Monthly Archives: May 2022

Dracula

Count Dracula: [hearing wolves howling in the distance] Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.

Iconic film is perhaps the worst of the classic Universal films.  Nonetheless, it continues to entertain all these years later.

Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) lives in a remote castle in Transylvania with his undead brides. He wants to expand his horizons and calls real estate agent Renfield (Dwight Frye) from London so he can buy an estate there.  Between Dracula and his brides Renfield becomes Dracula’s abject slave.  Renfield is installed in the insane asylum next to the estate where the staff have a hard time preventing him from eating flies and spiders.

Doctor Seward, director of the asylum, has a lovely daughter named Mina (Helen Chandler) who is engaged to handsome John Harker (David Manners).  Dracula first attacks her friend Lucy, whose corpse is found drained of blood.  Then Dracula begins a slow attack on Mina, draining her blood gradually over several days.  Esteemed scientist Van Helsing (Edward van Sloane) is called in to help identify Mina’s mysterious illness.  Fortunately, Van Helsing is a vampire specialist and he instantly knows the cause.  We spend the rest of the movie following Van Helsing’s attempt to save Mina and slay the vampire once and for all.

By all rights this movie just shouldn’t be a classic. The acting is over the top when it isn’t wooden and the effects are laughable (I am especially fond of the armadillos in Dracula’s crypt and the rubber bats).  It isn’t even scary. So why is it so darned entertaining??? Beats me. Every time I watch it I enjoy it all over again.

Frankenstein

Henry Frankenstein: Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!
Victor Moritz: Henry – In the name of God!
Henry Frankenstein: Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!

This one never gets old.  The definition of a true classic.

Do I really need to explain the plot?  Surely not but I want to squeeze in two photos.

The setting is a village in some unnamed country of Central Europe.  As the story begins, Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) are grave robbing in furtherance of Frankenstein’s experiments to try to bring dead humans back to life.  He is working in strict secrecy and his fiancee Elizabeth (Mae Clark) is worried.  So is his old professor Doctor Waldman (Edward van Sloane).  The two set off for Frankenstein’s castle/laboratory accompanied by Henry Moritz (John Boles), who is sweet on Elizabeth.   They break in on the Creation/Monster (Boris Karloff) coming to life.  He has been given an abnormal criminal brain, which explains his violent tendencies though I have never felt anything but sympathy toward him.

The Monster awakens to a confusing new life filled with torment.  All hell breaks loose.

I’ve seen this one many times before. Each time I am moved all over again by Boris Karloff’s timeless performance as the monster. It is amazing that Universal considered for even one second giving the part to Bela Lugosi.  I had forgotten how few of the scenes Karloff appeared in.  They are what sticks with the viewer long after the movie is over.

Then, too, the images are just wonderful. Some of the performances are over the top but they seem to fit right into the Gothic story.  For a movie that is so easily parodied, this plays it surprisingly straight.  Essential.

King Kong

Carl Denham: We’ll give him more than chains. He’s always been king of his world, but we’ll teach him fear. We’re millionaires, boys. I’ll share it with all of you. Why, in a few months, it’ll be up in lights on Broadway: Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World.

The granddaddy of all special effects movies withstands the test of time beautifully.

Adventurer/impresario Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) has convinced a skipper and crew to take him to an unknown location where he intends to make an unknown movie.  He needs a female lead. Desperate, he picks up starving Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) in the city and it is off to the races.  First mate Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) does not like the idea of having a woman on board.  He gets over this quickly and Ann and Jack are in love before too long.  Denham coaches Ann on her screaming technique.

As the ship nears its intended destination, Denham explains that they are going to an uncharted island to make their picture.  When they get there they find that villagers are engaging in a ritual.  They prepare a young woman to be sacrificed as the bride of Kong to placate the giant ape. When they see the lovely Ann, they decide that she will make a better bride than one of their relatives.  They tie her to some posts and she screams her lungs out as the Kong plucks her off her platform.

There follows a pursuit which kills most of the crew of the ship.  Kong takes Ann through a jungle populated by dinosaurs, stopping to defeat them one by one.  He seems to be protective of Ann during these encounters.  During one such battle she manages to slip away so she can be rescued by Jack.

Denham is not deterred from his project.  He sedates King Kong with gas bombs and brings his captive to New York City where he plans to put him on exhibition.  Then all hell breaks loose.

This is still amazing for its time. It is hard to imagine how much work must have gone into the elaborate stop-motion animation, matte paintings, and projections needed to make this work. It is impressive that we end up being scared by and feeling pity for what is, after all, a rubber puppet covered with rabbit fur. The Max Steiner music, one of Hollywood’s first purpose-written full-length film scores, adds to the suspense.  Even after several viewings, I found myself in suspense during the scary moments.  Essential.

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I also watched Lowell Sherman’s “The Greeks Had a Name for Them”/AKA “Three Broadway Girls”  (1932). Three women are the best of friends.  Except when it comes to stealing wealthy men from each other. Ina Claire will resort to the lowest of tricks to do this. Joan Blondell is more sensible. Madge Evans has a very wealthy boyfriend David Manners whom she loves for himself. But Ina is not about to leave him alone. She also steals pianist Lowell Sherman who had offered to finance Madge’s piano lessons and be her sugar daddy. It’s a very pre-Code movie but nothing to write home about in my opinion.

She Done Him Wrong

Lady Lou: I always did like a man in a uniform. That one fits you grand. Why don’t you come up some time and see me?

Fun, fun comedy based on Mae West’s Broadway hit “Diamond Lil” and an early role for Cary Grant as one of her many admirers.

It is the Gay Nineties.  Lady Lou (West) is the headline singer in a San Francisco saloon. But her main business is collecting diamonds provided by her many, many admirers.  Next door to the saloon is a religious mission,  Captain Cummings (Cary Grant) is newly arrived to run the mission.  Lou takes one look at the Captain and makes it clear she wants to know him much better, diamonds or no diamonds.

There is a plot involving a young girl in trouble, a jealous ex-boyfriend who escapes from jail, some counterfeiters, a murder, etc., etc.  The story is but an excuse for West to get off some naughty one liners and sing some of her signature songs. With Gilbert Roland as a Latin lover.

It’s hard to fathom why this was so shocking in its day. There are plenty of double entendres but it’s just bawdy good fun. This is the one where she asks Grant to “Come up sometime and see me.” Mae also sings “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone”, “A Guy What Takes His Time” and “Frankie and Johnny”.  I thought this was thoroughly entertaining.

I have to admire West.  She was 40 when she made this film and her curves didn’t fit the figure popular at the time.  Yet she really is sexy.  And she is always in control.never cheap.