The Old Dark House

I'm back, everybody! Sorry I haven't been updating as frequently lately. I plan on having a whole bunch done over the weekend. I hope nobody is getting tired of my Universal horror movie reviews, because I have another one here.

After seeing Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and Bride of Frankenstein, I became very interested in director James Whale. In research mode, I looked to see if he did any other horror movies in his career. Turns out he did another one in between, and it's really not much like the other three. I mean that in a complimentary way, of course. Not only does it demonstrate his versatility as a storyteller and director, it's also a cracking good time.

The movie I'm referring to is The Old Dark House, made in between Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, and starring several of the same actors, including the great Boris Karloff. James Whale's moody, expressionistic horror style is still in full effect, but is tempered by a good deal of comedy. I wouldn't say the movie is a straight up comedy, per se, but it's one of those movies where a group of funny characters are put in the middle of a very serious situation. The balance is struck quite well.

The story follows a married couple, the Wavertons, and their wisecracking friend, as they get caught driving in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. After nearly getting buried in a mudslide, they're forced to stop for the night at the only house around. Now you might be asking is the house old? Is the house dark?

Highlight below for SPOILERS:

It IS.

The house belongs to the Femms, an old brother and sister. The brother is old and suspicious, the sister is super religious, deaf, and mean. And old. They have a scary giant drunken mute named Morgan (Karloff) in their employ, as their butler. They also have some secrets in the house. The cranky sister especially doesn't want the Wavertons and their bro to stay, but are persuaded to let them. The Wavertons do their best to be charming and polite but still seem unwelcome, so if that isn't enough, another stranded couple find their way to the house and, being a care free widowed nobleman and his showgirl companion, completely impose themselves upon the Femms. Once all the players are in place, a sometimes comedic, sometimes menacing narrative unfolds as the skeletons in the Femm family closet are set free upon our group of travelers.

The characters are all around great. The cast is such a fun and versatile array of character types, and they have great chemistry with each other. The movie has kind of an episodic feel to it where the cast splits up and we get to see how they each interact with different characters. Karloff gets the short end of the straw this time, though. Not that he isn't great, just that he is still stuck playing a hulking, non-communicative monster. What a role to get typecast as! The movie actually opens with a card assuring the audience that this is, indeed, the same Karloff that played Frankenstein. He's just that versatile, everyone. This time, he has a beard!

I especially liked Melvyn Douglas as the Waverton's easygoing friend character. He starts off the movie seemingly as a sidekick and ends up sort of being the hero and the romantic lead. Charles Laughton is both likeable and sympathetic as the widower who wants the world to think he's a hard partying socialite, but is inwardly sad and lonely. Gloria Stuart is quite good as Margaret Waverton, too. One of the best moments involves her playing with her shadow on a wall. Also, hey, she was pretty hot. What? She's the old lady from Titanic? Shut up, that's weird to think of. I'm leaving people out, but everyone is good, really. There is one more player that I'm not mentioning because I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say the Femm siblings aren't the only family members in the Old Dark House. Wait until you meet this guy, even by today's standards, he's a pretty freaky character.

I liked that there was nothing supernatural in the movie, just a messed up family in a house in the middle of nowhere. I know there are more movies that are like this, but they seem to be pretty rare nowadays. I also like a lot of the stylistic choices James Whale made. I think I mentioned in my Bride of Frankenstein review that I thought the comedic stuff was weird or something. Well, I take that back now, he handles it wonderfully. Also, the ending is quite intense and pretty brutal. Not, like, gory, or anything, but it's easy to forget that before the Hayes code got in the way, old movies could have some surprisingly jarring material in them.

I'm glad that seeing the other Universal movies led the way to this one. I know this could be sacrilege, but I might even have liked The Old Dark House better than the monster movies. I mean, I understand why the monster movies are great and impactful and iconic, but the juxtaposition of comedy and horror, as well as the strong characterization and ensemble feel of the cast really spoke to me. I think I need to dig even deeper sometime and see what some of James Whale's non-horror pictures are like. Just not the Showboat movie because I saw the play in 8th grade and haaaaated it.

Son of Frankenstein

Over the last couple of months, I've written posts discussing the first two Frankenstein movies, and how they compare with the versions in the minds of those of us who only had parodies, homages, and pop culture as our reference points. It's crazy how referenced the first two films are. It was like when I saw Citizen Kane or The Godfather for the first time and realized how much of those films had been tweaked in The Simpsons. The third film in the series, Son of Frankenstein, is not referenced as much, but it's still has many important touchstones from the Frankenstein canon.

Son of Frankenstein is the third and final Frankenstein picture starring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's Monster. Rowland V. Lee steps in as director, replacing James Whale, who made the first two. Also joining in on the fun are a couple of greats: Basil Rathbone as the new Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi as Ygor (finally!)

The story is actually the basis for Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Rathbone plays Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, the son of the original Henry von Frankenstein. He lives in the shadow of his father, who lives on in the minds of the people as a madman who unleashed a monster upon them. He foolishly revives the monster to prove the people wrong, and of course it all goes crazy from there.

The most intriguing character is Bela Lugosi's hunchbacked Ygor. I'm happy to finally see Ygor introduced to the Frankenstein mythology. His backstory is very interesting. His hunch is a deformity of birth; it's the result of a broken neck caused by a botched hanging. He was hung for grave robbery.

Karloff kind of gets the shaft in this one. After the depth and pathos he brings the monster in the first movie, and the character growth and ultimate redemption he gets to play in the second one, they just revert him back to the monster the third time through. I can see why he didn't want to return a fourth time.

Karloff's character's devolution is part of what's wrong with Son of Frankenstein. They clearly wrote themselves into a corner with the awesome ending of Bride of Frankenstein and tried to reset things to the way they were. Overall, it's still a pretty entertaining movie, but director Rowland V. Lee doesn't quite have James Whale's visual flare. The three lead actors are what makes the movie worth watching.

And finally, another great pop-cultural touchstone: Lionel Atwill plays the one-armed Inspector, who lost his arm a generation earlier in the monster's original rampage. He has a fake arm that clicks as he moves it with his other hand. I had no idea that this was from an original Frankenstein movie! It was so odd and such a well realized piece of physical comedy in Young Frankenstein, that it never occurred to me that it was from anything but the minds of Mel Brooks and Kenneth Mars. Son of Frankenstein even has a scene with Baron Frankenstein throwing darts. Young Frankenstein makes a lot more sense to me now, having seen these three movies.

So overall, Son of Frankenstein is still a lot of fun, but inferior to the first two. B-

I'm not sure if I'll watch the fourth one. It doesn't have Karloff and it's not on Netflix at the moment.

Bride of Frankenstein

Last weekend, I watched the original Frankenstein with certain assumptions of what the movie was that I wound up being dead wrong in. Tonight, I was confounded again with the 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. I knew nothing about this one, either, besides the bride's fright wig. Turns out that everything we know about Frankenstein, referenced in pop culture, is pretty much from this movie.

Bride of Frankenstein is everything that nowadays defines a sequel. Exponentially more ambitious than the first, with a visibly much larger budget, but with a ton of callbacks to the scenes and elements of the first one that audiences responded to so much. There is a drawback to the widened scale, of course. I feel like it lost a little bit of the soul of the original in the process.

That said, it's still a great movie, just in different ways. The opening, for example: Director James Whale obviously needed a way to bring our heroes back after their (spoiler? Can I spoil an 80-year-old movie?) fiery demise. Solution? The movie opens with Mary Shelley narrating to Lord Byron how the story of Frankenstein would continue, should she ever continue it. What a brilliant device! We the viewers get to pretend that the author herself is acting as a deus ex machina for her own story.

This time, Dr. Henry Frankenstein is an alright guy, penitent and guilt-ridden after barely surviving his fall from grace at the hands of his own hubris. The monster, too is painted in a more heroic light. He is gradually and fascinatingly humanized over the course of the film. The villain of this piece is Dr. Praetorius, and he is the very epitome of the mad scientist archetype I always took Dr. Frankenstein to be. He blackmails Frankenstein into creating a woman for him and uses the monster to do his dirty work.

Boris Karloff, awesomely credited as only "Karloff" in the credits, is great again as the monster. He brings the same pathos and sadness to the character as in the first one, but with a much wider palette to work with. The best sequence in the movie is, of course, his befriending the old blind violinist (the scene was famously parodied by Gene Hackman in Young Frankenstein). He teaches the monster to talk, which is where the "Fire bad" talk in all the spoofs comes from.

The ending, which I won't give away, in case you aren't familiar, is pretty incredible. James Whale brilliantly builds tension and anxiety throughout much of the last twenty minutes with the sound of a pulsing heartbeat. The camera angles get more wacky too. It's gripping, all the way to the epic, emotional, and satisfying conclusion.

The one thing I didn't like was this weird old lady character that was Dr. Frankenstein's servant or something. She was the comic relief, and her attempts at humor were too wink-wink-nudge-nudge for the movie they were featured in. There are times where she's just shy of looking directly at the camera, which took me out of the movie. The one thing she said that I laughed at was when she was bringing Praetorius to Frankenstein, she mutters to herself skeptically, in earshot of Praetorius, "Praetorius isn't a real name." It's such a weird thing to say!

So in the end, Bride of Frankenstein is a worthy, ambitious sequel that builds upon the world established in the original. I think I still prefer the first one overall, but one could make a good argument for the superiority of this one. If it weren't for the awkward attempts at humor, I'd give it perfect marks, but still I'll give it an A.

Wow, this might be my longest review yet. I had a lot to say about this one. Good night, everybody! If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Frankenstein

I love watching the classic films that I've somehow missed. There are quite a lot of them, especially from before the 60's. Every time I see one, I can feel a huge gap in my knowledge of cinema history fill up just a little bit and create two smaller gaps where it once was.

The Universal monster movies are definitely something I should have gotten to sooner. I saw Creature From the Black Lagoon a couple years ago and really dug it. It's amazing how well that costume holds up to this day. I watched Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein over Halloween this year. I don't know if that counts. But last weekend was my first time watching the original, real deal, 1931 James Whale Frankenstein.

I was surprised by what it was. This wasn't the movie I expected at all. I grew up watching so many Looney Tunes, Mel Brooks, and everyone else parodies of Frankenstein that I thought I already knew what it was, without ever seeing frame one of the movie itself (okay, I've probably seen some frames).

Dr. Frankenstein (not Victor, but Henry) is not the wild haired mad scientist cliche that I expected, but a clean cut dignified man (except that "It's Alive" scene, which is pretty much exactly how it's portrayed). His hunchbacked lackey, Fritz (not Igor), was a sadistic little monster of a man.

And Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster was such a touching performance. It wasn't the "FIRE BAD" thing that Phil Hartman did. Karloff had this look of pain and sadness in his eyes the whole time. There's a scene where Dr. Frankenstein opens the skylight to show him the sun. The monster reaches up to the sky and takes in it's rays and warmth.

The movie was also startlingly violent for an old movie. It came out before the Hayes code effectively neutered all Hollywood films until the late 60s. The famous scene with the little girl was amazing.

One thing that surprisingly was the same was the fact that Fritz/Igor actually did break the original brain and take a brain clearly marked "abnormal" from another jar. I would never have guessed that this was in the original since it feels tailor made for a Mel Brooks movie.

Another classic. Of course I liked it. A+

I plan on watching Bride of Frankenstein soon.