Category Archives: Horror
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 9: The Fly (1958)
Director: Kurt Neumann
Writer: James Clavell, based on the short story by George Langelaan
Cast: Vincent Price, David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Charles Hebert, Herbert Marshall
Plot: A scientist (David Hedison) is found dead, his head and arm crushed into an unrecognizable mess. His wife (Patricia Owens) confesses to the crime, but refuses to provide details, although she seems obsessed with finding a strange white-headed fly. As the investigation begins they find she actually crushed him in a hydraulic press twice… something the victim’s brother (Vincent Price) cannot fathom, as they had a loving marriage. Owens begins to come unraveled, going berserk when a nurse crushes a fly on the wall. Finally, Price coaxes the truth from her: his brother was destroyed by his own invention – a disintegrator-integrator – which horribly mingled his body with that of a housefly, turning him from man to beast. As they attempted to find the fly that now had his arm and head, his mind became more and more frayed, until he finally begged her to kill him. Price keeps the story to himself, allowing the court to believe her insane, and sparing her from a murder charge.
Thoughts: I wish I could have found other films between the last one (1942’s Cat People) and this 1958 classic, but as I tried compiling my list, I was stunned at the utter dearth of memorable horror films from the late 1940s and early 1950s. This isn’t to say there weren’t scary movies, but that doesn’t necessarily make them the right choice for my little project here. It actually gets back to what I said about horror at the very beginning – horror is subjective. Each person, and in a larger sense, each culture determines for itself what it considers terrifying, and in the late 40s and 50s the fears of the American public weren’t running along the lines of vampires and witches and monsters. In the wake of the atom bomb, we were afraid of science gone wrong. With the rise of the Soviet Union, we feared the threat of international communism. The result is that the best, most iconic scary movies of this era don’t necessarily fall into the category of horror, but belong more appropriately on the science fiction list (which I hope to use for this same sort of project in the future). The truly disquieting films of the time were things like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – both excellent films worth discussing, but I feel like they belong more in the realm of sci-fi than true horror.
So that brings us to 1958 and The Fly, which still straddles the line between science fiction and horror, but falls with enough of its bulk on this side of the line to make it on the list. While not exactly built on hard science, the movie attempts more of a feeling of realism than most other sci-fi shockers of the area, which often dealt with the likes of insects and other animals mutating into giant beasts thanks to radiation exposure, eventually leading to their death by missile and their ridicule at the hands of a guy in a satellite and his two little robot pals. In The Fly, director Kurt Neumann does make an effort to help the science seem plausible, at least to an audience without deep understanding of such things. (At one point, while trying to guess the nature of his brother’s experiment, Price even suggests a flatscreen television.)
Vincent Price, of course, gets top billing for this movie, but for my money that really should have belonged to Patricia Owens as Helene. Price is in the framing sequence – the 30-minute buildup to the flashback and the 10-minute denouement at the end – but Owens really carries the film. We see her at the beginning as the shellshocked, borderline deranged woman who has just witnessed her husband’s death, then go to the backstory where she’s a kind, devoted wife. She’s really magnificent in the part, going from the heights of joy for her husband’s success to a slow spiral into despair when his experiment falls apart. Finally, at the end we get pain and resignation from her. Genre pictures are rarely recognized for the performances of their actors when award season rolls around, but I would put Owens’s performance in this film right up there with any great actress of the era.
The film follows a fairly standard format for horror films of the era, where the truly terrifying stuff happens largely off-screen. This is to the good, because when the blanket comes off David Hedison and we finally see his transformation… well… just as Owens is as fine an actress as any of the day, his creature costume is as goofy as any of the day. It’s a silly-looking monster helmet with a some device to make the pincers twitch a little bit. I find the final scene far more chilling – Price and the inspector (Herbert Marshall) manage to track down the white-headed fly to a spider’s web where it’s been captured and about to be consumed. The effect of a tiny little David Hedison caught in the spider’s web, superimposed against film of a real spider, is impressive by 1958 standards, and the effect of his miniscule voice pleading for help as the predator advances upon him is creepy even today. It’s probably the most memorable scene of terror from the film, far more so than the human-size fly.
The film plays upon the fear of unchecked science, questions of insanity, and a good dose of body horror (which, no doubt, is why David Cronenberg was the man tapped for the 1986 remake). All of these elements add up to one of the best films of the era.
From the end of the age of monsters, we’re about to step into the world of more psychological terror. Next on my list is the film many consider the first slasher movie, the 1960 film Peeping Tom.
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 8: The Cat People (1942)
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Writer: DeWitt Bodeen
Cast: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph
Plot: A young woman from Serbia meets and marries a handsome young American man. But their relationship is stalled due to a fear that, should she allow herself to become intimate with her new husband, she will fall victim to an ancient curse that causes people in her family to transform into killer panthers. After they’ve been married for some time – during which she never allows herself so much as a moment of physical passion with her husband – she begins to suspect that he is having an affair with his attractive young assistant. And then we realize lust isn’t the only emotion that can trigger the curse… jealousy works, too.
Thoughts: Like a lot of early horror films, this one uses folktales (real or imagined) as the basis of the monster, such as it is. The idea of an “old curse” is standard. What’s interesting to me is the way Irena (Simone Smith) claims the curse came upon her family: in centuries past, they dabbled in witchcraft and consorted with the devil, and as such were branded with this inability to grow close to anyone. This immediately calls to mind the question of how, exactly, they’ve managed to perpetuate the family line over the centuries, if they turn into monsters and slaughter anyone they grow physically intimate with. (The 1982 remake answered this question in the logical and extremely squicky way of saying that family members could only be intimate with one another, despite them being from Serbia and not members of any particular royal family.)
Of more interest – to me, anyway – is the way the perception of witchcraft has changed over time. Sure, whenever a movie that seems vaguely related to the topic is released today you get your requisite group of picket sign-carrying protestors condemning everybody who’s going to see the movie to Hell, but they’re considered a joke by both the media and most passerby who see them. In truth, these days if a movie uses witchcraft as its hook, we usually see a case of an innocent person accused of witchcraft and being tormented by an oppressive society. (For the best example of this, see 1996’s The Crucible, the script for which was written by the original playwright, Arthur Miller.) The alternative is typically a more classic representation of witchcraft wrapped up in a movie that’s laughable in its presentation of something that was once considered a very legitimate threat. (For the most recent example, as of this writing, see 2011’s Season of the Witch. This movie gets bonus cheese points for having Nicolas Cage with long hair while simultaneously being bald.)
At any rate, in 1942 witchcraft was seen as a much more legitimate source for horror, and a curse being a punishment that goes down generations was something that could cause true fear. The 1982 version of the film throws away the witchcraft elements in favor of a more vague curse, which is apparently still acceptable so long as you don’t specify that it’s a result of bubbling cauldrons or dancing in the moonlight with Mephistopheles. Even the specific manifestation of the curse is given a Biblical connection – Irena chats with a zookeeper who kindly takes the time to explain who the Book of Revelations describes a beast from Hell that is “like a leopard, but not a leopard,” which to him is pretty much the definition of a panther.
The other thing about this film that I find really odd is the way the relationship grows. In 1942, when filmmakers didn’t get quite as explicit about sex as they do today, they got away with a man falling and love with and marrying a woman who refuses any sort of physical intimacy – even so much as a kiss – giving him an excuse that would today either have the man drop her for a loony after the first date or do everything he can to get her onto Dr. Phil. Granted, Oliver (Kent Smith) eventually does seek out psychological help for Irena, but only several chaste months after they are married. I don’t care it if is 1942, nobody is that good. Let’s be clear about this: this is not a fear that Irena developed some time after she and Oliver got involved, this was a barrier between them from the day they met. A month after they start dating, he mentions to her that, y’know, normal people in love kiss, and she starts with the whole “I turn into a cat” thing. This, Oliver, this is the time to seek out mental help. Not after you marry a woman who insists on separate bedrooms and a bowl of Fancy Feast at night.
In many ways, this Oliver Reed character begins the film as something of a fantasy man. He’s good-looking, square-jawed, loves Irena from the moment he meets her despite her little “quirks,” and is resistant to temptation from Alice (Jane Randolph) even once she pretty much starts throwing herself at him. But even Mr. Perfect eventually starts to break down – he gets mad at Irena when she starts skipping her therapy sessions, and ultimately decides to leave her for Alice. Even then, though, the film doesn’t give us reason to believe there’s any hanky-panky going on before he proclaims he wants a divorce. Look at the timeline here: Irena is given the 1942 Man of the Year on a silver platter, then drives him away because she acts cold, jealous, and irrational. (Well, okay, it only seemed irrational, turns out she really did turn into a murderous cat, but one can hardly blame Oliver for not quite believing that.) You can’t tell me that the writer of this film wasn’t firing a warning shot across the stern of the Women of America, whose husbands at this point were increasingly getting shots fired across their own sterns over in Europe and the Pacific.
The movie’s ending is suitably tragic, and the body count is remarkably low (compared to modern films). And to be frank, while it’s entertaining in its own way, I don’t see it as being that great a precursor to modern films, except perhaps to show how different societal norms have become in the last 70 years. There’s a taste of Jekyll and Hyde in here, a flash of the subtle sexuality that would later become more dominant in the works of Anne Rice, but nothing I really feel is definitive the way I’ve felt about some of the other movies I’ve seen. The film’s sequel, 1944′s Curse of the Cat People, is even less memorable, with no “cat people” present, instead tapping into The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and turning into a ghost story about a married Oliver and Alice terrorized when Irena’s ghost begins visiting their six-year-old daughter. Weirdness.
We’re taking our biggest jump in time yet next, and I’ll talk about why that is tomorrow, when we get down to the classic 1958 sci-fi chiller The Fly.
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 7: Freaks (1932)
Director: Tod Browning
Writer: Willis Goldbeck & Leon Gordon, suggested by the story “Spurs” by Tod Robbins
Cast: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Henry Victor, Harry Earles, Daisy Earles, Rose Dione, Daisy Hilton, Violet Hilton
Plot: Filmed with circus performers rather than professional actors, this film smacks of classic Greek tragedy. A circus midget named Hans (Harry Earles) falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist named Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). The other circus performers discover she only wishes to marry him for an inheritance that’s waiting for him, and decide to seek retribution for their friend in a horrific fashion.
Thoughts: This is one of those films whose name I’ve always heard whispered, but didn’t really know much about. For that matter, I don’t know that I’ve ever talked to anyone who’s actually seen it. But the fact that everyone seems to know about it definitely suggests that it’s worth delving into for this little project of mine. As it turns out, it’s one of those movies responsible for stuff that’s become so pervasive that people don’t even know the origins of it anymore. (Check out the initiation scene – suddenly you’ll start to get pop culture references you never understood before.)
The structure of the film is fantastic, beginning with a carnival barker leading a crowd of onlookers to some horrifying (but yet unseen) exhibit, then cutting away to the main story. Hans is already engaged to another performer, Frieda (Daisy Earles), and initially denies that he is infatuated with the lovely Cleopatra. Cleo is already involved with the circus strongman, Hercules (Henry Victor), and with him hatches the scheme to bilk Hans out of his money.
This is one of those films that’s particularly difficult to judge, thanks to the prism of modern experience. My own gut reaction is surprise at how the story is pieced together. Although the characters, the titular “freaks,” aren’t necessarily brilliant actors, I’m intrigued at how human their depiction is. Although there are a few things played for laughs (a stutter, for example) that would seem cruel today, many of the freaks are shown displaying very normal emotion and desires, which I find surprising in a film made in 1932. I’m not sure that’s really fair of me, though. I don’t know exactly what the expected reaction would have been at the time. Certainly, we tend to think of a period nearly 80 years ago as being a less permissive, less inclusive time period, but is that the same thing as saying that a 1932 audience would have expected a group of circus sideshow performers to be less than human? Just because they were alive in the 30s? Seems rather intolerant of me, doesn’t it?
One thing that’s undeniable is that director Tod Browning – who also directed Dracula and several silent films starring Lon Chaney – places his allegiances firmly with the freaks. The members of the circus sideshow have a code of conduct and honor, particularly when it comes to how “normal” people interact with their clan of outsiders. Those “normal” people – Cleopatra and Hercules in particular – are the real monsters of the film. The horror doesn’t originate with the abnormal in this movie, but from the way ordinary people choose to treat those they view as less than human. The freaks do wind up doing some pretty nasty things, but in retaliation. Cleopatra attempts to slowly poison Hans, but with the help of his friends he grows wise to her scheme and, together, they find a grotesque retribution. Overkill, perhaps, but it’s hard to feel bad for their victim, whose own actions were just as damning emotionally as any physical torment she was put through.
The final scenes, admittedly, are hard to watch. One of the few sympathetic “normals” – a circus clown – is shoved against a burning stove by Hercules as he tries to defend Hans. Of course, what happens to ol’ Herc makes any injuries the clown gets seem almost bearable by comparison. As for Cleopatra herself, we see her flee just before we go back to the barker from the beginning of the film and see the end result of Cleopatra’s greed, a poetic justice imposed by the freaks.
Browning, from what I’ve learned, actually grew up working in a circus, so it’s quite possible that the things he saw and experienced at the time influenced this film greatly. Sadly, it seems the film influenced his career in a negative way. Audiences at the time were so horrified by it that his booming career fizzled, and he only directed four more films in his life, two of them uncredited – having directed sixty-seven previously. (And I doubt it was a question of just easing into retirement – he lived until 1962, 23 years after his final film, Miracles For Sale.) Were people that horrified? Did they find the film that threatening? One woman even sued Browning, claiming the film shocked her into having a miscarriage… not because of the human horror of the things Cleopatra did, but because of the shock of seeing the freaks in action. The film was actually changed several times, toning down some of the final scenes, cutting out nearly 30 minutes of footage (the final film’s running time is a brisk and all-too-brief 62 minutes) and grafting a happier ending that very, very much feels tacked-on. Had they left things with Cleopatra’s fate, it would have been a gut-wrenching final image that would linger with you. Instead, they drift back to Hans and Frieda one last time, evidently attempting to give the audiences some sort of good vibe to go out on. But this isn’t a movie that really suits a “good vibe.” It’s about horrible people and the horrible things they do, and leaving it on an up note weakens it.
Should you happen to get your hands on the DVD, make sure to watch the alternate endings. It’s more powerful, and considerably creepier.
We’re leaving the 1930s behind now, leaping forward in time. Join me tomorrow as we travel to 1942, and the horror classic The Cat People.
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 6: The Mummy (1932)
Director: Karl Freund
Writer: John L. Balderston
Cast: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan
Plot: While uncovering an ancient Egyptian tomb, an archeologist accidentally resurrects the priest Imhotep (Boris Karloff). Imhotep flees, and returns ten years later posing as a modern Egyptian and seeking a way to bring back his lover, Princess Ankh-es-en-amon. He meets a woman (Zita Johann) he believes to be the reincarnation of his love, and attempts to reawaken within her the memory of their past, leading to a terrifying final confrontation.
Thoughts: Now this is interesting. I admit, this is my first time watching the original, 1932 version of The Mummy, although I was a fan of Stephen Sommers’ remake in 1999. However, I’d always assumed that the 1999 version was one of those sequels in name only, just an attempt by Universal to jumpstart a long-dead franchise in a modern way. Watching the original, I’m surprised to see just how much of the original film actually made it into Sommers’ version. The mummy, Imhotep, was cursed in both for similar crimes (love of/attempting to resurrect a forbidden princess). Also, in both versions the mummy is resurrected by accident (not really a surprise there, who would do it on purpose?), and finds a woman he believes to be his ancient lover, and thus attempts to bring her back to him.
The difference, of course, is in scale. By 1999, special effects had progressed considerably, so instead of a mummy that basically did his work by walking around and creeping everybody the hell out, we had Arnold Vosloo, who morphed from a wet, gushy corpse into… well… Arnold Vosloo, and at the same time had the power to whip up sandstorms that looked like his face. The remake is far more of an action movie than a horror movie, but I think you can attribute that to the fact that these old Universal Monsters aren’t really considered anything to be afraid of. They’ve become beloved icons of creepiness, but aren’t actually creepy anymore. They’re instantly recognizable Halloween costumes, and cartoons that sell us breakfast cereal.
At least… the iconic image of the mummy has become that. This is what’s interesting to me. When you think of a horror movie mummy in your head, you conjure up that immediate image of a desiccated corpse wrapped up in gauze or, if your parents didn’t make it to the store until 6:30 in the afternoon on October 31st, toilet paper. But Boris Karloff only appears in that particular mummy form for a scant few minutes at the beginning of the film. When he turns up again after the ten-year lapse, he looks more or less human. Old, kind of leathery, like he’s been out in the sun for a hell of a long time, but not the mystical monster he actually is. His power is internalized, and you don’t really get a sense of him being a creature of the undead until his destruction at the end, when the goddess Isis ages him instantly and he drops dead.
David Manners, who I found rather dull and lifeless in Dracula, returns to again be rather dull and lifeless here. I’m not really sure what to make of this, why in all these old-school horror films it seemed like an attempt was made to make the ostensible hero as boring as possible. Manners really does nothing in the film. He’s there to give Zita Johann’s character a love interest, but he doesn’t come to the rescue, he doesn’t get her into the trouble in the first place in any meaningful way… he simply doesn’t need to be there. By the 80s, of course, it wouldn’t matter. You’d have a thousand slasher flicks where the audience no longer really needs to identify with the supposed protagonist, and instead is really pulling for the monster, waiting to see how many kills he can rack up and how creative the filmmakers can be in throwing blood at the screen. The other characters are placeholders until they get killed, except for the final survivor – usually a teenager girl. She may survive with her boyfriend, who will be easily identified as he’ll be the only male in the movie who isn’t a complete douchenozzle.
But in 1932 that wasn’t the case. Karloff was supposed to be the bad guy, Manners was supposed to be the good guy, and the good guy was just plain dull. Karloff steals the show entirely, and while his comeuppance at the end is inevitable, it’s really hard not to wish that he had at least managed to take out David Manners on his way out.
1932 was a big year for horror, as it turned out. Next up will be one of the most controversial films of the time – and honestly, it’s still controversial today. It’s time to get into Freaks.
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 5: Frankenstein (1931)
Director: James Whale
Writer: John L. Balderston, based on the novel by Mary Shelley
Cast: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, Dwight Frye, Lionel Belmore, Marilyn Harris
Plot: Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) has a plan to create life. Assembling a body from the pieces of corpses, he builds an enormous monster of a man. But alas, his plan goes awry when his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) places a criminal brain into the creature. The creation (Boris Karloff, climbing that rocketship to stardom) is innocent, but powerful and terrifying. When it gets loose and accidentally kills a small child, there can be only one solution – destroy the creature before it’s too late.
Thoughts: Right off the bat, this film is more engrossing than Dracula was for me. Henry Frankenstein (changed, for some reason, from the novel’s “Victor”) and his assistant begin the film with the eerie process of excavating the recently-dead to use their parts in Victor’s creation. Like Dracula, this actually adds to the original novel in ways that have become accepted as part of the lore – for instance, Mary Shelley was somewhat ambiguous about where Victor obtained the pieces he used to construct his man, even implying some of the parts were not human in origin. The whole segment with the abnormal brain, which is not pretty iconic for Frankenstein, started here.
That’ s by no means the only place where the film deviates from the source material, of course. It’s a pretty loose adaptation and abandons volumes worth of backstory, but it succeeds in creating a memorable, timeless interpretation of the character that has dominated our perceptions ever since. Every legendary image of Frankenstein — the green skin, square and scarred forehead, and bolts sprouting from the neck — originates here. This, my friends, is the reason Herman Munster was the man he was.
And let’s be honest here – it’s justified. This is a powerful piece of work. The creature in this film (Karloff, interestingly, was not named in the opening credits, but was given his due at the end) isn’t really a monster. He’s huge, he’s powerful, but he has no real desire to do harm until harm is done to him. This assertion, of course, is somewhat undercut by the idea that Fritz places a “criminal” brain into his body – that seems to imply that violence is in his nature after all. But then again, maybe that’s the point the filmmakers were going for.
Speaking of Fritz, I’m really starting to become a fan of actor Dwight Frye. His Renfield was one of the most memorable aspects of Dracula to me, and his portrayal of Fritz is creepy, laced with just a touch of comedy. The man really was a gifted actor, and did some magnificent work here in the early days of Universal Pictures. The classic “Igor” version of the mad scientist’s assistant actually doesn’t show up until later in Universal’s Frankenstein series, but Fritz is where the archetype has its foundation, making Frye responsible for two of the most enduring villainous second bananas in cinematic history.
Karloff, of course, is unequaled as the monster. He wasn’t really that big of a man, and reportedly the four-inch platform boots he wore as the monster were hell on him, but he brought in a tragedy to the performance that would make you think he was doing Shakespeare. You watched this creature and you felt for him. You watched the townspeople (in the classic torch-and-pitchfork wielding mob) chase after him and you had to wonder exactly who was in the wrong here. That’s what’s so great about this story – the way it can chill and still, at the same time, raise ethical questions. The creature did kill Marylin Harris, but is he actually responsible for her death? He didn’t know what he was doing. Counter-argument: if a wild animal kills a child, you put it down. Counter-counter argument: a wild animal isn’t a human being, and can’t be taught as one. Could the creature? We have to ask here – was he a monster, or was he an infant, unaware of his own strength, who had the potential to grow into a thinking, feeling man if it weren’t for all those people who wanted to poke him with stabby things and burn him with burny things?
To be fair, later films in the franchise would sort of throw away this particular hook, with the monster becoming less innocent and more malevolent, not to mention outright dangerous. But you can’t judge the original on those grounds. In this case, we can look at Frankenstein and his mob attacking the beast and wonder who was in the right. Frankenstein’s monster isn’t a zombie in the strictest sense of the word, but the ethical questions raised here feel like a precursor to the sort of things George Romero was later going to do in Night of the Living Dead and its better sequels, and that other, lesser filmmakers have attempted to do ever since.
I think it’s safe to say that Frankenstein – both the film and the creature – is my favorite of the classic Universal Monsters. But we are going to look at one more of them before we move on. So tomorrow let’s fire up the DVD player and step forward in time one year to 1932, and thrill to the tale of The Mummy.
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 4: Dracula (1931)
Director: Tod Browning
Writer: Hamilton Dean & John L. Balderston, based on the play by Garrett Fort, based in turn on the novel by Bram Stoker
Cast: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Solan & Francis Dade
Plot: The mysterious Count Dracula and his unwitting slave, Renfield, travel to England. When the ship is arrived, the entire crew and passenger manifest is dead, save for Renfield, who has gone mad. Dracula takes up residence in an abbey near Renfield’s sanitarium, and mysterious sightings and deaths occur, spurring the noted professor Van Helsing to confront the Count, and expose him for what he truly is – a vampire.
Thoughts: I’ve been waiting for this one. The Bela Lugosi version of Dracula, more than any other film or piece of pop culture, is what has helped to inform our current perception of the vampire. (Because the things in Twilight are not vampires, damn you Stephenie Meyer.) A lot of people don’t even realize how many of our current tropes come from this film or its sequels or imitators – the explicit connection of the vampire to bats, for example (where in the past – and even in this film – vampires could transform into bats, wolves, mist, and other things), or their aversion to sunlight. As important as those things are to current vampire lore, they didn’t come from the classic lore. (Which raises the question – if the Universal pictures depiction of the vampire hadn’t made him allergic to sunlight, would Meyer still have felt the urge to make Edward Cullen sparkle as an aversion to that trope? Hmm. Okay, I think I need to stop talking about Twilight now.)
Lugosi pops in with his tuxedo, his cape, his pendant, and those convenient beams of light that always seem to fall across his eyes and he absolutely owns the room, mesmerizing whoever’s on screen with him and whoever happens to be watching him. He may not be overtly sexual in the way that writers have tried to make vampires since the rise of Anne Rice, but he’s clearly seductive in a way that defies explanation. Even without the supernatural powers of the vampire, Lugosi’s presence would command anybody.
Other classic horror character tropes appear to be in their infancy here as well. Renfield, once Dracula has possessed him, is extremely effective. Dwight Frye has a madness in his eyes that spreads throughout his entire face. As he smiles and peers up the staircase of the ship at the camera, you find yourself absolutely chilled to the bone – he’s a madman, and he’s coming after you next. The Renfields of this world may come second to the Igors as the horror movie second bananas, but when played right, I’d be more scared of a Renfield any day. The atmosphere of the film is powerful as well – the scenery is fantastic, and the scenery is the stuff of every classic haunted house.
As masterful as Lugosi and Frye’s performances are, however, some of the other elements of this 80-year-old film just don’t hold up as well. Granted, you’ve got to make allowances for the special effects limitations of the time, but the scene towards the beginning where Renfield leans out of his carriage to see a bat flying in front just yanks a modern audience out entirely – it looks as though someone is dangling a rubber bat from a fishing pole, which probably isn’t that far from the truth.
You can’t blame age on stale performances, though, and Lugosi and Frye are really the only memorable actors in the film. The women are mannequins, and Edward Van Solan’s Van Helsing is forgettable at best. David Manners as Jonathan Harker is just plain bland, vanilla, and utterly unexciting.
The climax of the film, however, is what really hurts it. After so much tension and so much buildup, the ending just doesn’t excite. Van Helsing simply marches into Dracula’s lair and stakes him – off-camera at that. Again, I’m trying to make allowances for the time period. There wasn’t going to be any gory close-ups or a fountain of blood (like in the painfully weak Mel Brooks comedy, Dracula: Dead and Loving It), but at the same time, I can’t help thinking there could have been more. In truth, I think it speaks to how the still-evolving language of film hadn’t really been solidified yet. The film is based on the stage play based (legally, unlike Nosferatu) on Bram Stoker’s novel, and in 1931 they were still filming movies as if they were stage plays. I actually worked backstage on a production of this play several years ago, and I know how effective the final scene can be when done properly, but film is an entirely different medium with different demands.
The same goes for the novel – in the book, a great deal of the tension and fear is internal. It’s a lot harder to do that in a movie. You need to give the audience something to look at, something to see and fear. This is one of the reasons I’m not a purist when it comes to film adaptations. Sometimes, what works great on the printed page just doesn’t work on film. This is a case where the screenwriters should have found a more dramatic way to stage that final moment between Van Helsing and Dracula, some way to get the audience more engaged, than just waltzing in and driving in the stake.
I look back at these comments and I start to feel a little worried about myself. This film is a classic of the genre, isn’t it? I sure as hell haven’t endured for 80 years, do I really have the right dismiss something that millions have found frightening? Worst of all, what if I’m falling victim to the same mindset that I so often accuse my high school English students of having? What if I’m unable to divorce myself from my modern mindset and appreciate the film for what it was when it was created?
A terrifying thought.
But then I look at the next film on my list, a film released in the same year as Dracula, and one that I do consider a masterpiece of cinema. And I think, “Maybe Dracula simply doesn’t hold up the way Frankenstein does.”
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 3: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Director: Rupert Julian
Writer: Walter Anthony & Elliot J. Clawson
Cast: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin & Norman Kerry
Plot: As new owners take possession of an Opera House, they begin to hear tales of a Ghost that inhabits its walls. The Phantom, as he calls himself, begins leaving threatening notes, telling them to place Christine Daae in the lead role of their performance of Faust. When they fail to comply, a curse is brought upon the house, the Phantom abducts Christine, and a chase for her life and the survival of the opera house ensues.
Thoughts: This is the last of the silent films I’ll be watching for this little experiment, but I think it’s easily my favorite. To begin with, it’s just extremely well made. The sets are elaborate and well-constructed, the performances aren’t quite as over-the-top melodramatic as many silent era performances tended to be, and the work of the immortal Lon Chaneyas the Phantom is truly extraordinary. It’s said he did his makeup himself, and that it was hidden from the audiences until the premiere of the film. Contrast that to the movie trailers we get these days, that give away the entire damn movie in 90 seconds. Chaney, friends, was a true showman.
But I think something else that helps this film appeal to me is that it feels more modern in the telling than the other movies I’ve watched. It’s still silent, of course, but I’m starting to see a lot of the language of modern storytelling begin to appear. This film is not merely a filmed stage play, the way so many early films are. There are different angles, different cuts, different ways of telling the story we didn’t see before. It’s not as drastic as the cinematic evolution we’d later get in Citizen Kane, of course, but it’s definitely there. There’s a scene, for instance, where Christine (Mary Philbin) and her lover (Norman Kerry) fall down in the midst of an angry mob. Instead of watching them overwhelmed, the camera stays with them while the mob runs around it. It’s not an unusual shot at all by modern standards, but by the standards of the time it was a really clever trick.
In terms of horror, we’re seeing the monster beginning to evolve as well. The Golem was literally a lifeless beast, propelled by the whims of its creator. Count Orlock in Nosferatuwas evil for evil’s sake – which can be terrifying, but lacks some depth. Erik, the Phantom, progresses cinematic monsters to the next level by giving him an actual motivation: love. Granted, it’s a sick, twisted kind of love, but let’s be honest here, so are half the relationships you see on screen these days. (It is arguable, for example, that Erik is any worse for Christine than Edward is for Bella in the Twilight franchise.) Erik is a madman, of course, and a multiple murderer, but by giving him that warped love for Christine as his motivation, we’re given for the first time a monster that we can really understand.
Aside from his motivation, the Phantom’s methods also start to hint at the evolution of monsters in modern cinema. We see him employ a lot of the techniques that become familiar in later years – not just the secret passages and the skulking in the shadows, but the methods of abduction, of leaving the bodies of his victims in rather theatrical poses to best terrify the survivors, and the use of deathtraps. I really liked the deathtraps, in fact – rooms of mirrors, hotboxes, tricking Christine into starting a flood that threatens the life of her lover… these are the trademarks of later monsters and mad scientists, everybody from the Joker to Jigsaw, and it all seems to begin right here.
Once again, though, I’m forced to deal with what seems to be a piecemeal print of the movie courtesty of Netflix. The film is dark, moody, atmospheric – all kinds of great adjectives you want applied to a horror movie. Then, out of the blue, a scene in the middle of the film is in full color. It doesn’t quite look as oversaturized as most colorized movies, so I’m forced to wonder if the scene in question is actually taken from another film and wedged in here – but all of a sudden we see the monster waltz into a ballroom scene wearing a bright crimson costume with a skull mask. The lighting is bright, the scene could be in broad daylight, and the effect is ruined. The only thing that makes me less than 100 percent certain the scene is plucked from another film is that Chaney arrives in the next scene – once we’re back in the proper black and white milieu – wearing exactly the same mask.
The ending is the biggest deviation from the original novel, and it seems we’re given here an early example of focus groups altering a film. The original ending filmed, like in the novel, featured the Phantom dying of a broken heart when Christine leaves him. Test audiences apparently felt it wasn’t dramatic enough, so a new ending was shot featuring the Phantom fleeing from an angry mob that finally manages to overwhelm him, beat him, and throw his body into the river. You’re even left with a nice shot of bubbles rising to the surface, leaving the lingering question of whether the Phantom died from the beating or drowned once they had him down.
More so than the other two silent films, in this one I’m really starting to see what we recognize as a horror film today. And I’m really enjoying that.
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 2: Nosferatu (1922)
Director: F.W. Murnau
Writer: Henrik Galeen
Cast: Max Schreck, Gustav Van Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach, Georg H. Schnell
Plot: A wizened old man seeks a new home and becomes obsessed with the wife of his real estate agent. As it turns out, the mysterious Count Orlok has a much darker agenda than finding a castle to call his own. This unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is rightly considered a classic.
Thoughts: You don’t often see a movie that resulted in the bankruptcy of a studio considered one of the greats (except, of course, Cutthroat Island), but here ya go. The estate of Bram Stoker refused to allow permission for F.W. Murnau to adapt Dracula in a movie, but showing the kind of spunk and sass that have made the Germans so beloved throughout history, Murnau just changed the names, abandoned some subplots, and made it anyway. Stoker’s estate sued, Prana Film went out of business, and an attempt was made to destroy all copies of the movie. Fortunately for us, that attempt failed, and the movie is now in public domain.
This film, a silent movie of course, is incredibly successful at creeping you the hell out, and a lot of the credit for that has to go to Max Schreck as Count Orlok. Although he doesn’t really fit into what we not think of as a classical interpretation of Dracula (although the “classic” Dracula is really Bela Lugosi’s interpretation), he’s become an archetypical monster in his own right. Orlok’s body is incredibly slender, almost unnaturally so – his limbs, his torso, his head all look like they’ve been stretched out. The extremities, on the other hand, are all pointed and sharp – his fingers, his nose, his chin, his ears. Add that to his sunken eyes and you can see monsters from throughout the 20th century. The long body stirs up images of H.R. Giger’s Alien, the pseudo-zombies from the 2007 I Am Legend, any manner of creeps and crawlies, all the way up to the new Slender Man urban legend. In the introduction to this little project, I talked about the unknown being one of the pervading human fears. I didn’t mention one that may be even a little stronger – the manipulation of what is known. Orlok’s body is supposed to be human, but the little tweaks and alterations that define the character make him something even worse than what we don’t know: it makes him into what we should know, but don’t.
Think of it this way. We turn on the news, we hear terrible stories about things done to children by some nutjob or psychopath. I don’t feel the need to elaborate here, you guys know as well as I do what some human-shaped monsters are capable of. We hear these stories, and we think it’s terrible. But how much worse is it if the monster isn’t some random stranger, but someone the victim knows, someone they thought was a friend, maybe even a member of their own family?
It’s an extreme example, but the same principle that makes Orlok so creepy. Fortunately, trapped as he is on the movie screen, it’s a hell of a lot safer than the psycho on the news.
Anyway, on to a bit lighter fare. I haven’t included many silent films in this project (just one more after this one), but this movie really illustrates the need for a good print of these films. Nosferatu, of course, is in public domain now, which allows anybody to do whatever they want with it. In some ways, that’s a good thing – look at the 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire, about the making of Nosferatu, in which Willem DaFoe plays Max Schreck as a real vampire. It’s a great piece of work that couldn’t have been made were it not for public domain laws. (Which is funny, when you think about how Nosferatu was made in the first place, but there ya go.) The problem is, this allows people to put out really bad versions of the film. This was one case where I didn’t think I would need to turn to NetFlix for my hit, as I already happened to have a DVD set of many, many vampire films, Nosferatu included. As I started the movie, I realized that this version had actually changed all the title cards, replacing the names of Orlok and company with the original names from the Dracula novel. I realize, logically, that this shouldn’t have impacted my enjoyment of the movie, but I had a gut-level reaction that rejected the entire thing as wrong and bad and evil!
I turn into a purist at incredibly strange times.
So I did turn to NetFlix, where I found Nosferatu: The Original Version, which did in fact have all the classic names right where they belonged. This was much more acceptable… but in a few minutes, I found a flaw with this version as well. The music. Dear lord, the music. Old silent films we watch today don’t have any soundtrack except the one tagged on by whoever releases the DVD, and whoever put out the “original Version” of Nosferatu included one god awful super-synthesized soundtrack that went from happy, chirpy music at the beginning to a better (but weak) score towards the end. You’ve got to have the right music for these silent movies to make them come across properly. NetFlix also has a listing for Nosferatu: The Gothic Industrial Mix which, frankly, is a prospect I find horrifying.
While I can appreciate the artistry of these old silent films, I do have to admit, it’s hard to connect with them. I’m used to a completely different kind of filmmaking, and although there’s a definite style to telling a story I this way, it’s not my style. Only one more film from the silent era, and then we’ll move on to the talkies. Come back tomorrow for 1925’s Phantom of the Opera.
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen Day 1: The Golem-How He Came Into the World (1920)
Directors: Carl Boese & Paul Wegener
Writer: Henrik Galeen & Paul Wegener
Cast: Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrück, Lyda Salmonova, Ernst Deutsch, Hans Stürm, Max Kronert & Otto Gebühr
Plot: In 16th century Prague, the Jewish people are being oppressed by a vindictive emperor who blames them for the death of Christ and accuses them of engaging in black magic. To protect his people Rabbi Löw (Albert Steinrück) creates a Golem (Paul Wegener), a powerful creature made from clay. Löw summons the demon Azaroth for the magic word needed to bring the Golem to life, and brings him to the Emperor’s court. During a display of magic the people of the court break the one rule they’re told to obey – don’t talk or laugh – proving that people in horror movies have been unable to follow simple directions since the beginning of the medium. The Golem goes on a tear and the Emperor agrees to pardon the Jews if Löw saves them. All is well, until Löw bothers to read the next page in his magic book, where he learns that Azaroth is going to come back and turn the Golem against him. No problem, though, he simply removes the amulet with the word of life from the Golem’s chest. It looks like things are fine, until Löw’s assistant gets jealous that the girl he desires is running around with someone else. He brings the Golem back to life, and he goes on a tear that threatens the entire city, forcing Löw to step forward and fight his creation once more. In the end, the Golem escapes Löw, but is defeated when he befriends a little girl, who simply plucks the amulet from his chest.
Thoughts: I didn’t know it when I chose this film to begin my experiment, but this silent German classic is actually the third film in a trilogy. The original The Golem was released in 1914, and its sequel, The Golem and the Dancing Girl, came out in 1917. This concluding chapter is the prequel to the other two, though, and is the one that is best-remembered today, and for good reason. First of all, it’s the only film in the trilogy that survives intact. More importantly, even at this incredibly early juncture, it’s easy to see in this movie a lot of the horror movie tropes that are so familiar today.
Beginning with Rabbi Löw himself, the character visually evokes both the archetypical pointy hat-wearing wizard, and the lab coated mad scientist of the likes of Victor Frankenstein. In fact, even though this film predates the most famous version of Frankenstein by eleven years, it displays a lot of the themes and ideas that we most clearly recognize as part of that franchise: the Golem himself is the creation of man, a giant creature of incredible strength that is turned to dark purposes against his will. Even his interaction with the children at the end seems to feed the later scenes of the Frankenstein monster playing with the famous little blind girl.
This film is considerably darker than Frankenstein, though. While Vic’s monster is usually portrayed as the misunderstood beast, a gentle giant of sorts, the Golem is no benign creature. He’s angry and surly from the first, and seems to revel in the destruction he causes. In fact, in the scene where he carries Miriam (Lyda Salmonova) down from the tower where he kills her lover, there’s a truly disturbing hunger in his eyes. When he lays her down on a table and runs his hands over her body, there’s a second there where the clay beast actually raping the young woman seems like a distinct possibility. Then there’s the demon-summoning scene itself. When the creature’s head first appears, it’s a jump-out-of-your-seat moment. It snaps into frame, this ugly face with bulging eyes that seems to be looking down at Löw with terrible glee. Once the shock passes and the camera zooms in at the head, you start to appreciate it for the prop that it actually is, but by then you’re already invested in it as a creature of darkness. Smoke billows out of its mouth, and you question just what the hell kind of Rabbi Löw actually is, if he’s willing to deal with a beast of this nature. Today, you know the head would be CGI and the smoke would probably billow with the shapes of Hell itself, and you know that it wouldn’t be a tenth as effective as it is in this simple scene.
This isn’t the first horror movie ever, of course, although it seems to be credited as being the first ever horror franchise, and I think that’s fair enough. It also gives me a chance, very early in the process, to make an important point: although I’m looking at film in this project, it would be a terrible mistake to pretend any art form exists in a vacuum. Movies can be influenced by novels, can influence comic books, can later be influenced by comic books, can feed influence back into novels. The film is based on actual Hebrew legend, but the filmmaker presents the legend in a way that’s very evocative of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in 1818. The actual framework, though, as is the case with so much supernatural horror, comes from a religious stance. Regardless of your own personal religious faith (or lack thereof), it would be foolish not to recognize religion as part of culture, and as those things we find scary come directly from our culture, religion plays a vital role in deciding that. If anything, that’s only going to become more obvious as this little adventure continues.
Come back tomorrow and we’ll look at what may be the first vampire film of all time, the 1922 classic Nosferatu.
Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen: An Introduction
Fear is subjective. We need to agree on that right now or there’s really no point in continuing. What scares you and what scares me are likely to be very different things. And that’s normal, because those things we are afraid of, like those things we desire, are based on our collective life experiences. But there are some fears which are almost universal. The unknown, for example – something unfamiliar, something outside of our realm of experience can be full of great potential, but also great peril. A fear of the dark is largely an extension of our fear of the unknown – anything could be lurking in the shadows, and anything that spends so much time on the lurking part probably isn’t doing it because it wants to give you a big, warm hug and a kiss on the cheek.
And of course, we fear the monsters of this world, both literal and figurative, real and imaginary. And sometimes, we even fear with reason.
Despite that, though, we like to be scared. For thousands of years, we’ve gathered around camp fires to hear the stories of the Things in the woods around us, the vampires and werewolves and cannibals and madmen that creep about in the dark. For the past hundred years or so, we’ve gathered around a different fire: the bulb of a movie projector, allowing modern storytellers to terrorize us in new and different ways. We scream and we jump, we feel that jolt of adrenalin that comes with such fear and we laugh with relief when that fear passes.
We love scary movies for the same reason we love thrill rides and roller coasters – we get that rush of fear that can be so intoxicating without putting ourselves at any genuine risk. It’s remarkable what we, as a species, have devised to scare the crap out of ourselves.
But if what’s scary changes from person to person, how much does what is considered scary change over time? Look at the early icons of horror cinema, the Universal monsters. Dracula, Wolfman, and the Frankenstein monster were envisioned as chilling figures, but by 21st century standards they’re so tame they’ve become beloved by the smallest children. When I was growing up in the 80s, the Big Bads were Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, and my parents steadfastly refused to let me see their movies. In retrospect they were right. I was a nervous child and I grew into a nervous adult, and I can only imagine the image of Kevin Bacon being impaled from beneath would have necessitated an entire ring of incredibly hot stage lights shining under my bed at all times, an effect which really should be reserved for the likes of Charlie Sheen. Today, though, watching those films doesn’t phase me in the slightest, nor do Freddy and Jason haunt the dreams of children today who are of the age I was then. And it’s not because they’re unaware of the monsters – kids these days are more aware than ever. It’s because, like Dracula and Doc Frankenstein’s bouncing baby boy, they no longer find them frightening. The horror icons of the past now walk a line between being macabre clowns and anti-heroes.
And new horror icons roll in, like Jigsaw, while old ones are recycled in sequels, remakes, reboots, relaunches, whatever it’s in vogue to call them today. And so it continues, because horror evolves with culture.
That’s what this little project of mine, Mutants, Monsters, and Madmen, is really about: the evolution of stories and story tropes over time. I want to look at stories of a kind and see how the telling changes over the years, and see if I can’t parse out why, and I’ve decided to start with horror movies as part of the most ambitious Evertime Realms Halloween Party of all time. With the help of my lovely girlfriend Erin (herself a horror fan much longer than I’ve been) and a few other friendly suggestions, I’ve complied a list of 35 of the most significant horror movies ever made. I don’t claim this list necessarily represents the best of all time (although many of these films would deserve a spot on that list as well), or even my personal favorites (some of which were lost when I pruned the original, much longer list down to 35). I do think, though, this represents a good cross-section of horror since the birth of cinema, with each film being a cultural milestone in one way or another. As I write this, on May 31 (yeah, I started that early) I’m planning to start watching these films in the order in which they were released, and discuss my thoughts on the film with you. Why is this movie important? Where did it come from? How did it influence the films that came later? And was it ever really scary?
If nothing else, it makes for a hell of a discussion topic, don’t you think?
At the time I did this project – spring through fall of 2011 – all of these movies were available via NetFlix, either streaming or on disc, so if you’d like to play along, throw ‘em in your queue!
Reel to Reel 