The Pearl Of Death

Rondo Macabre

The Pearl Of Death
USA 1944 Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

The Pearl Of Death is the ninth of the series of Sherlock Holmes films put out by 20th Century Fox and then Universal. This one toplines Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson again but, unlike the last film in the series, The Scarlet Claw (reviewed by me here), we have the return of both Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson and Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade. It’s based on Arthur Conan Doyles story The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons.

The plot of this one involves Giles Conover (played brilliantly by Miles Mander), a master criminal who is after an enormous pearl with a bloody history. Holmes, in the guise of a clergyman... after Conover’s accomplice Naomi Drake (played by Universal monster scream queen Evelyn Ankers) steals the pearl from a secure location on a cruise ship... uses his disguise to have her relinquish the pearl, hidden in a camera, so it can get through customs and, due to Holmes ingenuity, she doesn’t realise her mistake until they’ve parted ways and Holmes, Watson and Lestrade deliver the pearl to the ‘Royal Regent Museum’ (no such museum in London, I can assure you), waiting for the precious pearl. And this is where it gets interesting because Holmes doesn’t trust the electronic eye security in the museum... so, in a twist to the way these tales are usually set up, Holmes disables the system momentarily to prove a point but, in that moment, Conover steals the pearl and hides it before the police can catch up with him. So Holmes has inadvertently allowed the pearl to be stolen... which doesn’t do his reputation much good.

After Conover is released on the grounds that there’s no evidence, people are found with their backs broken at various locations, midst a pile of smashed china (smashed to hide the one thing which is being smashed during the murders, to muddy up the scene of the crime). Holmes... after surviving a couple of attempts on his life, including a wonderful death trap of a ‘jack-in-a-box’ knife in a book which is thrown up into the ceiling because Holmes is suspicious of it... deduces that, when Conover was running from the police, he hid the pearl inside one of six wet busts of Napoleon. It’s up to Holmes, Watson and Lestrade to try and find the pearl before Conover’s sinister, back breaking heavy The Hoxton Creeper, of whom I shall say more in a little while, can finish their murderous spree and make off with the stone. I have to say though, it’s unintentionally hilarious when, after surviving the dagger in a box gag, Watson proclaims the obvious with his, “Great Scott. That was meant for you!”

And it’s another wonderfully entertaining slice of a movie, of course. The cast is perfect and Rathbone plays Holmes with a certain amount of anger since he’s the one who, after recovering the pearl at the start, allowed it to be stolen again. His temper is very thin in this one, especially in dealing with Lestrade’s usual fat-headed deductions. There’s some lovely, comical support from Watson in this one too, including a nice scene where he’s sticking a newspaper article in his scrapbook and loses said article. “What would Holmes do?”, he says, and reconstructs his movements with the paste and tea cup until he relocates the cutting, stuck to the underside of his sleeve (where the audience can see it all along).

Also, producer/director Roy William Neill seems to be thinking more about his shot compositions here. There’s a column suddenly grown now in 221B Baker Street, used to separate the actors within via the vertical split on screen and, similarly, he has a bizarre arch put into the middle of a room at the museum so he can use it the same way. These visual devices aren’t wasted, however... he uses them to full advantage visually.

And then of course, there’s The Creeper, played by the iconic actor Rondo Hatton. Hatton was exposed to poison gas during his service in the First World War and, as a result of that (it’s believed), went on to develop a rare disease called acromegaly, which does something to the bones of the face and warped his into the sinister visage he’s known for. He was a tall guy and this, when combined with his unusual features, made him perfect casting for heavies in Hollywoodland. This film, made when he was fifty, kinda catapulted him to success but... too late. Just as Gail Sondergaard, the villainess from the Sherlock Holmes film The Spider Woman (reviewed here) had made another film playing a ‘spider woman’ to trade in on the name (if not the character), so Rondo Hatton made a further two films as a different back breaking menace called ‘The Creeper’ the year after this. Alas, before they were both posthumously released in early 1946, Hatton had died of a heart attack due to his acromegaly.

He would, of course, leave a lasting legacy and he has been referenced in many things over the years such as a villain made to look like him in the movie version of The Rocketeer and even Judge Dredd disguised himself as his likeness in one of the early issues of 2000AD, if memory serves. And, of course, there are the annual Rondo Awards, made to celebrate the best in classic horror research, creativity and film preservation... which were named after the actor and which actually are miniature likenesses of him. So, he died young but was definitely, in his own small way, an influential presence on the pop culture scene. And if you want to know more ‘shady facts’ about acromegaly, take a look at the giant spider movie Tarantula sometime (review coming soon).

And that’s me done with The Pearl Of Death. Another great entry in what is surely one of the best film series of all time. It’s also a film where Holmes is forced to kill someone at the end of the picture (I won’t say who) which is a regrettable outcome. I must make a point to try and track down those Creeper movies at some point though. If they have survived the years, that is.*

*Since time of writing, Eureka Masters Of Cinema have released one of them last year as part of a box set.

Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror

 

Elementary,
My Dear Nazi

Sherlock Holmes And
The Voice Of Terror
USA 1942 Directed by John Rawlins
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

The character of Sherlock Holmes,
created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
is ageless, invincible, and unchanging.
In solving significant problems of the
present day, he remains, as ever,
the supreme master of deductive reasoning.
Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror

So there we are. Due to bad marketing (or so the story goes), the 20th Century Fox series of Sherlock Holmes films... starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes, the inimitable Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson and supported fleetingly but regularly by Mary Gordon as Holmes’ housekeeper Mrs. Hudson... had stalled after the second film (The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, reviewed by me here) and Fox had cancelled the series. However, this was not the end of the screen adventures of the great detective starring this particular set of actors... more like a new beginning. After three years of Rathbone and Bruce keeping their interpretations of the characters very much alive and popular on the radio, Universal pictures took the plunge and decided to continue the series, with a change or two and, frankly, the changes must have worked somewhat because they made a further twelve films, starting with this one, Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original story His Last Bow but, very much updated for obvious reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

Okay, so there are some format changes with this series from now on which mark them as slightly different to the two Fox pictures prior to this. For starters, this is very much in the Universal B-movie mode, much like what their classic horrors had evolved into by this point in the 1940s... which means that they’re all just a little over an hour long from now on. Furthermore, the films start off with a title sequence of Rathbone and Bruce in character in the fog, peering out of the screen at the audience to some strident, Frank Skinner music. This sequence is reused on most (probably all, I can’t remember but will confirm when I get to the last one) the films from this point on... so they are very much ‘branded’ as a specific series of Sherlock Holmes mystery films in this way.

The other big change is that, the films are no longer set in the period in which Conan Doyle wrote them and, instead, they’re set contemporary to when the films were released. Although Holmes reaches for his Deerstalker and cape at one point, he never actually wears them and, indeed, doesn’t don them for the rest of the movies either. Instead, Holmes and Watson are dressed appropriately to the time and will take a motorised taxi rather than the traditional Hansom cab associated with them in their source stories. The way the studio chooses to obliquely underline this message is in a screen full of text... which I’ve quoted directly and in full at the top of this review.

And I have to say, as horrendous as this all sounds, it all works beautifully and this is a real masterpiece of a Holmes movie as far as I am concerned. Joining the cast and further cementing the relationship with Universal’s classic monster pictures is Evelyn Ankers as the ill-fated Kitty. She’s trying to help Holmes and Watson stop a Nazi spy ring who are broadcasting propaganda radio broadcasts to the people of Britain and then causing the deadly disasters in England that they predict in their broadcasts. It’s all set in London as Holmes and Watson are called in to help the war effort and thwart the propagandist ‘Voice Of Terror’. Which, obviously they do.

And yeah, it’s a great one and quite bleak. It’s got beautiful black and white photography throughout and there are a lot of instances in this one of cutaways to long held close ups of various actors and actresses reacting subtly to on screen shenanigans, further enhanced by very little music in most of the scenes. Kind of like a form of Eisensteinian typage but it’s extremely effective at silently enhancing the suspense and tense atmosphere of the movie. I did feel for the poor actors though, as the way they are lit with the light framing all or most of their faces for the close ups must have been very hard for them. You can see Rathbone’s and Ankers’ pupils shrinking down to just pinpricks as they face into camera, towards the light.

There are some nice little touches too... like the fact that Holmes carries around a stick or cane in this one which has a built in torch at the end for when it’s needed. Also a hokey but nice piece of visual deduction as Holmes realises there something up with the version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony played on the radio at a certain time, in that it contains some kind of message to the German spies... I think, that point is never quite made fully implicit but they do spend a long time establishing that something us up with the broadcast at a certain point.

The dialogue is sparkling too and, even if one of the main villains is fairly easy to spot, it’s fast paced fun amongst little set pieces and stock footage of Nazi propagated disasters (such as a reuse of the train crash footage from The Invisible Man, reviewed by me here). And, yes, it is very much a tool for British propaganda to help the morale and war effort but, that’s okay, so was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original story written in 1917, on which this is based (in a topsy turvy way). Something which marked these Universal versions of the films out, if memory serves, was Holmes giving a patriotic speech to Watson (or whoever was listening) at the end of each film. This one is no exception but his words here are taken directly from his closing words in the original story... except in the original the character was talking about the upcoming First World War (or The Great War as it was known then)... in the movie the words are reused to address the Second World War to good effect. And that’s me done on Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror. A cracking film and I’m really looking forward to checking in with some other old favourites soon. Great stuff.

Son Of Dracula

Swamp Vamp

Son Of Dracula
USA 1940 Directed by Robert Siodmak
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

So the next up in my rewatch of the classic Universal Monsters movies is Son Of Dracula. Now this is an interesting one for many reasons including the arguments about just who Lon Chaney Jr is playing here. Despite the title, the family line is really not mentioned here in the film, nor any real mention of the Dracula he plays being in any way a chip off the old block. Rather, it’s intimated over half way through the movie, that he’s actually the original, believed to have died in the 19th Century. Which, of course, kinda knocks out the continuity from the previous Dracula films in this series straight away.

The film starts off with a static titles card, introduced by some hands brushing away the cobwebs to reveal the title and the card on which the titles play over. We then find two men, including Dr. Brewster (played by Frank Craven), awaiting the arrival of Count Alucard on a train at the station in the deep southern swampland town in which they make their home. Yep, this is the movie, I think, that started that whole running joke of Dracula hiding his true identity by spelling his name backwards. It’s been used a lot in many films and novels since then, of course.

So, anyway, Alucard is nowhere to be seen but his baggage is, including some rather, ahem, long looking ‘trunks’ which have his name printed on the side. The good Dr. Brewster starts to spell his name out backwards, just for the slowest members in the audience who didn’t pick up on this not too mysterious cypher the first time around. Actually, the elderly Dr. Brewster (the actor died just a few years after this film was made), kind of becomes the main protagonist of the film as he’s the one who pieces it all together and has far more screen time, it seems to me, than anyone else.

Back to the plot. The 'morbidly interested in the occult' Katherine (played by the gorgeous Louise Allbritton, who apparently played a trick on her co-stars by being naked in her coffin in one take which, alas, has probably not been kept) and her sister Claire (played by Chaney costar and Universal monster maven Evelyn Ankers) are awaiting the arrival of Count Alucard in a party Katherine is throwing in his honour. Alucard turns up behind the scenes however, to put in motion what he thinks is Claire’s plan, transforming into a bat and back again... in some quite well done animated overlays, shame about the fake bat... and kills their father. Later on, he and Claire are secretly married, much to the consternation of her actual fiance Frank, who gets into a fight with the super strong Count and shoots him repeatedly with his revolver. Alas, Claire was standing behind Alucard when he does this and, in a wonderful early demonstration of one of the powers of the vampire, is shot dead as the bullets pass through Alucard and into her.

Frank gives himself up and is locked up for her murder but, since she’s doing a lot of talking to people post-death, some find it hard to  believe she is properly deceased. Shenanigans abound as Dr. Brewster and his vampire specialist friend Professor Laslo, played by J. Edward Bromberg, try to destroy the two vampires... before Frank destroys them himself. Bromberg, of course, played the ‘fat funny nazi’ in Invisible Agent (reviewed by me here) but he’s been aged by make up in this and, despite the script completely cutting its ties with Dracula (reviewed here) and Dracula’s Daughter (reviewed here), he really does seem to be made up to have a superficial resemblance to Edward Van Sloan’s portrayal of Van Helsing in those two movies. A deliberate echo, I suspect, to get the audience to sympathise with a vampire hunter in as shorthand a way as possible, to keep the story moving along.

Anyhow, it turns out Claire, all along, was waiting to be made immortal by Dracula so she can do the same for Frank and then get Dracula out of the way in order to live with her former fiance forever. Yeah, she’s a kooky kid alright. I won’t go into the details of the way the Count and Claire meet their demise, which could be considered anti-climactic anyway but I will say that there’s some really nice stuff in this movie.

There’s a nice scene, for instance, when Claire goes to meet Alucard/Dracula, when his coffin floats to the surface of the swamp. Mist then flies out from the coffin and forms into Lon Chaney on screen (some of the effects in this are great... if it wasn’t for that damn fake bat) who then floats (due to the not so subtle point of view of the camera placement) over to the land to be with her. Another nice thing is when Claire, in the form of a bat, goes to bite the neck of Frank while he’s asleep in jail. Instead of seeing the bat performing the actual deed, we see Frank on the bunk and Frank’s shadow behind him, with the shadow of the bat biting the neck of the shadow, even though the bat is actually not in shot and nowhere near Frank. It’s a brilliant piece of suggestive expressionism highlighting the surreal world of the vampire but, I can’t help thinking that they probably already tried the effect with that terrible rubber bat and it looked so bad they were forced to come up with something which, serendipitously, really adds to the atmosphere of the film.

Lon Chaney Jr is always worth watching but he’s generally considered, it seems to me, miscast for the role. Certainly, his usual look of extreme anxiety does the part no favours but he does, at times, play the Count in an overtly hostile manner and, all in all, I think he does as good a job as he can here. I would have liked to see more of him in it as his ‘death’ seems somewhat rushed over and premature when that scene comes near the end of the film. It doesn’t help his performance any, however, when Hans Salter, who recycles a score he wrote with Frank Skinner for a film called Seven Sinners (according to the IMDB), kind of overscores Chaney’s first two appearances in the role with a kind of extended, mysterioso tone which is less than subtle and, honestly, really damages what could have been dramatic moments. I love Salter and Skinner and this usage wasn’t necessarily their idea but, still, it’s one of the few times in the Universal monster movies that I think the scoring is just a little too ‘on the nose’ to be truly appropriate for the scenes.  

That being said, Son Of Dracula, whether Chaney is playing the heir to the Count of Transylvania or actually the real deal, is nothing less than entertaining and watchable. In my opinion, it’s actually Frank Craven’s sound and reasoning Dr. Brewster who actually carries the weight of the film and it’s true that, this one doesn’t seem to really fit in with the other monster movies made by Universal at the time (in a way, it’s almost too sophisticated) but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a corker and always worth a watch. The continuity on the Dracula character, however, would be even further compromised in the next three films he turns up in, played twice by John Carradine and then, one last time, by Bela Lugosi. Which I will get too on this blog at some point soon.

The Ghost Of Frankenstein

Surgical Terror

The Ghost Of Frankenstein
USA 1942 Directed by Erle C. Kenton
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

It was never meant to be so but The Ghost Of Frankenstein, these days, acts more as a ‘link in continuity’ kind of movie (just like the atrocious Back To The Future II links two far superior films). It’s the last of the Frankenstein movies which had an A list budget (although it was still significantly slashed from the previous installments) and perhaps a sign that, with the B-movie status bestowed on pretty much all of the Universal monster movies that saw out the rest of the 1940s, the box office returns were perhaps less spectacular. Universal would attempt to do something about that in the very next Frankenstein movie but... I’ll get to that when I review Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman.

This one is an odd one... it’s the only one in which Lon Chaney Jr dons the Frankenstein’s monster make-up in the proper continuity of these films... officially that is. Unofficially he also doubled up a few shots in a couple of the upcoming movies but, this is the one where Chaney Jr (billed here at the end of the credits but without the Jr) started to become the man who had the honour of playing four different Universal signature monsters. This was filmed just over a month after his starring role in The Wolf Man (reviewed here) and he would later go on to play The Mummy and, arguably, Dracula (yeah, it’s a hard call on that one but I’ll get to it when I review that particular movie).

It’s starts being odd straight off, when several characters who were killed in the last one are all clearly fine again here. So two of the council men, murdered by the monster in Son Of Frankenstein (reviewed here), seem none the worse for wear. Alive too is Ygor, once again played by Bela Lugosi, even though Basil Rathbone’s character had shot him dead in the last film. The one excuse given for this spoken is, and I quote, “Ygor does not die that easily!”

Another odd thing is that the film kinda starts off in reverse, in that it plays out what seems like it should be the final scene of a typical Frankenstein movie first, with the villagers following the advice of a cameo appearance by Dwight Frye (who would appear twice in this film but only once with new footage as this uncredited character), by raising pitchforks and lighted torches and blowing up the now deserted Castle Frankenstein with TNT. Unknown to them is the fact that the TNT has helped dislodge some of the hardened sulphur encasing the Frankenstein monster (remember, he was knocked into the put of sulphur by Rathbone in a heroic moment at the end of Son Of Frankenstein) and Ygor rescues the now ‘alive again’ creature, the white of the sulphur covering his body and helping the trailers no end with the footage to sell the idea that the actual ghost of a Frankenstein monster is in this film to justify the title to the audience. It doesn’t but, they do have a proper justification later in the film, as ridiculous as that is (yeah, don’t worry, I’ll get there).

The creature loses his white covering fairly early on but of the things which always worries me about this film is the costume he’s wearing when he comes out of the sulphur. It’s just the typical suit the monster always wears but, if you remember, when the monster went into the sulphur as Boris Karloff, he was wearing a snazzy, furry waistcoat. Does sulphur discriminate and dissolve such cool fashion statements? Only the costume department at Universal knows for sure, I guess.

So, anyway, the basic plot of this is Ygor and the monster go to another village where the hitherto unknown ‘other son of Frankenstein’, “Ludwig Frankenstein MD - Diseases Of The Mind”, has his psychiatric practice. He is played by Cedric Hardwicke, is assisted by the nefarious Dr. Bohmer (Lionel Atwill returns to the franchise here as another character) and lives with his daughter Elsa Frankenstein (presumably named after Elsa Lanchester but played by Evelyn Ankers, straight off of The Wolf Man), who is in love with the local police chief played by Ralph Bellamy (fresh off the same movie). Ygor wants the Doctor to put his brain into the monster and, by a strange twist of fate and treachery, actually gets his wish... so really, in all the appearances of the Frankenstein monster in the rest of the franchise, Ygor’s brain is in it... although this is pretty much ignored after the end of the next movie.

I said Dwight Frye appears twice and he does, as Fritz alongside Colin Clive in flashback footage from the original Frankenstein (reviewed here), as Elsa reads the notes of the original creator. This must be a way of filling up screen time cheaply but it’s kind of a stupid way of doing it because, in order to really justify the title, there’s a scene which probably doesn’t last more than two minutes where Ludwig is visited by the blurry ghost of his father. And he’s blurry because he is also played by Cedric Hardwicke but, frankly, even though he’s blurry, he both looks and sounds nothing like Colin Clive... so why they took the time to remind the audience of Clive’s performance I’ll never know. Well... I guess the answer to that is... they just didnt care. After all, nobody was going to see the film ever again after 1942 right? Commercial television was not around, as yet.

And the film trundles along to its inevitable conclusion and it’s entertaining enough, although not as great as any of its predecessors. It was nice seeing Richard Alexander again as an uncredited villager... people will best remember him, perhaps, for playing the original version of Prince Barin in Flash Gordon (reviewed here) and Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here... he was replaced by another actor for the third serial)... but there’s not much more to recommend it. In a nice touch of symmetry (and perhaps I’m being kind here), the villagers burn down the institution with Frankenstein and the monster in it. The monster’s optic nerves have failed him because when Atwill’s character switched brains on the doctor, he hadn’t realised he was a different blood type. The creature does know how to talk now, though and, he does so in the voice of Bela Lugosi... something which would be a casualty of post-production on the next film, if memory serves.

And that’s about all I have to say about The Ghost Of Frankenstein, to be honest. A necessary and fairly entertaining watch in the series but this definitely doesn’t reach the heights of the films which came before. Great title... so so movie but, certainly enjoyable at worst. The next film in the Frankenstein series would, of course, see the humble beginnings of the Universal ‘monster rally’ film, being a sequel to both this and The Wolf Man.