sure much of it is original footage, so kudos to the editors for putting it together.

Shame they couldn’t make it dramatic too.

CREDITS

Directed by Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind; screenplay by George H. Plympton, Basil Dickey, and Mildred Barish, based on a story by Wyllis Cooper; directors of photography, Jerome Ash and William A. Sickner; edited by Irving Birnbaum, Joseph Gluck, and Alvin Todd; music by Charles Previn; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Bela Lugosi (Dr. Alex Zorka), Robert Kent (Capt. Bob West), Dorothy Arnold (Jean Drew), Jack C. Smith (Monk), Regis Toomey (Jim Daly), Edwin Stanley (Dr. Fred Mallory), Anthony Averill (Rankin), Dora Clement (Ann Zorka), Hugh Huntley (Perkins), and Edward Van Sloan (Jarvis).


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The Phantom Creeps (1939, Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind), Chapter 3: Crashing Towers

If Crashing Towers is any indication, the only thing keep The Phantom Creeps creeping along is top-billed Bela Lugosi. He’s not in the chapter much–more often than not he’s invisible–and, wow, are things rough without him.

In addition to the predictable bad acting from Robert Kent and Dorothy Arnold, Edwin Stanley–who’s not new to the serial–is fairly awful. Some of the fault is Beebe and Goodkind’s direction but especially the editing. The expository scenes in Towers, whether it’s Kent and Stanley or Lugosi and Jack C. Smith, the cutting is jarringly bad.

But in addition to the G-Men (Kent and his crew), this chapter introduces more of the enemy agents. Edward Van Sloan is their boss and he’s boring, not bad (and Edward Van Sloan should never be boring). There’s also Anthony Averill as the active foreign agent (Van Sloan sits at a desk). Averill’s real bad.

And Smith’s terrible here. He was mediocre (ish) before but he’s terrible here.

Crashing Towers is poorly executed, poorly acted, poorly written. There’s a fun car miniature but it’s just in a shot or two. Creeps is far more successful with the invisibility effects than anything else.

Whatever advances the serial made, quality-wise, in the previous chapter, are totally lost here. Nothing about it is memorable. Except maybe the footage from The Invisible Ray, which is only three years old but Lugosi looks like a teenager compared to his appearance in Creeps.

CREDITS


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The Phantom Creeps (1939, Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind), Chapter 2: Death Stalks the Highways

Despite a stupefying cliffhanger resolution–disasters happen, people just don’t get hurt–Death Stalks the Highways turns out not too bad. Comparatively.

Take Bela Lugosi for instance. He tries real hard with some of his acting. It’s not good, but he’s trying. The trying gets him ahead of Robert Kent, who’s not good but also not trying. Dorothy Arnold is initially a little less annoying than last chapter, but eventually she gets back to her previous grating achievement.

Lugosi gets to use his invisibility powers, which means invisible man special effects. They’re not great, but they’re not terrible. The visible “phantom” isn’t a particularly good idea. It’s a bad effect and a questionable idea. Why not just make him invisible?

But Highways is full of questionable ideas, like when Kent shoots someone six or seven times (I didn’t count) at near point blank range and only stuns the culprit. Kent tells Arnold he was shooting to stun. Because bullets work different in Phantom Creeps.

Much of the chapter is Lugosi and sidekick Jack C. Smith trying to get back to the laboratory for stuff they left behind. Directors Beebe and Goodkind do pretty good with the creepy house stuff–reporter Arnold is there, trying to scoop Army copper Kent, while Lugosi and Smith are cleaning out the lab. They’re got help from the robot. The robot’s a hoot.

And there are some decent shots towards the end. Phantom Creeps is surprisingly decent a few times in Highways. I’m not exactly hopeful–Kent’s really, really bad–but the serial’s not dread-worthy. Well, maybe not dread-worthy.

CREDITS


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The Phantom Creeps (1939, Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind), Chapter 1: The Menacing Power

The Menacing Power does all right setting up the hook of The Phantom Creeps–Bela Lugosi is a mad scientist with various technological inventions he’s going to use for nefarious purposes–and even manages to gracefully segue between the expository setup and the chapter’s cliffhanger.

So far Lugosi’s made an invisibility wearable, an eight-foot plus tall robot, and discovered a new element. That new element lets him blow things up and put people in comas. Lugosi puts the positive part of the element somewhere, then puts the negative part on a spider. The spider crawls over, somehow attracted to the positive, and boom. It’s ludicrous and the pull-string spider is probably Power’s worst effect. Some of the composite shots are iffy, but the jerky movement of the spider wins. The composite shots appear to be reused footage. Spider is for Creeps.

Lugosi’s kind of terrible but only until the other cast members get more to do. Leading man Robert Kent is fairly atrocious, ditto leading lady Dorothy Arnold. He’s an Army captain out to get Lugosi’s technology for the U.S.A. (Lugosi wants to sell to a foreign power because money) and Arnold is a reporter. Undoubtedly some sparks will fly later on.

This chapter also introduces Edwin Stanley as Lugosi’s former science partner, Dora Clement as Lugosi’s suffering wife, and Jack C. Smith as his monosyllabic sidekick and lab assistant. Directors Beebe and Goodkind don’t seem like they spend much time on actors’ performances; both Stanley and Clement disappoint, but Smith’s solid. He finds Lugosi obnoxious. It makes him immediately sympathetic.

Phantom Creeps isn’t off to a great start, but it’s also not off to an intolerable one. The title refers to Lugosi. When invisible, he calls himself the Phantom.

CREDITS


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Dracula's Daughter (1936, Lambert Hillyer)

Dracula’s Daughter starts as a comedy. With Billy Bevan’s bumbling police constable, there’s nothing else to call it. Sure, the opening deals with the immediate aftermath of the original Dracula–returning Edward Van Sloan arrested for driving a stake through a man’s heart–but it’s all for smiles, if not laughs. Bevan’s terrified expressions carry the movie until it’s time for Gloria Holden to show up.

Holden plays the title role. She’s in England to dispose of her father’s remains and to paint (and to prey upon the living). She’s not happy about preying upon the living and Garrett Fort’s screenplay implies its all going to be about vampirism as a compulsion. Top-billed Otto Kruger ties everything together; he’s a society psychiatrist, trained by Van Sloan, who ends up defending his old teacher while taking an interest in Holden. She’s in society because her paintings? It’s unclear why anyone would invite her. Fort’s script isn’t good on narrative progression.

Holden thinks Kruger might be able to help her with the vampirism. She assumed her father’s death would help, but her man servant and familiar Irving Pichel convinces her otherwise. Pichel’s just around to encourage Holden’s bad habits. He definitely looks creepy, but he doesn’t treat her with any respect, much less fear. It creates a bit of a tonal imbalance–the vampire isn’t bad, the human encouraging her is bad–until Holden finally takes up the villain reins.

Once Holden and Pichel go after Nan Grey (who’s rather good in her small part), it’s clear the happy London society dalliances are soon to be over. See, Kruger’s her doctor too. And he’s going to get to the bottom of it. Can Holden convince him to join her–possibly replacing Pichel–in Transylvania before Kruger can dehypnotize Grey long enough to find out who attacked her?

It’d be a far more effective twist if Holden’s character were better developed (and established in the first place) and if director Hillyer didn’t direct Kruger like he’s always waiting to react to a punchline. Once the initial comedic stuff is over–though Scotland Yard man Gilbert Emery is mostly for laughs (including the film’s best ones)–Hillyer starts giving Kruger these close-ups where he’s just reacting to something or pensively smoking. I guess he needs to be doing something since he’s not figuring out Van Sloan’s not crazy and Holden’s got something weird going on.

Twenty-something Marguerite Churchill is quinquagenarian Kruger’s assistant. She’s an heiress or something so she gives him a lot of guff. She’s also, of course, enamored with him. Because why wouldn’t she be enamored with her fifty-year old boss. They don’t have any romantic chemistry, though occasionally Kruger does come off paternal. Too occasionally.

Churchill’s unprofessional jealousy of Holden eventually gets her in a lot of trouble, kicking off the final act, where Kruger’s got to fly to Transylvania to try to save the day. He doesn’t, as it turns out, because Fort’s script is goofy. I wonder if it had to contort itself through the Hays Code. Hopefully. At least contorting for the Code would provide an excuse.

The film’s got good sets and fine photography from George Robinson. Hillyer starts with some creepiness, but soon gives it up. Why the film should want to scare Bevan’s bumbling constable but not Churchill or Grey’s damsels is another of its mysteries. There are some excellent foggy London effects and some real mood with Holden, in her black wraps–though Holden’s costuming when she’s not a creature of the night is grey and drab.

Holden’s okay. The film’s failures aren’t her fault. They’re not Kruger’s fault either, but he’s so miscast after a while–and Hillyer’s direction of him is so awry–he gets tiring. Van Sloan’s fun for a while, but he too can’t survive. Churchill’s just annoying. Maybe it’s supposed to be the part.

Dracula’s Daughter is an almost solid production of a troubled script. It’s a bunch of ill-fitting pieces mashed together without success.

0/4 ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Lambert Hillyer; screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on a suggestion by David O. Selznick and a story by Bram Stoker; director of photography, George Robinson; edited by Milton Carruth; produced by E.M. Asher; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Otto Kruger (Jeffrey Garth), Gloria Holden (Countess Marya Zaleska), Irving Pichel (Sandor), Edward Van Sloan (Professor Von Helsing), Marguerite Churchill (Janet), Gilbert Emery (Sir Basil Humphrey), Nan Grey (Lili), and Billy Bevan (Albert).


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The Mummy (1932, Karl Freund)

The Mummy is a strange horror movie. While there’s a definite villain–a monster–in Boris Karloff’s resurrected mummy, he poses a danger specifically to only one cast member–Zita Johann. She’s the reincarnation of his lost love and her exact importance to him isn’t clear until the last act. There’s a somewhat goofy moment where Edward Van Sloan, as Johann’s guardian and the closest thing to Karloff’s nemesis, reveals it all to David Manners (as Johann’s more appropriate suitor). Fortunately Van Sloan experiences the eureka moment just in time but not too early… otherwise the entire last act could have been avoided.

And the last act is the payoff of The Mummy. There are some excellent sequences throughout and Karloff is fantastic, but the last act is where Johann gets to toggle between a reincarnated Egyptian priestess finding herself in the 20th century and her initial character. It’s less than fifteen minutes of the runtime, but it’s awesome stuff. There’s an abrupt ending to the picture, but it has gotten the job done.

Van Sloan is reliable, Manners is likable–he and Johann’s initial flirtation scene is one of the film’s more successful ones between the couple. Arthur Byron is good as another Egyptologist.

John L. Balderston’s script has a lot of fine moments too, especially for Byron, as he comes to terms with meeting a reincarnated mummy.

As for Freund’s direction… it’s always good, but sometimes exceptional. Great editing from Milton Carruth too.

The Mummy is lean and successful. Rather good stuff.

3/4 ★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Karl Freund; screenplay by John L. Balderston, based on a story by Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer; director of photography, Charles J. Stumar; edited by Milton Carruth; music by James Dietrich; produced by Carl Laemmle Jr.; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Boris Karloff (Imhotep), Zita Johann (Helen Grosvenor), David Manners (Frank Whemple), Arthur Byron (Sir Joseph Whemple), Edward Van Sloan (Docter Muller), Bramwell Fletcher (Ralph Norton), Noble Johnson (The Nubian), Kathryn Byron (Frau Muller), Leonard Mudie (Professor Pearson) and James Crane (The Pharaoh).


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Dracula (1931, Tod Browning), the digest version

Even though it still falls apart at the end, this truncated, eight millimeter version of Dracula is better than the regular version. It’s exactly what I was hoping for from these Castle Films digests.

All of the long dialogue scenes are gone. There’s no explanation of vampires, the entire sequence before London is gone, no one even identifies Dracula by name until the flopping finish. It’s a really neat way to see the film, as it changes so many implications.

Even better, Lugosi doesn’t even have any lines. He’s a mysterious predator, not an awkwardly accented royal. There’s just enough romance between Helen Chandler and her beau too. It efficiently establishes the characters. Chandler’s first encounter with Lugosi is random chance, which makes Lugosi’s Dracula far more dangerous.

I wasn’t expecting much from this version, but Dracula finally works out. Until that ending, which is just too broke to fix.

2/3 Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Tod Browning; written by Hamilton Dean, John L. Balderston and Garrett Fort, based on their play and the novel by Bram Stoker; director of photography, Karl Freund; edited by Milton Carruth and Maurice Pivar; produced by Browning and Carl Laemmle Jr.; released by Castle Films.

Starring Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula), Helen Chandler (Mina), David Manners (John Harker) and Edward Van Sloan (Van Helsing).


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Frankenstein (1931, James Whale)

I’m trying to imagine how Frankenstein looks on the big screen–maybe on one the size of Radio City Music Hall; James Whale fills the screen upward. He directs the viewer’s attention always up, starting with the first scenes in the tower laboratory. The frames are obviously filled with extensive detail, which video certainly does not preserve. This style–tall screen (versus wide screen)–amplifies the watered-down Expressionist sets.

The film’s set design is stunning. Again, to complement Whale’s tall screen shots, the Frankenstein manor has cavernous rooms. The actors frequently occupy corners, making me wonder if theatrical audiences had to search for them in the expansive shots. But when the film’s sets are for the outdoors–the film’s famous graveyard opening for example–Whale uses the frame much differently. The painted backdrop, the endlessly murky sky, is Frankenstein‘s suspension of disbelief on-switch. Opening with it, Whale gets the viewer to accept he or she is no longer on familiar ground. Edward Van Sloan’s opening warning probably contributes as well.

Without a musical score, with incredibly delicate sound design and occasionally jarring cuts, Frankenstein is a strange dream. The first scene with Boris Karloff is the best example of this dream state. The nearly silent introduction to the monster, combined with the perspectively challenged sets, distances the viewer from Colin Clive and Van Sloan. This approach to the narrative–it being distant from the characters and more objective–really plays out in the last scene. As the Monster burns in the windmill, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him, but the film doesn’t encourage any sympathy. The lack of music really makes the narrative perspective indifferent.

That indifference only applies to the story of Clive and Karloff–and to some degree to Clive’s romance with Mae Clarke. The film’s very strange for the first act–with the grave-robbing, followed by Dwight Frye robbing the medical college (the lecture in the medical college is also worth some examination, which I’m not going to make time for here), then the rather frank scene between Clarke and John Boles. The friendship between Boles and Clive’s characters hardly gets any screen time, yet it’s present and important to the film. Frankenstein takes a lot of filmic shortcuts, usually to good effect, and that conflicted friendship is successful.

But it isn’t the most successful… the strangest thing about Frankenstein is the place of Frederick Kerr as Clive’s father. As it plays out, Kerr is the film’s main character. Even with all the conflict stemming from bringing a monster to life, the real focus is Clive and Clarke’s wedding, specifically what Kerr’s great scenes related to it. When Kerr first appears, Frankenstein changes direction–it goes from being uncanny to a bent traditional–and each of his scenes is better than the previous.

His performance isn’t the film’s best–all the principals are great, with Clive somehow turning that field day for overacting into one of Hollywood’s greatest portrayals of insanity. But in Whale’s detachment, Clive becomes even more removed in his recovering sanity. Boles and Clarke occasionally seem like they’re in a melodrama, but both have some great moments. Van Sloan’s great, as is Frye.

Karloff’s performance is singular.

Only in the end–like with most Universal horror films–does Frankenstein begin to show its stitches. The lack of content, of actual story, comes out as everything begins to run together (the Monster’s off screen rampaging, the attack on Clarke) and logic hops out the window. Around the same time, men in 1930s dress appear alongside the guys in lederhosen, which might give logic a shove.

It doesn’t really matter much, because by that time, Frankenstein‘s already established itself. Whale’s technically superior hunt through the mountains and the windmill finale, as narratively problematic as they are, still work great.

Dracula (1931, Tod Browning)

I never got Dracula. Even as a kid, I never watched it over and over, like I did the other Universal monster movies. When I went back and saw it in the late 1990s–after Ed Wood–Bela Lugosi’s performance horrified me. He makes funny faces and does Charles Atlas exercises for scary body language and woodenly says his lines. Apparently some blame Lugosi’s English-speaking skills on this performance (the lack thereof), but really, the line’s are just crap and hadn’t Lugosi been on stage in the play version? If so, he should have at least been responsible for inflection.

Regardless, while Lugosi is a major problem with Dracula, he’s hardly the one who breaks it. He might make silly faces, but the whole approach of the film is wrong. Dracula, more than any film I’ve seen, exists solely for the audience. These events aren’t happening to the characters in the film, rather they’re happening so the viewer can see them happen. Characters talk about each other when they’ve never met, nor is there any suggestion they’ve met, but the viewer has met both and so he or she is able to make some kind of connection. This example is indicative of Dracula’s narrative style and it isn’t–in itself–a bad thing. It just isn’t used to any effect. It’s pointless and a sign of some bad writing. The further signs of bad writing–when, for example, Van Helsing promises to deal with the vampiric Lucy–whose been feeding on small children–then does nothing… well, either a scene got cut or no one read the script before they started shooting. Further script problems include the comedy relief, which doesn’t really deserve to be mentioned. Some of the storytelling problems might stem from Dracula coming soon after the change to talkies, as it did have a silent version released at the time, and most of the film is actually silent. I wonder if the silent version, with intertitles, would be better.

The acting ranges from good to awful. Lugosi’s bad, so is leading man David Manners. Helen Chandler’s girl in distress isn’t always bad–when Chandler’s doing a scene with her friend, I almost thought I was wrong about Dracula, since the scene was so good and Chandler so likable (turned out I wasn’t)–but she does occasionally slip between her “British” accent and her native South Carolinian, which is distracting. Dwight Frye is good as Renfield. Only Edward Van Sloan–as Van Helsing–gives a really good performance, interpreting Van Helsing as a severe German, straight out of an Otto von Bismarck biopic. He even mimics some of Lugosi’s mannerisms, which almost sets up a juxtaposition, at least visually, but the story never catches on.

Even with all its defects, Dracula still manages to disappoint overall. The conclusion is hurried and nonsensical, not just leaving me wondering what’s going on in a broad sense, but also in an immediate one. Like, why Manners and Chandler are going up the huge staircase instead of leaving the creepy building? Perhaps it’s a metaphor for watching the film.

0/4 ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Starring Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula), Helen Chandler (Mina), David Manners (John Harker), Dwight Frye (Renfield), Edward Van Sloan (Van Helsing), Herbert Bunston (Dr. Jack Seward), Frances Dade (Lucy Weston), Joan Standing (Briggs, a nurse) and Charles K. Gerrard (Martin).


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