Tag: Vincent Price

The Invisible Man Returns (1940, Joe May)

The best thing about The Invisible Man Returns is quite obviously Cecil Kellaway. He’s a Scotland Yard inspector who’s spent the eight years since the last movie preparing for another invisible man attack, making sure the Yard’s ready to go technologically.

Worst thing about The Invisible Man Returns? It’s a little long? There’s nothing really too bad about it. There’s just nothing too good about it either. John Sutton’s not bad. He’s just not good. Ditto female lead Nan Grey, who somehow manages to remain unaware of dirty old man Cedric Hardwicke’s lusty devotion to her. Hardwicke’s real obvious. He’s not ineffective either.

Okay, actually—worst thing about Invisible Man Returns? New Invisible Man Vincent Price. Despite being set in England, Price does this blandly gruff, very American voice. I was hoping he’d start, you know, using a Vincent Price voice once he got invisible but no. Sticks with the gruff thing the whole time. I can’t imagine it helped his performance anyway—scary thought, maybe it did.

With a better “monster,” the movie would be better. Especially given the contortions the script makes to get through the Code. Lester Cole and Curt Siodmak’s script, in that context, is easily the most impressive thing about the film. Otherwise, it’d be the effects, which aren’t every fantastic or narratively ambitious—the biggest effects set piece is a snorer with Price messing with Alan Napier. But the contortions….

Returns opens with an exposition dump in the kitchen of Hardwicke’s manor. None of the downstairs staff are important, it’s just for the exposition, which should be a better move than it turns out to be because there’s not much narrative efficiency later on.

Grey’s boyfriend (Price) is on death row—or whatever the English equivalent at the time—for killing his brother. Since going to prison, Hardwicke has taken over the brothers’ family mine business. From the first shot of Hardwicke it’s clear he’s madly in love with Grey and she doesn’t notice because he’s an old man with a terrible mustache.

Though maybe she doesn’t mind the mustache. Every guy in Returns except Kellaway and maybe Napier has a terrible mustache. You can’t tell with Napier because he’s covered in grime. Kellaway just doesn’t have one.

It’s the day before Price is going to be hanged so Grey finally has to plead with Hardwicke to call his friends in the government, which neither of them thought of doing until this moment, apparently. But, no, the Home Secretary is in Scotland so Price is going to die.

Or would die if it weren’t for Sutton, who just happens to be the brother of the original Invisible Man, something Kellaway figures out right away but apparently Hardwicke didn’t know about despite working with Sutton for a substantial time.

Sutton gives Price the serum, Price escapes, movie starts (after at least ten minutes of increasingly tedious exposition). Price has to figure out who killed his brother while Sutton has to figure out how to turn Price back to visible before Price goes criminally insane and starts murdering people.

The original Invisible Man, Kellaway tells us, murdered hundreds in the original movie, which doesn’t seem right but Kellaway would’ve exaggerated to get funding for his anti-Invisible Man task force. The task force turns out to be a red herring as the latter half of the film doesn’t have any big set pieces.

If the cast were better or showed signs of being better, their mediocre turns would be more disappointing. Any of them—Price, Grey, Sutton, Hardwicke—should’ve been able to walk away with the movie. Instead, they just manage to keep stride with it.

May’s direction is fine. Not at all distinctive, but fine. Frank Gross’s editing is probably the worst technical feature and, again, it’s not really bad, it’s just never, ever good.

Champagne for Caesar (1950, Richard Whorf)

What’s so frustrating about Champagne for Caesar is how little the film really would’ve need to do to be a success. It just needed a rewrite. Someone to come in and fix Hans Jacoby and Frederick Brady’s script, which is usually fine but they really can’t figure out what to do with Celeste Holm. And given Holm is second-billed (albeit below the title) and doesn’t come into the picture until moments before the halfway point… it’s like there needs to be a point to Holm.

And there really isn’t.

Up to the point Holm arrives, it really seems like the film knows what to do. Until then, the biggest problems with it are director Whorf’s bland close-up inserts—you can just imagine the actors mugging at nothing instead of the other actor in the scene—and Art Linkletter’s game show host. Linkletter’s supposed to be a jackass so he gets a lot of leeway—he really does seem like a jackass. But even he’s able to redeem himself and help move the film into position to really take off with Holm.

So the film, which starts consciously objectifying sunbathing Ellye Marshall because—as the narrator informs the audience—there won’t be any chance for it later, is actually about erudite Ronald Colman. Colman’s dedicated his life to learning all that is learnable, content to sit and read, doing the odd job to help with the bills, but it’s obvious sister Barbara Britton is supporting them. She teaches piano. It’s crappy—while Colman doesn’t look his fifty-nine years, he’s visibly older than Britton and there’s a story in how they ended up together, with Britton acting like she’s a spinster just because she doesn’t sunbathe.

This portion of the film, with Colman and Britton just hanging out and trying to get by while being eccentric—they invite Britton’s student, Byron Foulger, to a show and it ends up them watching a television through the store window. Historically accurate but it’s not a “show.” The scene has Foulger perplexed at how he’s ended up sharing the activity with them; it’s really strong stuff—Whorf’s direction is never better than in the first act, though there are some returns to form later on. Colman and Britton just perfectly click.

So Colman has this bad job interview with this weird soap company run by oddball businessman Vincent Price. What makes Price so funny is how everyone indulges his eccentricities when he’s really just a poseur. It pisses Colman off, so much he decides to sabotage Price’s game show—the soap company sponsors a quiz show and who better to go on a quiz show than Colman, who’s got encyclopedic knowledge and instant recall.

While at the game show, Britton gets taken with Linkletter, which doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a great arc or anything—quite the opposite—until they fall in love. Again, shouldn’t work, but does work. After Colman keeps winning, Linkletter offers to use Britton’s crush to snoop on Colman; except Britton knows Linkletter’s doing it and doesn’t care. She’s not going to betray Colman—though she’s against his game show revenge plan—but she’s also not going to stop seeing Linkletter.

Very unexpected, very well-executed. You get to see Price just completely lose it, which you’ve been hoping he’s going to do since his first scene and the payoff’s there. The third act bungles Price in a lot of ways—somewhat through neglecting him—but he’s mostly magnificent and absurdly so.

But everything going so well makes it seem like the film’s going to know what to do when it brings in Holm, who’s a professional troublemaker. Price hires her to seduce and destroy Colman. Holm poses as a nurse to take care of man cold suffering Colman, working to quickly sabotage him with her feminine wiles.

Except Holm mugs through all the feminine wiles scenes—very effectively, but it doesn’t seem like the script’s written for that approach. And, although he’s obviously taken with her, Colman’s not believably moony about her. The scenes where he’s got to be a jealous mess, Colman plays with a shrug. His character’s willing to lose $20 million to make a point, it doesn’t seem like Holm manipulating him will get much mileage.

During this section of the film—so the middle to the third act start or thereabouts—Britton basically disappears. Colman even comments on her absence. Presumably she’s off with Linkletter but seeing them sit around and talk about Colman’s chances on the game show would probably be more interesting than the feigned screwball stuff with Colman and Holm. If Whorf could keep up with the actors, it’d probably be fine. Colman and Holm are doing different things but never bumping into each other. They’ve got a professional grace, even though the script’s clunky and the direction’s detached.

Then Colman and Britton get back together in the third act to regroup and Caesar’s all of a sudden so much better for a moment; it’s like you’ve forgotten the ground the film’s lost through its runtime.

The ending’s not bad just flat. Tepid. Lukewarm. Blah.

There’s some excellent material in it—Price is a hoot, Britton’s quite good, Colman and Holm are solid; Caesar never tasks Colman and he always gives more than the scene needs. Just needs a better script and more decisive direction.

This post is part of the Vincent Price Blogathon hosted by Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry of Cinematic Catharsis.

Tower of London (1962, Roger Corman)

Tower of London almost makes it. The film gets through the low budget, which has a static picture of a model Tower of London instead of a picture of the real Tower for establishing shots, obvious backdrops, not great makeup to age or deform its cast, and the occasional reused footage. Director Corman keeps the pace up—the film doesn’t even run eighty minutes and covers two years and at least a half dozen murders. Well, more assassinations than murders. The film’s about Richard III (Vincent Price, who’ll either get a half sentence or a paragraph later, both are suitable) and his mad quest for power. He kills off kin, children, women, and the elderly, most of whom come back to haunt him as ghosts. See, Tower of London isn’t just Vincent Price and Roger Corman doing a historical horror picture together, they’re doing Shakespeare. More specifically, Price is doing Shakespeare, while Corman refuses to give Price that stage. Though probably for budgetary reasons, not to spare the audience.

The film’s best sequence is when handsome, fit, good guy Robert Brown is trying to get the Queen and her two sons to safety. Richard III, historically, in the play, and in this film, wants to kill off his little nephews so he can assume the throne. Brown isn’t going to let that happen. He’s handsome, fit, and good, after all. Unlike Price’s Richard, who’s got a varying-sized hunched back (it doesn’t jump left to right and then back, unfortunately) and an ostensibly withered arm. We never see the arm (Price always has on a glove) but it seems perfectly strong enough to wield a sword. But Price is a warrior, something Brown is not. Though Price being a warrior doesn’t matter because he goes crazy.

But the escape sequence. There are a few times in Tower of London when everything comes together and the escape sequence is the best example of it. Corman’s pacing, the sturdy professional performances from Brown, Sarah Selby, Joan Freeman, and Richard Hale (they all seem to be able to pretend they’re doing Shakespeare, not Tower of London), Archie R. Dalzell’s excellent black and white photography (it’s not moody but it’s outstanding), and, I don’t know, the added value of children in danger. The escape sequence is really good. You wish the movie could somehow end with it, even before you find out how the movie’s actually going to end.

Because Tower’s greatest strength is everyone but Price. Price gives a hammy, drooly performance, limping and wrenching his back to and fro, full of energy. His monologues are enthusiastically whiny. His character is a combination of a jackass and an idiot. The only people stupider in Tower of London than Price are the entire rest of the cast because he’s always killing people and never getting even suspected of it. When the rest of the cast finally gets to just act like they know Price is killing people left and right, Tower enters into its best phase—the escape sequence is in this portion. But getting to watch the actors opposite Price when he’s cavorting? Their professionalism, if not better (Joan Camden is actually good as Price’s wife, who Lady Macbeths him, and Michael Pate is kind of awesome as Price’s chief stooge), makes Tower interesting to watch.

Unfortunately the finale—and blame Shakespeare—gets rid of the supporting players and is instead just Price hamming it up in an absurd suit of armor—the costuming is probably inaccurate but is at least not absurd for most of the film, but Price’s king outfits are hilarious. There’s one where he wears the crown over his silly hat and then his armor has a visibly cheap crown incorporated into the helmet, which also has a big floofy feather. He should win the battle when everyone else starts laughing and he can take them out. He also doesn’t have much of a hunch in the armor, which is annoying since Price’s looked goofy the whole movie because he’s wearing such a big hunch, who knows how he might’ve played without it to leverage. Price somehow isn’t overtly theatrical, but borrows devices from such a performance and applies them badly to whatever he’s doing.

But, yeah, the end. No one else around to react to Price, just him blathering… Tower falls just when it needs to stay strong. It’s too bad, though probably inevitable.

Laura (1944, Otto Preminger)

Laura is a film with multiple twists and a brilliant screenplay by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein and Elizabeth Reinhardt but none of it would work without Preminger’s direction of his cast. Preminger’s direction, in terms of composition, is fantastic. Thanks in no small part to cinematographer Joseph LaShelle, every moment of Laura looks wonderful. Preminger has a fabulous way of positioning his actors, particularly Dana Andrews in the first half of the film, to enhance the performance. It’s not quite a trick, though it is separate from the other way Preminger directs the cast.

The film is able to get through its twists and turns, which–with a major exception–are entirely about the characters, not just because of how the actors succeed in those scenes but because of how they, and Preminger, have established their characters throughout. It’s also where the script comes in–for example, Laura works because Andrews and Clifton Webb bond. With the beautifully cut flashback sequence introducing the viewer (and Andrews) to Gene Tierney’s eponymous character, through Webb’s perspective–Louis R. Loeffler is the editor; don’t want to forget him–Preminger is able to sublimely arrange the characters for later revelations. Webb and Andrews play wonderfully off one another. Webb’s erudite snob and Andrews’s mildly laconic police detective are great together. The script goes for gimmicky dialogue; Preminger and the actors sell it thanks to a self-awareness.

Because, even though it’s a mystery, Laura needs a certain amount of melodramatic flair to succeed. David Raksin’s lush, emotional score, along with rainswept New York streets–not to mention the wonderful sets–Laura is far from realistic. Preminger never lets it go too far though. The film runs less than ninety minutes, with it changing tone fifty minutes in; that second half, very different from the first, still occupies the same spaces. The film’s exquisitely constructed.

The film’s major twist is incredibly melodramatic in its plot implications. All that careful construction is what makes it work so well.

And, like I said, that careful construction has to do with the actors as well. Like when Tierney and Andrews get together, their chemistry is perfect. Scene after scene, even as their relationship develops, the chemistry is precise. It’s a little more obvious–as Andrews moons over her–but it’s the same careful way Preminger established Andrews and Webb’s relationship.

All the acting in the film is excellent. Webb’s the best, just because. Andrews and Tierney are both great. Andrews gets to have more fun at the beginning of the film, but it’s only fair because co-star Vincent Price doesn’t get to have much fun until near the end of the film. Price’s good, Judith Anderson’s good. No one else got billed, but Dorothy Adams deserved it as Tierney’s maid.

Laura’s a phenomenal film.

This post is part of the Gene Tierney 95th Birthday Blogathon hosted by Simoa of The Ellie Badge.

The Bat (1959, Crane Wilbur)

There ought to be something good about The Bat, but there really isn’t anything. Agnes Moorehead is actually quite good, all things considered, and Vincent Price seems game too. Moorehead’s a successful mystery novelist vacationing in a scary old house–summering, actually–and Price is a murderous physician. Why is Price murderous? So the audience can suspect his every action in the film.

After a protracted first act, The Bat gets underway with terrifying Moorehead. Only Moorehead doesn’t terrify, she tries to get to the bottom of the mystery. It ought to be a cool turn of events, but director Wilbur’s screenplay is as abysmal as his direction (The Bat’s a thriller without any thrills whatsoever) and he doesn’t give Moorehead anything to work with. He doesn’t give anyone anything to work with, but Moorehead is visibly capable of improving a thin part. She just doesn’t get the chance.

The dialogue’s usually expository (Moorehead’s got such a bad part, her sojourn to the country never gets a good enough description). Sometimes it’s so expository Wilbur has to backtrack to explain how the characters could possibly know something, given it’s against all their previous development.

Like I said, Price’s game but he has nothing to do. Gavin Gordon’s bad as the investigating detective and Lenita Lane’s awful as Moorehead’s sidekick. Elaine Edwards isn’t bad.

William Austin’s editing is weak, though with Wilbur’s dreadful composition it’d be hard to cut together a good scene out of any of it. I suppose Joseph F. Biroc doesn’t do too bad with the cinematography. It’s competent, anyway, though not scary.

The fault lies with Wilbur. His script’s bad, his direction’s bad. Between Moorehead, Price and an old dark, house, there’s no reason The Bat shouldn’t have been at least amusing.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Crane Wilbur; screenplay by Wilbur, based on a play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood; director of photography, Joseph F. Biroc; edited by William Austin; music by Louis Forbes; produced by C.J. Tevlin; released by Allied Artists Pictures.

Starring Agnes Moorehead (Cornelia van Gorder), Lenita Lane (Lizzie Allen), Elaine Edwards (Dale Bailey), Darla Hood (Judy Hollander), Gavin Gordon (Lt. Andy Anderson), John Sutton (Warner), John Bryant (Mark Fleming), Harvey Stephens (John Fleming), Mike Steele (Victor Bailey), Riza Royce (Jane Patterson), Robert Williams (Detective Davenport) and Vincent Price (Dr. Malcolm Wells).

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Vincent (1982, Tim Burton)

I’ve probably known of Vincent since Batman but I’ve never seen it. It also turns out I didn’t know much about it–I though Vincent Price starred in it (he narrates) and I thought it was live action (it’s stop-motion).

Price reading Burton’s narration–it’s a beautiful bit of rhyming, reminding a little of Karloff and The Grinch–opens the film and it’s immediately captivating.

Burton’s use of stop-motion captures the imagination of its young protagonist, but the film’s never cartoonish. It’s far more affecting than if it had been live action because the viewer is able to see the protagonist in his element, instead of being artificially inserted into it through special effects.

It’s hard to believe it’s only five minutes; the stop-motion forces the viewer to pay attention.

Lovely photography from Victor Abdalov.

Burton produces a startlingly impressive piece of work; Vincent is quite wonderful.

3/3Highly Recommended

CREDITS

Written and directed by Tim Burton; director of photography, Victor Abdalov; music by Ken Hilton; produced by Rick Heinrichs; released by Walt Disney Pictures.

Narrated by Vincent Price.

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