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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 3 |
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HORROR FILMS FROM MAJOR STUDIOS DURING THE GOLDEN AGE OF HORROR
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Horror wasn't exclusively
done at low budget studios
of TheColumnists.com
It's a common assumption that the Golden Age of Hollywood Horror--the period between 1930 and 1946--took place almost exclusively at Universal Pictures, the home of the Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, Invisible Man and Mummy movies that so characterize that era.
And, the assumption goes, the rest of the horror filmmakers worked at the "poverty row" studios--Republic, Monogram, Chesterfield, Invincible, PRC and the like--waiting for the price to go down on horror's biggest stars--Karloff, Lugosi and Lionel Atwill--so they could headline some cheap imitations of their greatest hits.
Meanwhile, we assumed the biggest "major" studios kept busy with their own special genres--musicals at MGM, gangster pictures at Warner Bros., Frank Capra-style comedies at Columbia and dramas at RKO, Paramount and 20th Century-Fox.
That assumption makes sense if you consider that Universal turned horror movies into an enormously profitable franchise that was the envy of every "major" studio during the lingering years of The Great Depression in the 1930s and the tight budget years of World War II.
Universal was, after all, the studio that created Hollywood's horror legacy in the 1920s by putting Lon Chaney on the map with two silent horror classics--"The Huncback of Notre Dame" in 1922 and "The Phantom of the Opera" in 1925. After the box office success of both "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" in 1931, Universal created a galaxy of "horror stars" and began to grind out a long series of stylish pictures that amounted to a brand name for Universal Horror that still continues to this day.
But time gives us new perspective on just about everything, including horror movies. All the "major" studios made horror films during the Golden Age, just not as many as Universal. And some still stand as classics of the genre.
For instance, try to imagine the Golden Age of Hollywood Horror without MGM's "Freaks" (1932), Warners' "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933), RKO's "King Kong" (1933), Paramount's truly creepy "Island of Lost Souls" (1933) or "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1932), for which Fredric March won the Best Actor Academy Award, an honor no Universal horror player ever achieved.
Even in the final years of The GoldenAge, the majors did their part. You can't think of that era without remembering RKO's "Cat People" and the other Val Lewton chillers, Warners' "The Beast With Five Fingers" (1946), Paramount's "The Man in Half Moon Street" (1944), Fox's three John Brahm shockers "The Undying Monster," "The Lodger" and "Hangover Square" or Columbia's Boris Karloff "mad doctor" movies, Lugosi's "Return of the Vampire" (1943) and the "A" thriller "Ladies in Retirement" (1941) with Ida Lupino and Louis Hayward.
It's true that the moguls running the other big studios during the Golden Age considered the horror genre to be mostly a kiddie thing. Though Universal's "Frankenstein," "Dracula" and "The Invisible Man" all were based on literary classics and drew moviegoers of all ages, their many sequels quickly descended to the level of action pictures with a rather Saturday matinee veneer. Still, those cheap sequels and "B" level originals like "The Man-Made Monster" (1941), which introduced Lon Chaney Jr. as a Universal "horror star," also rolled up sizeable profits.
What's more, the re-issue of the Universal horror classics via RealArt, the distribution firm that handled their archival releases, generated millions for Universal in the early 1950s when TV was cutting everyone's audiences down to size. Then, when Universal released its horror oldies in the "Shock" packages designed for TV syndication, even more profits rolled in.
By the mid-1930s, Columbia, RKO and Fox all took steps to meet the Universal competition and either set up or seriously tried to set up separate "horror units" within the studio to make just such films. The most successful effort was at RKO, where Val Lewton turned out a series of supremely dark chillers between 1942-46, including "The Seventh Victim" (1943), "I Walked With A Zombie" (1943) and "Isle of the Dead" (1945).
Columbia built several films around Karloff in the 1930s and 1940s, but with declining budgets after their first big effort with him--"The Black Room," an elaborate 1935 costume picture in which Karloff played a dual role. His "mad doctor" series at the studio produced some neat little chillers, including "The Man They Could Not Hang" (1939), "Before I Hang" (1940), "The Man With Nine Lives" (1940) and especially "The Devil Commands" (1941).
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surname only, Boris Karloff used his fame from Universal's "Frankenstein" to land starring roles at other studios in films like this big production at Columbia. |
Columbia also gave Peter Lorre a great showcase in an "A" version of Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (1935), directed by Josef von Sternburg with lots of horror-style atmosphere. Columbia later shaped a few spooky pictures around Lorre, such as "The Face Behind the Mask" (1940), and made a few unsuccessful stabs at tapping into some of Universal's franchises with films like "Cry of the Werewolf" (1944).
In contrast, MGM looked only for "big" horror concepts and counted heavily on director Tod Browning, who had directed the original Lon Chaney in nine classic silent films, including MGM's "The Unknown" (1927). MGM signed Browning up after the huge box office success of his "Dracula" for Universal. At MGM, Browning directed the most shocking of all 1930s horror films--"Freaks" (1932)--which starred real-life circus freaks in a nightmarish tale of betrayal and revenge. Banned in England and in many U.S. regions, it was a box office disaster.
Despite that flop, Browning stayed at MGM to direct "Mark of the Vampire" (1935). a big budget remake of his silent Chaney film "London After Midnight." It starred Lionel Barrymore and Bela Lugosi. He followed that with the bizarre, but highly entertaining "The Devil Doll" (1936), again with Barrymore, this time as a vengeful character who shrinks people to doll size and sends them out to commit crimes. Browning finished his career at MGM with "Miracles for Sale," a poorly-received thriller with some horror trappings.
However, the few horror films MGM made in the 1930s tended to be lavishly mounted and superbly acted. Case in point: "Mad Love" (1935), a remake of the silent "Hands of Orlac." Directed by famed German cameraman Karl Freund, it starred Peter Lorre in perhaps his greatest true horror role. He was supported by Colin Clive, who played the original Dr. Frankesntein at Universal, and beautiful Frances Drake. The studio made few such films in the 1940s and the ones they made were not very spectacular, such as "Bewitched" (1945), based on Arch Oboler's radio play "Alter Ego" about a woman possessed by the murderous persona of another woman who invaded her mind.
Warner Bros. made some "A" budget horror films in the early talkie era even before Universal did "Frankenstein" and "Dracula." The spooky "The Terror" (1928), based on an Edgar Wallace story, had limited sound effects, but was quite popular, generating a 1934 talkie sequel, "The Return of the Terror."
The studio also gave John Barrymore his two greatest horror roles since his triumph in the 1920 silent "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." He played the title role in a beautifully photographed version of George DuMaurier's story "Svengali" in 1931 and, later the same year, played the title role in "The Mad Genius" (1931), a film that tried to echo the atmosphere of "Svengali."
But Warners claim to horror fame really came with two back to back chillers filmed in two-color Technicolor--extremely rare for the period: "Doctor X" (1932) with Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Preston Foster, then "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933) again with Atwill and Wray, who was getting her pipes tuned for the screaming she would do later that year in "King Kong." Both films were marred by unfunny comedy bits, but proved that monsters could be just as terrifying in color as they were in black and white. The latter film was remade as the greatest of all 3-D chillers in 1953--"House of Wax"--with Vincent Price in the Atwill role. In 1939, Warners released "The Return of Doctor X," which really had nothing to do with the original film and was in moody black and white. It's only claim to fame: It featured Humphrey Bogart in his only "horror" role, the mad scientist of the title.
Like most of the other studios, Warners also used the big name horror stars of the 1930s as often as something came up. Karloff made one of his better films of the period at Warners--"The Walking Dead" (1936), playing a man who was electrocuted, then brought back to life. In 1938, the studio brought him back in "Invisible Menace," a dreadful film that used Karloff as a red herring. teaming him with daffy blonde Marie Wilson, later to be radio's "My Friend Irma."
The studio made sporadic journeys into the horror realm in the 1940s with films like "The Gorilla Man" (1942) and "The Mysterious Doctor" (1943), but didn't really innovate much until 1946 and the first of the "crawling hand" movies, "The Beast With Five Fingers," which let Peter Lorre go deliciously mad trying to cope with a severed hand determined to strangle him. Stylishly directed by Robert Florey, who did the classic "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1932) with Bela Lugosi for Universal, "Beast With Five Fingers" had the misfortune to be released right after World War II, a period in which the public lost interest in horror films for nearly a decade.
 Gorillas were popular 1940s monsters as in this 1941 Paramount chiller. |
 Peter Lorre menaced by the severed hand of a murder victim in Warners' "The Beast With Five Fingers" (1946) |
 Lionel Barrymore used miniaturized people to commit crimes in this 1936 MGM chiller. |
Paramount had positioned itself as the classiest studio for drama, but also toyed with the genre during The Golden Age. Its 1933 "Island of Lost Souls," the first of three films adapted from H.G. Wells' novel "The Island of Dr. Moreau," was an "A" production starring that year's Oscar-winning Best Actor, Charles Laughton, as the evil doctor who turned animals into humanoids in his "house of pain." Leading man Richard Arlen was the shipwrecked hero who defies Dr. Moreau.
Most of Paramount's 1930s horror films used leading players from "A" films, such as the 1933 "Supernatural," which starred Carole Lombard and Randolph Scott. (It was directed by Victor Halperin, signed by Paramount after his independent horror hit of 1932, "The White Zombie," with Bela Lugosi.) Randolph Scott also appeared in Paramount's scariest film of 1933, "Murders in the Zoo," which starred Lionel Atwill, fresh from Warners' wax museum.
The studio gave a little potential "horror star" buildup to character actor Albert Dekker, starring him in "Dr. Cyclops" (1940), a Technicolor horror film from the creators of "King Kong," in which he played a near-sighted mad scientist who shrank people down to mouse-size. The following year, he played a dual role in "Among the Living," playing twin brothers, one of them a homicidal maniac.
The studio's most intriguing horror films of the 1940s included "The Man in Half Moon Street" (1944), starring Nils Asther as a scientist experimenting with rejuvenation, with spectacular--and ghastly--lack of success. (It was remade by England's Hammer Films in 1959 as "The Man Who Could Cheat Death.") But by far the studio's best of the war years was "The Uninvited" (1944) with Ray Milland and Gail Russell trying to get romantic while a ghost was trying to break them up. It was wonderfully entertaining--and it introduced the song "Stella by Starlight."
Fox is now reissuing some of its Golden Age horror films in DVD boxed sets, starting first with three made by director John Brahm--"The Undying Monster" (1942), "The Lodger" (1944) and "Hangover Square" (1945), the latter two with Laird Cregar, playing a Jack the Ripper type in the first and a homicidal composer in the second.
Fox's "Undying Monster" featured "B" leading man James Ellison as a detective investigating murders believed to be committed by a werewolf that preys on one English family. The film today seems like an obvious attempt to attract fans of Universal's "The Wolf Man," which began its run as a horror franchise in 1941. The Fox werewolf's makeup even looked like the Universal wolf man, played by Lon Chaney, Jr.
Fox has just released a second set in the "horror classics" DVD series, containing "Chandu the Magician" (1932) with Edmund Lowe playing the radio hero and Bela Lugosi as his adversary, a mad scientist who aims to take over the world; "Dragonwyck" (1946), a shadowy costume drama with Gene Tierney, Walter Huston and Vincent Price, directed (his debut) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the studio's future Oscar winner for "All About Eve," the Best Picture Winner of 1950, and "Dr. Renault's Secret" (1942) with J. Carrol Naish as a part-ape scientist, a colorful horror picture from a novel by Gaston Leroux, the author of "Phantom of the Opera."
RKO had two horror blockbusters in the 1930s--"King Kong" in 1933 and the 1939 remake of "Hunchback of Notre Dame" with Charles Laughton in the original Lon Chaney role of Quasimodo. Another famous literary work of the horror genre was filmed by director Wesley Ruggles ("Cimarron") for RKO in 1933--W.W. Jacobs' famous short story "The Monkey's Paw," but this film may no longer exist.
In the same year as "King Kong," RKO produced a quick sequel--"Son of Kong"--and two years later the studio brought together the same production team from "Kong" to do the first sound movie version of H. Rider Haggard's "She" (1935), an elaborate film starring Helen Gahagan as the evil eternal queen of an underground empire and Randolph Scott as the hero who challenges her rule. It was not a success. Gahagan, who made her film debut in "She," never did another movie, but was elected to Congress and served two terms.
In the 1940s, RKO's major contribution to the genre was the slate of nine moody, atmospheric horror films from the special unit headed by producer Val Lewton: "Cat People" (1942), "I Walked With A Zombie" (1943), "The Seventh Victim" (1943), "The Leopard Man" (1943), "The Ghost Ship" (1943), "Curse of the Cat People" (1944), "The Body Snatcher" (1945) with Karloff and Lugosi, "Isle of the Dead" (1945) with Karloff and "Bedlam" (1946) with Karloff.
By the end of The Golden Age, Universal had run out of steam, making too many sequels and finally sending all of its franchise "monsters" into comedies with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. When the party was over at Universal, it also came screeching to a halt at the other studios--until the atomic age, the flying saucer scare and the dawn of the space age started a whole new trend and got all the studios back into production with a new breed of horror films peopled with alien monsters (RKO's 1951 "Thing From Another World"), giant beasts awakened by atomic mutation (Warner Bros. 1953 "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms")and grotesque creatures caused by science gone wild (Fox's 1958 "The Fly").
Though Universal has maintained a high profile in the postwar horror business, the competition has increased tenfold and all the studios have been at it for the past 50 years.
(All the films mentioned in this column
are currently available either on DVD or VHS videotape except
the following: "The Terror," "Return o;f the Terror,"
"The Monkey's Paw," "Ladies in Retirement,"
"The Mad Genius," "Miracles For Sale" and
"The Gorilla Man.")
©2008 by Ron Miller. The illustrations are courtesy of the following studios: Columbia, Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO, Warner Bros. This column first posted Dec. 15, 2008.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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