Tag: Lionel Atwill

The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942, Joseph H. Lewis)

I spent the first fifteen minutes of The Mad Doctor of Market Street wondering why the movie didn’t have a better reputation. Yes, the title’s bad even before it was marginally ableist, but director Lewis has been rediscovered; why not Market Street. It starts as a traditional, albeit modern Universal horror picture with “pseudo” scientist Lionel Atwill killing some unwitting dope. Atwill wasn’t trying to kill the guy; instead, he used invermectin to put him in suspended animation, then revive him later. And it didn’t work.

So Atwill shaves his sinister guy beard into a mustache, puts on a dinner jacket, and gets mildly debonair on a cruise ship. He’s sailing to New Zealand under a false name, with detective Byron Shores also onboard, trying to sniff him out. Except Atwill’s shaved, so he’s basically invisible.

The movie then sets up its ensemble cast: leading lady Claire Dodd, leading man Richard Davies, Una Merkel as Dodd’s comic relief aunt, Nat Pendleton as comic relief lunkhead with a heart of gold, and John Eldredge as dipshit officer. Merkel’s going to New Zealand to finally get married, Pendleton’s going for a fight, Dodd’s accompanying Merkel, Davies is an M.D. working his way to an internship in Australia, and Eldredge doesn’t like Davies liking Dodd.

Thanks to Merkel and Pendleton, it feels like some weird MGM comedy, and for a while seems like it’ll be about the passengers finding out Atwill’s not what he appears.

Only, no, there’s a shipwreck, and they end up on a tropical island, and it turns out Market Street is a racist South Seas picture. Atwill saves Rosina Galli, one of the superstitious natives (who wear the latest swim trunks), and declares himself “the God of Life.”

It’s real bad—everything with the natives. So the reason Market Street has never been rediscovered is it isn’t some early moody, low-budget suspense thriller from Lewis; it’s just a cringe-worthy mess of racism.

Though there’s a surprisingly affecting scene later between Galli and Atwill when she thanks him for resurrecting her, something the film never quite explains.

Anyway.

After becoming the local deity, Atwill decides he will need to take a bride, and Dodd’s the lucky girl. It’s just as Dodd and Davies start getting cozy. So, lots of drama, fisticuffs, and bad wisecracks from Merkel.

Market Street becomes a screwball thriller, at least in how Lewis and cinematographer Jerome Ash shoot it. Lots of characters in static, very long medium shots, bantering and reacting. The ship sequence is well-directed and inventive with budget. The island stuff is mind-numbingly middling. It’s the identical setups and stagings, over and over again.

Atwill starts the movie as a caricature and then becomes its subject, not its lead, which works. He’s unpleasant to be around, in a good way. Also, in a bad way, when he’s running the island and bossing around chief Noble Johnson.

The cast is almost entirely likable. Eldredge is too much of an asshat, but otherwise, even Merkel eventually becomes sympathetic. Some of her problem is lousy timing from director Lewis, who doesn’t know what to do with humor. There’s one moment where Pendleton delivers a witty retort to Merkel, and it ought to be great, but Lewis is entirely confused.

Given it being a racist South Seas movie, however, it’s better there aren’t many pluses. There’s also something to be said about pre-World War II Hollywood racist characterizations being very similar to the mid-sixties mainstream sitcom ones.

In other words, Market Street’s a messed up three-hour tour. Even without the racism, it’d be a mess, though it’s one of those stories you can’t do without the racism.

Icky bad.

But also not a terrible movie. Just a surprisingly disappointing and mortifying one.

Doctor X (1932, Michael Curtiz)

Doctor X has pretty much the wrong prescription for everything. After a genuinely creepy first act, which has police autopsy consultant Lionel Atwill telling the cops the only place a monthly serial killer could get a particular scalpel is at Atwill’s school and then giving them a tour and everyone there being in some way familiar with cannibalism, the movie becomes an old dark house picture before going off the rails with its finale reveals. But it’s also a lousy gag comedy, with reporter Lee Tracy bumbling around—a lot of bumbling—and then a weird romance with Tracy unintentionally wooing Atwill’s daughter, Fay Wray. Sometimes it seems like the wooing is intentional, but then it’s the opposite during other scenes.

Robert Warwick plays the police commissioner who’s investigating the case. Atwill takes back to his medical school to introduce all the suspects, but then Warwick disappears from the main plot. It’s a real bummer because, without Warwick, there’s room for so much bad acting. Bad acting and weird decisions from the screenwriters and director Curtiz.

The most annoying weird bit is George Rosener as Atwill’s creepy butler. Roesner spends the first quarter of the movie just looking suspicious—according to a witness, the murderer’s really ugly, and Roesner’s creepy dude fits the bill. For the audience, anyway. See, when Atwill takes all the suspects out to his Long Island house to hook them up to blood pressure monitors and try to get them worked up watching murder reenactments, it’s pretty clear Atwill’s not good at his job and isn’t going to be able to catch the killer. Especially not since, based on the nonsensical resolution (which turns movie-long clues into plot holes), none of his ideas about catching the killer would’ve worked. There’s a lengthy fight scene at the end, and as it drags on, one has time to reflect on how little the bad science makes sense given the reveal.

So it would help if Doctor X had a bunch of good acting to make up for the script.

It does not.

Best is Warwick, then Atwill (after a lackluster first half, he recovers well in the second), then Wray. And Wray’s not particularly good; she’s got a terrible, silly part and no chemistry with Tracy because he’s a pest. But she’s not bad. And there’s a lot of bad. The worst is Preston Foster. He’s atrocious.

Oh, wait, I got sidetracked talking about Roesner. Who’s also got a terrible part because he’s not actually a creepy butler; he’s just a regular dude who no one in the movie knows is a creep. There’s a whole scene where he teases maid Leila Bennett (who’s good, but barely in it), and you think he’s intentionally being mean, but then he’s weirded to Wray later, and she’s okay with it, taking it as concern. Who knows how it’d play if director Curtiz weren’t entirely checked out regarding his cast’s performances.

The color photography from Ray Rennahan is just okay but charming. He’s trying harder than almost everyone else, who’s not trying at all. And why would you with the script? But, still, someone had to realize Tracy shouldn’t be just bumbling for long scenes, all by himself.

It’s not the worst, but it’s still a reasonably comprehensive fail.

House of Dracula (1945, Erle C. Kenton)

House of Dracula is immediately disappointing. The film opens on man of science Onslow Stevens as Dracula (played by a boring John Carradine) comes visiting, hoping for some cure to vampirism. Will Carradine try to seduce Martha O’Driscoll’s fetching nurse? Will something go wrong with Stevens’s cure for Carradine? Unfortunately, yes to both. Director Kenton and screenwriter Edmund T. Lowe Jr. don’t so much have foreshadowing in Dracula as much as they immediately follow tangents.

The film feels relatively tame; I wonder if it was meant for a more child-aged audience than usual. George Robinson’s photography is boring, though somewhat competent–the shadows don’t tell stories or hide monsters, they’re just contrasted well against the lights. There’s no nuance to Dracula. Kenton’s particularly disappointing.

Lon Chaney Jr. escapes mostly unscathed. He has a lousy part but he does try. Same goes for the rest of the cast, with the exception of Carradine. Once Stevens starts to feel the effects of the vampirism, he plays an excellent Mr. Hyde. But Lowe’s script is still lame. Kenton’s direction is still disinterested.

Some of the problem is how uncomfortable the film gets with Jane Adams’s nurse. She’s the hunchbacked assistant this picture, only Lowe doesn’t give her anything to do. Kenton gives her a little more–mostly because O’Driscoll’s just around for the nurse’s outfit’s skirts–but not enough. The film’s in desperate need of a protagonist. It’s not Stevens, it’s not Chaney, it’s not Adams.

In Dracula’s smallest significant role–inciting, wrong villager–Skelton Knaggs does some good work. It’s a shame there’s not a good film here for him to be doing that work in.

House of Dracula barely runs sixty-five minutes. It’s boring from the first three minutes. Nothing so short, so full of monsters and effects and Universal contract players should ever be boring.

House of Frankenstein (1944, Erle C. Kenton)

Just over half of House of Frankenstein is glorious. Kenton’s direction is outstanding, the sets are imaginative, the actors are doing great. Beautiful photography from George Robinson. House is a scary movie, what with physically but downright evil Boris Karloff running the proceedings. What doesn’t work–like John Carradine’s “just okay” Dracula–gets smoothed out by unexpected gems, like Anne Gwynne and Sig Ruman. It all starts to fall apart when second-billed Lon Chaney Jr. shows up. It’s not Chaney’s fault, it’s just when exhaustion is setting in.

Well, except the general exhaustion accompanies some script problems. Edmund T. Lowe Jr.’s third act for House of Frankenstein is unmitigated disaster. If Kenton had embraced the chaos, maybe the film would’ve kept its momentum, but he tries to rein it in and fails. All of the subplots come up–with the exception of Carradine, who basically gets his own episode. That episode, costarring Gwynne, Ruman, Peter Coe and Lionel Atwill, is probably House’s best section. The sets aren’t the best, but it’s a creepy little story. And Gwynne, Ruman, Coe and Atwill are all pretty dang good, Ruman and Gwynne more so. But the other little stories, which Lowe and Kenton do succeed in establishing and encouraging throughout the busy picture… they don’t end well.

Karloff and Chaney suffer the worst. Karloff had almost half the picture to be amazing and then the second half reduces him to a bit part of a lame mad scientist. It goes from being a physical role to a sedentary one. Karloff is spellbinding in the physical parts. Standing around in a lab coat, he seems like he’s just cameoing. As for Chaney, he never gets a good part. He’s got good chemistry with Elena Verdugo, but she gets all the material. She’s quite good, but the film does just have Chaney standing around.

Verdugo’s part of both Chaney’s subplot and J. Carrol Naish’s subplot. Naish is Karloff’s assistant. Naish is pretty darn good in the film, because you want to like him, you want to be sympathetic. He’s kind of a creep though, so maybe it was a mistake to feel sorry for him. But then what does that rejection of sympathy say about you? Kenton and Naish have a great time with the character throughout the film and it even seems like he might get something to do, but no. The third act fail takes Naish down with it.

By the time Glenn Strange starts moving about as the Frankenstein Monster, the film’s completely derailed. Howe’s script can’t bring all the elements together right. The measurements are off. Simultaneously disappointing, the acting is nowhere near as good in the last fourth or so. The angry, thinly written (and acted) villagers in the second village can’t compare to Gwynne, Ruman and Verdugo examples of villagers. The frustrating thing about House is it seems to realize its collapsing. There’s a resigned air to the third act, which should help with certain storylines, like Chaney, Verdugo and Naish’s, but it doesn’t.

So it’s a disappointment. A glorious disappointment, with mostly great direction from Kenton, some excellent acting from Karloff, Gwynne and Verdugo, some decent acting from Naish and Chaney, wonderful production values (until the final act), and an occasionally ingenious script from Lowe. It’s a shame all the dim moments came together at the end.

Son of Frankenstein (1939, Rowland V. Lee)

Son of Frankenstein is a mostly wasted opportunity. For everything good, there’s something significantly wrong with it. The script is good, director Lee doesn’t direct actors well. The German Expressionist-influenced sets are great, Lee shoots it so stagy, the sets go to waste. Lee likes his long shots. He and editor Ted J. Kent do nothing to make the cuts interesting. Though, really, Kent doesn’t have any material to work with. Lee has about six different shots and he just goes through them in a cycle. It’d be annoying on its own, but with everything else, it gives Son of Frankenstein way too much narrative distance. If the sets had been worse, if the actors had been better, who knows….

The Son in the title is Basil Rathbone. He is returning to Castle Frankenstein. Oh, right–it’s basically a lot like Young Frankenstein. Rathbone discovers the monster, brings it back to life, chaos ensues. He’s got a wife (Josephine Hutchinson in an admirable performance given all the constraints on her–Lee’s lack of direction, Rathbone’s inability to share scenes) and son (Donnie Dunagan, who’s supposed to be adorable). Right off, Rathbone’s a mad scientist. Most of the film has him hanging out with Bela Lugosi (who understands how to upstage a screen hog and delivers a fairly solid performance). Lionel Atwill’s around as a police inspector with only one arm. Yes, there’s a dart scene in Son too.

Oh, right. The Monster. Boris Karloff. You’d think he’d be important but he’s not. There’s no room for Karloff or the Monster in Son, not with Rathbone, Lugosi and Atwill. Atwill’s got more chemistry with Hutchinson than Rathbone and Atwill’s not even good. Lee doesn’t direct him and sort of lets him dangle in the film’s most thankless, but most important role.

Karloff is great. He has almost nothing to do, but watching him examine himself in the mirror, one can just imagine how good it would be with better direction. Cooper’s script is full of little moments Lee just can’t convey. The script’s far from perfect–anyone but Rathbone needed to be the lead the story, the part itself is inherently unlikable and Cooper doesn’t go anywhere interesting with it.

Really lame music from Frank Skinner doesn’t help things.

Even when Son of Frankenstein feints to impress, it manages to disappoint. And most of it is Lee’s fault.

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942, Erle C. Kenton)

The Ghost of Frankenstein is pretty bad stuff. Running less than seventy minutes, it’s unbearably boring from the twenty-five minute mark, once the picture focus on Cedric Hardwicke.

Ghost opens with villagers pursuing Bela Lugosi’s evil hunchback. Though awful, Lugosi’s at least an enthusiastically vile character. Hardwicke–playing a neurosurgeon with his own castle (he’s a Frankenstein, after all)–is bad and boring.

Besides the subplot (if one wants to be gracious and call it a subplot) involving the Frankenstein monster (Lon Chaney Jr. here) befriending a child, played by Janet Ann Gallow, the best thing in the main part of the film is the flashback to the original Frankenstein. It’s never clear, but the flashback infers Lugosi was the hunchbacked assistant in that film. Only, he wasn’t… Dwight Frye doesn’t just appear in the flashback, he shows up at the beginning of the film too, along with some other Universal monster movie regulars.

Also lousy is Lionel Atwill. He and Hardwicke have some painful scenes together.

The end’s pretty cool for a few minutes, when Lugosi’s evil brain ends up in the body of the monster. Chaney has a great time mouthing the words and doing a Lugosi impression.

Ralph Bellamy keeps a straight face for his role as town prosecutor (who knew Eastern European villages had legal systems based on the United States) and Evelyn Ankers is okay.

Scott Darling’s script’s disastrous; Kenton has a handful of decent shots. Nice photography of bad sets.

Ghost is ghastly.

Mark of the Vampire (1935, Tod Browning)

MGM cut at least twenty-five percent out of Mark of the Vampire, which accounts for some of the plotting problems but still leaves the film a little messy. Ben Lewis’s editing is weak during dialogue exchanges, not just in general. And no amount of studio interference could have changed Browning’s reliance on weak special effects.

There is, however, one special effect sequence of startling mastery. Unfortunately it only lasts six seconds.

Vampire is a mix of Universal horror and MGM character drama. Elizabeth Allan and Henry Wadsworth are the engaged couple, Donald Meek is the comic relief, Lionel Barrymore is the wise old man. It feels very comfortable, but it’s so plot-heavy (it’s impossible to know if Browning intended it to be so) one can’t really enjoy the cast enough. Though Allan’s weak and Wadsworth looks lost in a horror film.

Vampire tries for reality–it has a definite setting, a small town near Prague in 1935–and is partially successful.

Jean Hersholt is fantastic as Allan’s guardian. The film contracts a lot in scope–the studio edits move the halfway point up twenty minutes. But Hersholt keeps it grounded for that first half, before he can pass it over to Barrymore.

Browning too occasionally has a great shot or two (ably assisted by James Wong Howe’s photography) but not enough overall. He usually stumbles during the dramatic scenes.

Vampire should be better. Maybe, before the studio got ahold of it, it was more successful. And maybe not.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Tod Browning; screenplay by Guy Endore and Bernard Schubert, based on a story by Browning; director of photography, James Wong Howe; edited by Ben Lewis; produced by Browning and E.J. Mannix; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Lionel Barrymore (Professor Zelen), Elizabeth Allan (Irena Borotyn), Bela Lugosi (Count Mora), Lionel Atwill (Inspector Neumann), Jean Hersholt (Baron Otto Montay), Henry Wadsworth (Count Fedor Vincenty), Carroll Borland (Luna Mora), Donald Meek (Dr. Doskil), Ivan F. Simpson (Jan), Leila Bennett (Maria) and Holmes Herbert (Sir Karell Borotyn).

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Man Made Monster (1941, George Waggner)

Man Made Monster, at least for the first fifteen minutes (of an hour), gives Lon Chaney Jr. one of his best roles. He gets to be the affable guy his other performances from the forties often hint he’s capable of being, but never gets to be. Not surprisingly, Monster takes that aspect of his character away and turns him once again into a tragic monster. This time, Lionel Atwill is turning him into an electronic zombie.

Lots of Man Made Monster is familiar. The opening reminds a great deal of Unbreakable, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say M. Night Shyamalan is aware with this film–it’s clear from his films he doesn’t know anything about movies. And Danny Elfman has at least heard Hans J. Salter’s score, as he turned some of it into the Batman score.

The film’s uncredited legacy aside, it’s a misfire–too cheap, too short. There’s not enough time spent with Chaney to make it a significant tragedy and the special effects are goofy. A glowing electric man is not scary.

There’s a lot of great acting here. I’m not sure if Atwill’s ever had more fun; he’s a joy to watch as he oozes evil. Samuel S. Hinds plays the good scientist here and does well. Anne Nagel and Frank Albertson are somewhat unlikely love birds who figure Chaney’s not really bad; it’s got to be mad scientist Atwill.

Waggner has some great closeups and some mediocre medium shots.

It pretty much evens out.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by George Waggner; screenplay by Waggner, based on a story by Harry Essex, Sid Schwartz and Len Golos; director of photography, Elwood Bredell; edited by Arthur Hilton; music by Hans J. Salter; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Lionel Atwill (Dr. Paul Rigas), Lon Chaney Jr. (Dan McCormick), Anne Nagel (June Lawrence), Frank Albertson (Mark Adams), Samuel S. Hinds (Dr. John Lawrence), William B. Davidson (District Attorney Ralph Stanley), Ben Taggart (Police Detective Sergeant), Chester Gan (Wong), George Meader (Dr. Bruno) and Russell Hicks (Warden Harris).

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Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943, Roy William Neill)

Of all the Universal monster movies, The Wolf Man “deserved” a real sequel most. With Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Lon Chaney Jr.’s abilities to essay the Larry Talbot role really shine through. I’ve read (and maybe even repeated here) Chaney never gets credit for playing such a physical role while being a bigger man.

Here he actually starts showing off a lot of acting chops, as his character becomes, essentially, a suicidal lunatic. Being able to elicit sympathy with such a character is no easy task and Chaney does it. It helps having Maria Ouspenskaya around doesn’t hurt. In maybe three minutes, she and Chaney establish this surrogate mother and son relationship and whenever he talks about killing himself, they cut to her quietly sad expression.

Of course, the film’s got a lot of editing troubles of that nature (Bela Lugosi’s Frankenstein monster originally talked, making the film a direct sequel to the previous Ghost of Frankenstein, but they cut those scenes out) and there’s Patric Knowles’s way too rapid switch from caring doctor to mad scientist.

Knowles is fine at the beginning, when the film’s just a Wolf Man sequel, but gets silly when he returns. Ilona Massey is also a weak female lead.

The supporting cast is strong–Lionel Atwill, Dennis Hoey, Dwight Frye are all good. Rex Evans is a great villain, but never gets his comeuppance.

And Neill’s a solid director, even if he doesn’t top his opening shot.

Decent enough, could’ve been better.

This post is part of the Dynamic Duos in Classic Film Blogathon hosted by Annmarie of Classic Movie Hub and Aurora of Once Upon a Screen.

The Vampire Bat (1933, Frank R. Strayer)

It’s hard not to be, at least, somewhat impressed with The Vampire Bat, if only because it came out in 1933 as a knockoff Universal horror picture. Except at this point, there’d only been Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. The Vampire Bat brilliantly resembles a Universal horror picture in every way but the filmmaking. There’s the burgomaster, played by the same guy as in Frankenstein (Lionel Belmore). Dwight Frye plays a role somewhat similar to Renfield. It’s only the three principles who don’t really fit–and Lionel Atwill would go on to do a lot of Universal horror pictures.

The screenwriter Lowe eventually did write a Universal horror picture. It took him eleven years, but he wrote House of Frankenstein.

It’s a knockoff, but it’s an effective knockoff made on a lower budget without music. By Bride of Frankenstein, in 1935, music was very important in the Universal horror formula. Seeing one of these pictures without the music is very interesting–it’s a transitory step, but made by a different studio.

The film was shot on the Universal backlot at night. But the set isn’t directed like it’s a Universal horror picture. Frank R. Strayer had time to do a lot of crane shots. His interior shots aren’t impressive (way too much headroom), but the exteriors and transition shots, it looks like Curtiz shot it during his exterior movement phase.

It distracts the viewer from realizing he or she has never seen the exterior of Lionel Atwill’s house. It’s referred to as the castle, but it’s never shown.

Atwill is pretty bad. He would go on to develop a certain character and he hasn’t gotten to it here. Fay Wray’s in it, just before Kong. They don’t use her much. She’s the girl in peril, but only a little bit. The movie only runs sixty-five minutes. She’s second-billed and it’s like they couldn’t get her to stay up late to shoot.

The most interesting thing is Melvyn Douglas, being someone who went on to greater fame. He’s fantastic in this film. He’s very aware of what film he’s in, almost mugging for the viewer when he has to deliver crazy lines–actually, when the other actors deliver the crazy lines to him, you can feel his understanding of how absurd the viewer feels watching the exchange.

Maude Eburne plays Wray’s aunt. It’s never explained why Wray works for Atwill or why Eburne lives there with them (Wray probably lives here because she’s Atwill’s assistant). It’s also never explained what kind of medicine Atwill practices (or why he needs the Universal horror bubbling devices).

Thinking about The Vampire Bat at all, it collapses–which isn’t to say it holds up. It’s an interesting debacle. It ends on a joke and it’s one of the most unfunny jokes you could end on. There’s a whole comic element to the film. Eburne’s played for laughs and it makes no sense.

For a sixty-five minute film to be as meandering and as loosely constructed as this one, it’s impressive.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Frank R. Strayer; screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr.; director of photography, Ira H. Morgan; edited by Otis Garrett; produced by Phil Goldstone; released by Majestic Pictures.

Starring Lionel Atwill (Dr. Otto von Niemann), Fay Wray (Ruth Bertin), Melvyn Douglas (Karl Brettschneider), Maude Eburne (Aunt Gussie Schnappmann), George E. Stone (Kringen), Dwight Frye (Herman Gleib), Robert Frazer (Emil Borst), Rita Carlyle (Martha Mueller), Lionel Belmore (Bürgermeister Gustave Schoen), William V. Mong (Sauer), Stella Adams (Georgiana) and Harrison Greene (Weingarten).

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