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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 9 |
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Creaky 1931 thriller rises
from "forgotten horrors"
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FILMS FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF HORROR (1930-1946) AND THEIR AVAILABILITY ON HOME VIDEO. |
of TheColumnists.com
When you consider the year 1931 in the context of the American horror film, it's a rather important one because it's the year Universal Pictures first released the original "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi and the original "Frankenstein" with Boris Karloff. It also was the year John Barrymore made both "Svengali" and "The Mad Genius."
But almost no one noticed Paramount's "Murder By the Clock," which probably seemed awfully pale when compared to those two classics from Universal that began what's now recognized as "The Golden Age of Horror Movies," a period that lasted a bit longer than 15 years, finally ending in 1946.
Now available in a good quality DVD-R edition from Sinister Cinema for about $17, "Murder By the Clock" still is worth taking a look at just to see the bizarre performance of Irving Pichel as a half-wit strangler who's seriously bananas over the film's resident bad girl, played in grand over-the-top style by silent screen sizzler Lilyan Tashman.
Be warned in advance, though: "Murder By the Clock" is very creaky in terms of cinematic style, betraying its stage play origins and the inexperience of its director, Edward Sloman with post-silent screen storytelling techniques.
What it does have, though, is a pretty decent horror film atmosphere and the geeky performance of Pichel, who was much more sinister just a few years later as the creepy servant working for the vampire's spawn in Universal's 1936 "Dracula's Daughter." Pichel, in fact, is best remembered as a film director, doing a marvelous job handling some of my favorite pictures, including "The Most Dangerous Game" (1932) with Joel McCrea and Fay Wray; "She" (1935) with Randolph Scott and Helen Gahagan; 'Hudson's Bay" (1940) with Paul Muni; "The Pied Piper" (1942) with Monty Woolley; "The Moon is Down" (1943) from John Steinbeck's novel; "O.S.S" (1946) with Alan Ladd; "Something in the Wind" (1947) with Deanna Durbin; "The Miracle of the Bells" (1948) with Fred MacMurray and Frank Sinatra; "Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid" (1948) with William Powell and Ann Blyth; "The Great Rupert" (1950) with Jimmy Durante, and the first great sci-fi film in color, "Destination Moon" (1950).
The storyline is about an eccentric family living in a grotesque old house next to a cemetery. The matron of the house fears she'll be buried alive, so she has a horn installed in her crypt so she can summon help if she wakes up entombed. She disinherits her "idiot boy" son (Pichel) in her new will, giving everything to her alcoholic nephew, who's married to a money-hungry vamp (Tashman) who can't wait for the old lady to kick the bucket. When she dies by strangulation that night, the cops suspect the nitwit son because he was disinherited by his mother. Meanwhile, the greedy wife is urging her lover to kill her husband so they can have all the wealth.
More murders occur, the horn in the tomb goes off, "ghosts" walk, the nitwit demonstrates his powerful strangling hands and bungling cops get everything wrong. Meanwhile, nitwit Pichel carries vixenish Tashman off to the tomb, drooling all over her many physical assets. Credible, it's not. Much scenery is chewed and not much fine acting is displayed.
Unaccountably, the star name above the title is that of Regis Toomey, who has the dinky role of a dopey policeman who's trying to make time with the cute parlor maid at the old estate. The "hero" is a police detective played by William "Stage" Boyd, not the same William Boyd you will remember as the movies' Hopalong Cassidy.
The best line in the movie comes when Tashman's hard-drinking husband attempts to kiss her and she pulls away in obvious distaste, saying, "No, you'll spoil my makeup." This predates by one year Bette Davis' famous line from Michael Curtiz' "Cabin in the Cotton," where she says, "Ah'd love to kiss ya, but I jes washed my hair!"
I wouldn't go so far as to call "Murder By the Clock" a forgotten "classic" of horror cinema, but it's definitely worth seeing once before it's forgotten any more than it already is.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The movie poster illustration is courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Sinister Cinema of Medford, Oregon. This column first posted Jan. 26, 2009.
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.
A longtime collector of classic horror films, he has inteviewed
such giants of the genre as Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., Vincent
Price, John Carradine and Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund.
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