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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 8, No. 22 |
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 Among the joys of this 1944 opus: Future Oscar-nominee Nina Foch as a gypsy werewolf queen. |
How to look for their
inevitable silver linings
of TheColumnists.com
How can I express the delight I felt when I opened my latest box of goodies from the ever-popular Sinister Cinema home video company and discovered a beautiful digital DVD copy of the 1943 Columbia spooker "Cry of the Werewolf" with the original advertising poster on the cover?
Well, scoff if you will, but I know my pal John Stanley will understand. I'm certain that even after all those years of hosting the telecasts of countless schlock horror movies on TV's "Creature Features," John still gets a thrill when he locates a pristine copy of a vintage nugget like "Cry of the Werewolf" and adds it to his collection.
Okay, I will concede that on page 87 of my autographed copy of John's 1994 "Creature Features Movie Guide Strikes Again," the fourth edition of his esteemed guide book, John describes "Cry of the Werewolf" as a "mild" horror thriller while Leonard Maltin's "Classic Movie Guide" calls it an "OK low-grade thriller." I am inured to such criticism, even from two great film critics that I know personally and esteem highly.
That's because I have learned how to extract pleasure from watching old horror movies from the 1930s through the 1950s. Curiously, that pleasure often has little to do with whether or not the movie is really "good" in the conventional critical sense.
For example, I take great pleasure in watching that distinguished actress Nina Foch, later an Oscar nominee for "Executive Suite" and a star of such immortal films as "An American in Paris," "The Ten Commandments" and "Spartacus," doing her very best to play a gypsy queen who has inherited the curse of werewolfism. Sorry, but I just LOVE watching fine actors bringing their gifts to ludicrous roles in their youth.
I also enjoy watching the leading man, Stephen Crane, who's little known and barely remembered today, knowing that he was married to then superstar glamour queen Lana Turner and was the father of her daughter, the notorious Cheryl Crane, who, as a teenager, stabbed to death Lana's lover, gangster Johnny Stompanato, and precipated one of Hollywood's enduring scandals. (Cheryl survived it all, became a lesbian and wrote her memoirs.) As I watch Stephen Crane in "Cry of the Werewolf," I can't help muttering..."if you only let that gypsy gal tell you your future, would you be freakin' surprised!"
And I truly relish the supporting casts of movies like "Cry of the Werewolf," which features two of my favorites--Fritz Leiber and John Abbott.
At the same time, I find joy in watching a horror movie that actually could produce "mild" suspense by not showing you much of anything horrifying. Today "Cry of the Werewolf" would have to show entrails splatting against walls when the werewolves went to work on their victims and poor Nina Foch probably would have to go naked through half the movie.
Here are 10 more of my favorite schlock
horror movies from the good old days:
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This is one of the nifty "mad doctor" movies Boris Karloff made for Columbia Pictures from 1939-42. Boris is trying to regain contact with the spirit of his dead wife by using a machine of his invention. Boris takes the scientific attitude that energy can't be destroyed and his wife's life energy (i.e. "brain waves") can be "tuned into" if you invent the right machine. Sure, Boris. Anyway, it's based on a great book I loved in my teens: William Sloane's "The Edge of Running Water" and it features a great nasty performance by Anne Revere as the phony spiritualist who helps Boris with his wacky experiments. If you thought Revere was the epitome of niceness in her Oscar-winning role as Elizabeth Taylor's mom in "National Velvet" (1945), this will set you right. |
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Bela Lugosi, a decade after his "Dracula" success, still managed to keep his name above the title in the "poverty row" quickies he made for studios like PRC, which made this charmingly thrifty clunker. Bela has bred a giant bat that follows a scent Bela plants on his enemies and then drains their blood. Bela cackles famously and is quite entertaining. This film was virtually remade just four years later as "The Flying Serpent," subbing George Zucco for Lugosi. Another charmer is the 1946 sequel "Devil Bat's Daughter," in which former Miss America Rosemary LaPlanche plays the daughter of that "devil-bat" lunatic, who may be up to his old tricks. |
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John Carradine, a ranking member of the second-rate horror star brigade of the 1940s, plays a Nazi "zombie master" who raises the dead and puts them to work doing Hitlerl's evil in this budget-thin Monogram picture. It has several worthwhile assets, starting with the politically incorrect Mantan Moreland, doing his eye-rolling "feets don't fail me now" comedy as a black man who's deathly afraid of zombies. The hero is traditionally handsome Robert Lowery, who would wind up playing Batman in a 1949 Columbia serial, and vivacious Gale Storm has a decorative supporting part, long before her TV sitcom fame. |
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(1943)  |
Bela Lugosi had tumbled from the horror movie
big leagues by the 1940s, but his name still signified horror
to moviegoers in spite of the really low-grade schlock he was
doing at Monogram and other poverty row studios. This film openly
pretended it was the "Dracula" sequel Lugosi never
made, having him revived by bombs falling during the London blitz
of World War II. Even though he now goes by the name Tesla, Lugosi
does the same old Dracula stuff with his usual overripe panache. This time he has a werewolf sidekick (Matt Willis)--and guess who the girl is: Poor Nina Foch! |
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WHO CAME BACK (1945)  |
This movie scared me quite a bit when I first saw it, but perhaps that's because I was only six or seven years old. The woman coming back is Nancy Kelly, who somehow believes she's the reincarnation of a 300-years dead witch. The big appeal of this Republic thriller is the chance to see Nancy Kelly, who later became a most distinguished stage actress, winning the Tony award as the mother in "The Bad Seed" on Broadway and a Best Actress Oscar nomination when she reprised the role in the 1956 movie version. She did her best to elevate the material--and it's fun to watch her trying. |
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The PRC studio went out of business in 1946 and so Universal distributed this "poverty row" classic of bad taste in horror movies. It was about a man who's disfigured in a lab accident who becomes a brutal strangler as a result of his ordeal. To play the part, PRC cast a once handsome man who contracted the disease known as acromegaly, which distorts the face and body, turning him into a real-life monster. As Rondo Hatton, he became a regular in a number of Universal "B" pictures, usually playing a character called The Creeper. His death ended his brief career. This film is as much a tragedy as a horror picture, especially when you know the back story. It also features Tom Neal, the star of the great 1945 film noir, "Detour." |
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ghostly "strangler." Great murky sets, a chilling performance by Charles Middleton as The Strangler. (He was Ming the Merciless in those 1930s Flash Gordon serials.) Another reason to watch: Rosemary's boy friend is played by a very young Blake Edwards, who would become the director of those "Pink Panther" movies and so many more memorable films in the 1960s and later. |
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This film really is schlock, but it has its merits. First, it offers a leading role to Basil Rathbone, the once and famous Sherlock Holmes of so many movies and radio shows, as a mad doctor with a basement full of botched human experiments, including Tor Johnson, the bulky ex-wrestsler once known as The Swedish Angel, who spent the last part of his life working in some of the worst horror movies of all time. Another reason to endure this junker: It includes one of Bela Lugosi's final screen appearances. He was, by then, so far gone on heroin that he could only do "cameo" parts as deaf mutes or butlers. Also featured: The remains of some other one-time horror legends, among them Lon Chaney, Jr., and John Carradine. Whenever you watch this, be prepared to frequently mutter, "Isn't that a shame!" |
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This was one of those bare-bones British sci-fi films of the 1950s, actually made by Hammer Films, just before it started doing the color remakes of classic horror films that made it famous. The "monster" is a radioactive sludge that rises out of cracks in the moors and gobbles up anything radioactive. It's done in the fashionable "semi-documentary" style of the era and falls into the category of anti-nuclear films. Why watch it today? Well, it has a taut and intelligent script by Jimmy Sangster, who went on to write some classic British sci-fi films, and it has two of my favorite actors in major roles--Dean Jagger, 1949 Oscar-winner for "12 O'Clock High," and Leo McKern, who'll have you gasping, "Hey, that's Rumpole of the Bailey!" as soon as he appears on film. Also in a small part: Anthony Newley, his child actor days over, but long before he became a famous stage star singing "What Kind of Fool Am I?" |
©2007 by Ron Miller. The poster from "Cry of the Werewolf" is courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Sinister Cinema. The posters from "The Devil Bat," "The Woman Who Came Back," "Return of the Vampire," "The Brute Man" and "X...the Unknown" are courtesy of their original studios and Amazon.com. This column first posted June 4, 2007.
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.
He is a longtime horror movie fan who interviewed Boris Karloff,
Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine and other horror stars during
his long career as a critic.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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