Shock: The Wolf Man

Well, even though this is one of the A-listers, I watched it for two reasons:  1) because it was on the list, and 2) because I've been watching Lon Chaney Jr movies and I needed to watch this before I commented on any of the future installments.

I love this film.  It's fun.  Set in Wales, where Lawrence Talbot, Chaney, comes back home from California with an American accent.  And gypsies.  With gypsy wagons.

Bela Lugosi plays one of these gypsies, one named Bela.  Yeah.  But he's killed shortly after showing up, giving the always haunting Maria Ouspenskya the voice of exposition.

Except nearly everyone in the village, the one where Talbot grew up in, knows the legend of the were-wolf and the poem about it:

Even a man who is pure in heart

and says his prayers by night

may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

and the autumn moon is bright.

There's so many little quirks and contradictions in the story that it's inadvertently funny- up until the point where Talbot realizes he's cursed, and then Chaney gives this softly heartbreaking performance that's probably in the top four of the Universal horror movies.  It's a good show of a range that start with Lennie in 1939's Of Mice and Men.

BUT

Here's something I've been wrestling with since I started this project:  In other movies, seems to me Chaney is kind of lumpy, and I don't get him.  In Weird Woman, he's got women fighting over him.  In  The Pillow of Death, he's got a younger woman going against the wishes of family to be with him when he leaves his wife.  He's got it going on somehow.  And I'm totally missing it.

As Talbot, he rocks- in this and the subsequent movies in the series.  I'll deal with my thoughts on his portrayals of other characters as they occur. 

His sweetheart, Gwen, is played by Evelyn Ankers, who we last watched in Weird Woman.  Another face we'll come to recognize as project progressed will be Talbot's father, played by Claude Raines.

I think the thing I love most about this movie is how incredibly, amazing tightly the folklore from the movie made it's way into the idea of "real" werewolf folklore, despite the fact that Curtis Siodmak wrote it up. 

As much as I'm not looking forward to the Inner Sanctum movies, I'm eagerly looking forward to the subsequent movies.

Required Reading

I've been re-reading David Skal's Monster Show and leafing through Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Films, 1931-1946 as "homework" for the blog. 
There's also the excellent blog Shock!: The Shock! and Son of Shock! Phenomenon of the Late 1950s and Early 1960s - With The Shock and Son of Shock Viewing Project that I've been reading as well- they've got scans of the original Screen Gems promotional materials as a treat.
I was looking through my old blog posts and I saw I'd considered doing the Shock blog before, back in March 2011.  I think Perry is having an easier time with the Universal movies than he did with the vampire movies.

Shock: The Cat Creeps (1946)

Well, it's a cool poster isn't it?
That's as far as it goes for me.  An overly complicated set up to get a group of people to an island, then there's murder.  Maybe a murdered woman's spirit is possessing her cat... maybe not.  Fred Brady, who went on to write in Hollywood, plays a fast talking witty witty witty reporter.    It was distracting actually, because all I could think of while listening to him was Bogart's comment about someone "cracking foxy" in the Maltese Falcon.  His photographer is played by Noah Berry Jr, a very young Rocky Rockford from tv's The Rockford Files.
Lois Collier was more impressive as a scorned college student in 1944's Weird Woman.

Erle Kenton, the director, also helmed House of Dracula and House and Ghost of Frankenstein, as well as Island of Lost Souls.

I realize that not all these movies are going to be "The Mummy" or "The Black Cat."  Despite this, you could tell The Cat Creeps was produced and acted in a totally professional, if not by the numbers, manner.  That said, I'm going to keep the A list movies in reserve til I can't take any more of the B's.

Shock: Weird Woman

The flaw, for me at least, in working my way through the Shock Theater package, isn't seeing "new" movies- it's the realizing that I've got more stuff to get. 


First, I need to get my hands on the Inner Sanctum collection, seven movies Universal did based on the radio show of the same name.

Second, I need to read Fritz Leiber's classic novel, Conjure Wife, which today's movie, Weird Woman was based on.

Weird Woman, part of the Inner Sanctum series, is about Norman, an anthropology professor, played by Lon Chaney, a firm believer in rational thought without any room in his life for superstition, who has married Paula,  a witch, more accurately a practitioner of strange south seas Voodoo.  Their mysterious rituals and rites are pretty peppy- it reminded me of the bit from MST3K:  "You know, liturgical dance is weird. " "Yeah, but it brings in the parishioners."

There's lots of college intrigue, the whole publish or perish thing, as he vies the position of department chair.   Paula uses her charms to help him, and when he discovers this, he's annoyed, since it's the sort of primitive superstition he's trying to eradicate.   Paula has also fallen afoul of Ilona, a colleague of Norman who'd had designs on the professor. 

Anne Gwynne, Paula, and Evelyn Ankers, Ilona, are in several other Universal movies, like The Wolfman and House Of Frankenstein.  Since I've already seen the core movies of the Universal Horror collection, they weren't unknown to me.

And of course, Lon Chaney is Lon Chaney.  I have some problems with him that I'll address when I watch The Wolfman.

Shock: The Secret of the Blue Room

One of my Resolutions for 2014 is to write more, to blog more. Another is to watch as many of the Universal Studios horror classics as I can- specifically those that comprised the syndicated packages for Shock Theater and Son of Shock.

So I've decided to merge the two and resurrect my old Vampire movie blog (once upon a time, I'd decided to watch 365 vampire movies- I made it to August) to document my viewing, based on the reference book Universal Horrors.

It was tempting to start with Dracula or Frankenstein, but part of the experience was not just to watch movies I loved, but to find new favorites- that's why I started with the thriller The Secret of the Blue Room.

It's Lionel Atwill and Gloria Stuart in a rather by the numbers mystery set in an old family castle- Stuart has three suitors visiting for her twenty-first birthday.    One of the three challenges the others to spend the night in the cursed Blue Room.  Soon one is vanished, another dead, and the third left to discover what's behind the deaths.

As someone who originally encountered Stuart in Titanic, I've come to admire her in the Universal movies, such as this, The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man;  I was lucky enough to find a studio picture of Stuart at a flea market a couple of years ago.  I guess I've become quite a fan.

I felt for certain I'd read somewhere that The Secret of the Blue Room was a lost movie.  So when I did a google search that turned up the entire move, I was pleasantly surprised.