Republic Horrors - The Serial Studio’s Chillers

Eagle Eyed Horror

Republic Horrors -
The Serial Studio’s Chillers
By Brian McFadden
Kohner, Madison & Danforth
ISBN: 9780615920986

Just a very quick shout out of a review for Brian McFadden’s quite valuable little tome Republic Horrors - The Serial Studio’s Chillers. Now Republic weren’t exactly known for their horror output, most people would, I’m sure, mostly associate them with serial chapter plays and westerns. My running joke with my father, every time we sit down to watch a serial made by Republic, is that as soon as a good guy and bad guy enter an interior set, most anything not nailed down is going to get tossed at each other in a brawl... which is pretty much correct. I don’t think I’ve seen a Republic horror but I’m aiming to fix that at some point. Judging from this book though, there weren’t that many of them made.

The book highlights what, according to the author, are the ten Republic horror films... a subject he became interested in because he was trying to chase down a memory of a scene from one which had haunted him since childhood and then the subject became something of an obsession, as he went through studio by studio trying to find the film... until, to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth, whatever studio remained, no matter how improbable, must be the truth... the film in question was a Republic movie (which I believe he’s written about in another book which I need to track down, as it was a mystery movie).

Now, I have to say my definition of what makes a horror film differs from what the writer thinks... so there are a few mystery films tinged with the cinematic vernacular of a horror film rather than being the genuine article, as far as I can see... but some of these definitely are. The ten movies covered here are London Blackout Murders (1943), The Lady And The Monster (1944), The Girl Who Dared (1944), The Vampire’s Ghost (1945), The Phantom Speaks (1944), The Fatal Witness (1945), The Woman Who Came Back (1945), The Madonna’s Secret (1946), The Catman of Paris (1946) and Valley of the Zombies (1946). Of those ten there’s also at least one mystery... The Woman Who Came Back, where the explanation as to the scientific reasons behind the manifestations are so badly thought out and unconvincing in light of the shenanigans afoot, that it probably does turn out to be a horror movie after all.

Each chapter has a summary of one film which includes little, useful asides about key actors and character actors in the film. And then a behind the scenes section with more of the same and notes about sets and special effects (the Lydecker Brothers are obviously mentioned a fair bit and, with good reason... I remember their melting cave sequence from King Of The Rocketmen when I was a kid and I’m still amazed when I watch it these days). So there’s lots of interesting shout outs to stars like the original screen Superman, Kirk Alyn or, say, future Perry White (opposite George Reeves’ version of the man of steel) John Hamilton. And also Republic’s sometime failure to really cash in on an actor to the degree they might have done, such as Universal horror regular Evelyn Ankers.

There’s lots of stuff I didn’t know here too... such as actress Peggy Stewart, who became so tied in to Republic Westerns that she had a deliberate career change for a few years as a casting agent to shake the image with the plan to then restart her acting career when she wasn’t so typecast. Then, when she went back into acting on TV in the 1950s, well... anyone who knows American TV in the 1950s knows that most of her opportunities would have been westerns, which were pretty much the main staple of the tube at that time.

I also didn’t know that Maxine Whitney, wife of serial director William Whitney who helmed some of the studio’s best serials, went into acting for the studio to keep the paychecks coming in while her husband was serving his country in the war. Or the real downfall of Republic studios being largely due to the studio head insisting on casting his girlfriend, ice skater Vera Hruba (later Vera Ralston) as a leading actress in films... she was not a great actor, was mostly in flops and the shareholders had had enough, it turns out. I never knew that story until now.

Another thing the book is useful for is confirming various street sets and interiors reused and redressed for other productions... and what stock footage was re-used and so on... which is something my father and I are always on the lookout for too, whenever we watch one of these Republic serials. So a Spanish and Cantina street set location redressed as an African village for The Vampire’s Ghost etc. And even the way Western stuntmen would turn a Western bar brawl choreography into a brawl in a Paris pub or a Western stage coach chase into a big city carriage chase... using the skills they had on the former for the less westerny assignments.

All in all, I’d have to say that Republic Horrors - The Serial Studio’s Chillers was a delight to read and I got a lot out of it. That being said, the book was written a while ago now. That’s a double edged sword it turns out because, for example, if I want to grab the book on the Lydecker Brothers the writer recommends, well... it’s out of print and fetches three figure sums now. So no chance of that. On the other hand, just recently, these films have started to get restored and reissued so, I’m probably going to try and nab that new Blu Ray set of Republic horrors at some point, I think. So there you have it, a valuable tome and a guide to what were then some hard to find movies. Definitely worth your time if you are a lover of Republic, for sure.