Sherlock Holmes In Washington

By George!

Sherlock Holmes
In Washington
USA 1943
Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Sherlock Holmes In Washington, the fifth in the ongoing series of films based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character to star Basil Rathbone as Holmes, Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson and Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson is, I think, the first in the series to not actually use specific or named source material from the stories and is completely a Hollywood concoction. However, with that being said, the writers knew what they were doing and the script, coupled with Rathbone’s confident performance as Holmes, certainly stays true to the spirit of the earlier films and is another fun movie.

This one starts off with the familiar ‘on brand’ credits and music before then going into the same card used in Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror (reviewed here) which once again reminds the audience that Holmes has been updated to a contemporary setting. I’m not sure why this was needed because the previous film didn’t do that and, by now, the contemporary nature of the continued series was obviously something which had been accepted by the cinema-going public.

This one has an extended sequence at the start of the film which doesn’t feature either Holmes or Watson for around ten minutes but which is quite gripping in itself. A British agent carrying sensitive documents, which would be a bad thing if they fell into Nazi hands, is kidnapped after his train journey from one of the airports to Washington. It’s a shame that this character later turns up dead as the performance is pretty good. However, when he goes missing, back in good old London Town, Holmes and Watson are asked by the British Government to find out what happened and to get the documents back. Holmes goes to the house of the agent (as he’s worked with him before) and deduces some information about the nature of the documents which puts him a little ahead of the main villain (played here by George Zucco, who earlier played Moriarty in The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, reviewed here) but also survives an attempt on his life.

Holmes and Watson then rush to Washington for a fun filled adventure which involves a kidnapped woman and some really nice scenes of actual detecting and deducing various essential clues which ultimately lead Holmes to be able to save her life and foil the plans of the lead villain and his henchmen (one of these being Henry Daniell, who played one of the good guys in Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror and who would also play Moriarty in one of the later films in this sequence).

As usual the acting is first rate and the chemistry between Rathbone’s razor sharp sleuth and Bruce’s bumbling Watson is always going to bring a smile to the face. I especially like that one of the cultural take homes that Watson gets from his American experience is that he likes the Flash Gordon newspaper strip. Plus, as I said, there really is a lot of actual, proper detection work going on here and, though it’s not based on an original story, it certainly pushes the kind of deductive thinking that Holmes was always known for.

I’m beginning to appreciate director (and now also producer) Roy William Neill’s way of doing things too. It’s very efficient, allowing his shots to unfold and reveal or highlight interesting moments, without cutting, in one shot... as he did with the mirror to room shot in Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon (reviewed here). In this one, for instance, there’s a nice shot of Watson in the main living areas of 221B Baker Street, sitting in his chair in the middle of the frame. Then the camera swings around 90 degrees as Holmes enters but we only see his arm as the camera is now showing us a detail on another table in close up (without zooming, it’s all just done by panning around) and some words are exchanged before Holmes is revealed fully as he walks into the room and the camera swings back around to frame him and Watson in the original view. It’s nice, economical stuff and hits you on an almost subconscious level.

Once again, Holmes has an interesting set of conversations with the lead villain but, since it’s not Moriarty, Zucco’s character is not armed with an intellect that, at any time, threatens to overshadow or gain a foothold against Holmes’ mind and he beats the villain rather easily... tricking him into handing over the documents without him even knowing he had possession of them.

And that’s that. At the end of Sherlock Holmes In Washington, as Holmes and Watson are being driven through the US capital, presumably on the way to the airport which will take them back to London, Holmes’ gives another of his patriotic speeches about what a great country it is and so, also, how great America is. This time around... and Holmes reveals the reference on screen here... his final speech comes not from either Conan Doyle or Shakespeare as in the previous two films... this time it’s from a speech that Sir Winston Churchill made in America. Once again, another Sherlock Holmes film which is as entertaining as anything and which I would wholeheartedly recommend, along with the rest of the series of features, to pretty much anybody.

House Of Frankenstein

The Man
With Niemann

House Of Frankenstein
USA 1944 Directed by Erle C. Kenton
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so after hitting on the idea of having two monsters for the price of one in Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (reviewed here), what could be a more natural progression than to fashion a movie which would star all four of Universal’s main, flagship monsters? Alas, the budget proved too much for their original line up so, despite originally planning another continuity busting component of this film when it was originally to be titled, The Devil’s Brew, the studio ditched the idea of having Kharis The Mummy getting in on the fun here too.

But we do have, in House Of Frankenstein, the first film to feature Dracula (as played by John Carradine), the Wolfman (as played once again by Lon Chaney Jr) and the Frankenstein monster (played once again by Glenn Strange). Bela Lugosi was originally scheduled to return as Dracula but some scheduling difficulties arose when Boris Karloff, who is also in this film, had to be released from a stage contract... so the studio went with Carradine in Bela's role due to the delay.

Yes, that’s right, Boris Karloff returns to this film as Dr. Niemann, a murderous mad scientist who along with a fellow cell mate, a hunchback lab assistant played by J. Carrol Naish, escape from their prison in order to find the secrets of the Frankenstein monster and seek revenge on the village people who put Niemann in jail (not the ones who sing YMCA). So, yeah, it’s kind of strange to have Karloff in a Frankenstein movie in which he’s not actually playing the monster but, honestly, he’s very good in this. His wonderful line delivery and the way he interacts with the other characters really lifts the film.

There are also a few other names from previous Universal horror movies who people will recognise, all pretty much playing different characters to their previous one... such as Anne Gwynne, Lionel Atwill and George Zucco.

Now, the thing about this movie is that it’s not really a proper monster mash at all. In terms of the story connecting up the three monsters... well, it really doesn’t. Niemann and his assistant are the only connecting tissue in a story that is definitely a game of two halves. The film plays for 1 hour and 10 mins but Dracula is only in the first half an hour and the other two monsters don’t come into the story until after he has made his last bow. Again.

So Karloff and Nash take over a travelling side show trailer, Professor Lampini’s Chamber Of Horrors on the way to the village of Frankenstein. The trailer comes complete with a specialist exhibit in the form of the actual skeleton of Dracula, with a stake pinning it in its coffin. When Karloff pulls out the stake in anger in one scene, not even he would have believed it but we are treated to the skeleton transforming into John Carradine, who kills one of Lampini’s foes (played by Sig Ruman from A Night At The Opera) in return for Niemman’s help... a favour which doesn’t get returned because, while he is being pursued for his crime, Dracula gets caught in the daylight and returns back to skeletal form (until the next film... yeah, we’ll get that one in another review). Of course, this whole back story about the skeleton being unearthed in Castle Dracula in Transylvania makes absolutely no sense in terms of continuity with any of the previous Dracula films but, hey, that seems to become the rule rather than the exception by this stage in the series of Universal horror films.

The other half of the film deals with Niemann not fulfilling his promises to either his assistant or to Larry Talbot, the Wolfman, who he thaws out along with the Frankenstein monster as, it turns out, the flood which engulfed the castle at the end of Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman merely washed them into a cave system under the castle where they were frozen solid for many years. Niemann has promised Larry a brand new brain for his help which, frankly, makes a lot less sense to me than just putting his current brain into a new body but, yeah, I’m not a scientist so what do I know about such things?

Anyway, as usual, things go wrong but, astonishingly, even though the Frankenstein monster and Lon Chaney in his human form share a couple of shots, the Wolfman incarnation doesn’t share screen time with the monster... so there’s not even a big showdown between these two like there was in a the previous installment. So, at the end of this one we have Dracula back as a skeleton, the Wolfman dead by a silver bullet (again, it’s only a temporary fix) and the Frankenstein monster engulfed by quicksand in much the same way that Kharis the mummy had sunk into a swamp the same year in The Mummy’s Ghost (reviewed here).

But, despite all this, the movie is rather well made and quite entertaining. Kenton seems to have an eye for the design and lighting of these things and there are some nice compositions which lead the eye into the centre of the frame quite a lot. Also some great scenes shot through vertical bars of windows and fences (and sometimes both) which make an impression... not to mention the placement of people at different heights to balance out the shots. And, of course, Hans J. Salter’s score does the usual thing and gives it the kind of music one always associates with these Universal monster pictures.

Admittedly, it’s a disappointment that at least two of the monsters don’t actually meet up properly in this one but these characters would all share the screen two more times for this era of Universal horrors and so, their time would come. House Of Frankenstein is one of the better B-movies of this era and a pleasure to watch every now and again... even if it features neither Frankenstein (it just features his more famous monster) nor, you know, his house. Essential viewing for admirers of these franchises, though, for sure.

The Mummy's Ghost

Wrappy Campus

The Mummy's Ghost
USA 1944
Directed by Reginald Le Borg
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Another Mummy movie, another Bey. This time it’s Youssef Bey, played by young John Carradine. In an opening scene for The Mummy’s Ghost, George Zucco also appears as the High Priest, handing down the secret of the Tana leaves to Bey and giving him the mission of having Kharis The Mummy (once again played by Lon Chaney Jr), go with him to Mapleton, New England to rescue the remains of Princess Anankha and return her to Egypt. Remember the location where the rest of the film is set... Mapleton, New England.

Okay, so we then have the tentative male lead of the film, student Tom, played by Robert Lowery, attending his regular college lessons on the local campus in Mapleton, where the geology teacher is telling all the students about the last time Kharis was in town (in The Mummy’s Tomb, reviewed here), many years ago... even though, once again, the setting of the film is contemporary to the year it was released... which makes absolutely no sense, of course. He tells of the last rampage of the monster and how Tana leaves can be used to revive it because, well, of course that’s the kind of lessons you have in an American university, isn’t it?

Anyway, after class, Tom goes to see his strange Egyptian girlfriend Amina, played by Ramsay Ames. The audience can tell she’s strange because she doesn’t like talking about Egypt, has an undisclosed past and later on, when the resurrected Kharis (who it turns out, isn’t all that worse for wear after once more perishing in the flames at the end of the last movie) passes by her house on the way to murder the Professor of the college (who stupidly figures out that you need nine Tana leaves to call the mummy... so therefore does just that)... she sleep walks to the scene of the crime and collapses outside after Kharis drinks his fill of the potion and the professor is dead. Although, quite why Kharis chooses to strangle the professor for giving him a nourishing hot drink and not do the same to Youssef Bey is anybody’s guess.

The shenanigans continue for the running time of 1 hour and 25 seconds (a very short feature indeed) and it’s nicely paced and shot, although not as well done as the previous film. There’s a nice moment when the watchman at the Scripps Museum is reading a strange detective tale magazine and listening to a horror themed radio show (I’d like to think it’s an episode of Inner Sanctum but I don’t know for sure what it is) and the narrative on the radio foreshadows the watchman’s death 5 minutes later. I’m sure this brought grins of delight to the audiences who first saw this in a theatrical venue, as it still does to me.

It’s pretty run of the mill stuff throughout but, like I said, it’s certainly watchable. There’s a nice moment when Kharis is caressing the bandages of the princess in its museum case at Scripps when the bandages suddenly go limp to indicate the figure inside has vanished into the ether and it’s implied, quite strongly, that Anankha’s soul has jumped into the body of Tom’s special lady friend Amina. This would seem to be about right as there was obviously a family ancestry connection between the two anyway. When she faints the first night, she awakens with a pseudo-Lanchester white streak in her hair. When she faints again and is taken by Kharis, she then has two white streaks in her hair. Then, as Bey is struggling with himself and deciding to take the woman for his own and to make her his ‘forever partner’... in an attack of sexual attraction which seems to afflict most of these Egyptian sect members sent to be caretakers of Kharis... he looks down at her still unconscious form and her hair is suddenly replaced by a white wig.

She isn’t actually awake and when, at the end, Kharis has killed Bey and cut short his sexual enthusiasm, we see shots of her skin ageing considerably as Kharis approaches his final resting place for this movie, as he and his captive are chased into the swamp and sink into its depths to their forever sleep (where forever sleep equals... until the next sequel). Yes, sinking to their death in a swamp in... where? Oh yeah, New England. Remember that folks, for when my next Mummy movie review is up. Mapleton, New England.

Oh, and by the way, the place Bey and Kharis are seen to be hanging out at seems to be those long steps which, I believe, have somehow found their way from the coal mine in The Invisible Man Returns (reviewed here) and into this picture. I don’t mind though, it’s a nice set and it looks pretty good.

So there you have it... The Mummy’s Ghost is an okay entry into the franchise and it would be followed with another ‘continuity screwing’ sequel which tried to follow things from where they were left off in this movie, while still making no logical sense at all. If you thought the continuity was bad up until now, just you wait until the next part. All in all, though, a watchable movie and I will always watch these ones again.

The Mummy’s Hand

 

Wrap-ture!

The Mummy’s Hand
USA 1940 Directed by Christy Cabanne
Universal  Blu Ray Zone B

So, following on quickly from The Invisible Man Returns earlier that year (reviewed here), Universal continued their revival of monster movies from the previous decade with The Mummy’s Hand and, I have to say, even though I love the original The Mummy and its importance in the pantheon of Universal Classic Monsters, I think The Mummy’s Hand is also a very important and influential film in its own right. The main reason for my thinking on this is because, although we have a new Mummy character completely, in the form of Kharis The Mummy, played here by B movie Western star Tom Tyler... who would go on to play the titular superhero characters in both the 1941 serial The Adventures Of Captain Marvel (reviewed here) and 1943’s The Phantom... we also have the first, to my knowledge, American movie where the Mummy is an actual bandaged monster who slowly limps around killing people with its superhuman strength. In The Mummy, Karloff was only seen opening his eyes in bandages, followed by a shot of his bandaged hand reaching for some papyrus... so this is the first time that we get the full monty, so to speak, of the Mummy in all his wrapped up glory. So all later films which feature mummies swathed in bandages and shambling about owe a debt to this movie in particular, I think.

Now, in The Mummy (reviewed here), the titular character was Imhotep (who would later be revived in the Stephen Sommers reboot movie in 1999). Here, however... and for the next three sequels too... we have Kharis but, this is the only time he is played by Tom Tyler. After this, Lon Chaney Jr would don the bandages three more times.

Now, the film primarily focuses on the lead protagonists of archeologists Steve Banning (played by Dick Foran) and Babe Jenson (played by Wallace Ford), who make up a kind of Abbot and Costello straight man and funny man partnership. Here they are joined by Cecil Kellaway (who we saw in The Invisible Man Returns) as stage magician Silvani plus Peggy Moran as his daughter and love interest for Banning... Marta. Silvani is bankrolling Banning’s expedition (after a little way into the picture, after some fairly entertaining shenanigans) but they are abetted by George Zucco as Andoheb, one of the guardians of the High Priests of Karnack, who will stop at nothing to ensure the American ‘defilers of tombs’ will not find the tomb of the Princess they are looking for. As luck would have it, they find Kharis instead... who is controlled by Zucco to kill for him.

In a long sequence before we even meet any of the main protagonists, a High Priest who is Andoheb’s father passes down the secret of making Kharis mobile and its all to do with the bizarre and unfortunately persistent plot device of the brewing of a potion made from Tana leaves. A brew made form three leaves during the full moon will ensure Kharis continues to live but, nine leaves allows him to get up and start doing killer shenanigans for his masters. And I seem to remember in terms of Kharis getting up to his tricks in the next three movies, these rules keep changing or at least being broken somewhat but, we shall see.

Now, in this opening sequence we find the High Priest character has a little pool which acts just like Boris Karloff’s did  in The Mummy... it projects pictures of what the guy is talking about. Here, he tells the back story of Kharis the mummy which is, it has to be said, almost identical to that of Imhotep... barring the inclusion of the Tana leaves. That’s handy then, since an awful lot of the back story of The Mummy is included via re-used footage with the odd shot of Tom Tyler inserted whenever we need to see his face. It’s quite comical once you start spotting the way the footage has been put together. Here’s a hint... when the footage looks just a little grainier and doesn’t include Tom Tyler’s face, you are almost certainly looking at the back of Boris Karloff’s head and other bits from the previous film. One truly dead giveaway is when Tyler is bending over a box of Tana leaves and turns his head to see the temple guardians behind him... in long shot with his head turned away from us, he is suddenly bending over a scroll... he turns his head back in close up and... it’s magically a big casket of Tana leaves again. So yeah... Karloff standing in... err... bending in for Tom Tyler there via the miracle of re-used footage. There’s a heck of a lot of that kind of thing in this sequence and, if you are familiar with the first movie, it’s fairly easy to spot.

More recycling is Andoheb’s father as the Writers here are... maybe not trying to be lazy, just on brand... with a bit of famous dialogue recycled to give a similar beat from the very first talking Universal horror movie, Dracula (reviewed here). In that movie Bela Lugosi hears the wolves howling and says... “The children of the night. What music they make.” Here, the guy hears the jackals baying and says... “The children of the night. They howl about the Hill of the Seven Jackals and Kharis must be fed.” So, yeah, trying to echo their earlier successes no doubt.

Now, at just under 67 minutes, the film is fast moving, entertaining and has some nice dialogue. The classic Hans J Salter music, partially recycled, is augmented by some Flash Gordon fight music during a bar fight and its one of those films that trundles along nicely to its inevitable conclusion.There are some interesting little errors and oddities I noticed about the film which I’ve not come across listed anywhere else though... not to mention the huge problems with continuity which would go on to kill the credibility of the entire Mummy franchise after this one.

Okay, so something I noticed was that, when Kharis enters the tent shared by Silvani and his daughter and strangles the father (more in that in a moment), Marta screams and then feints before being carried off by Kharis. However, when we cut to Banning and Babe’s reaction shot outside the tent, they then hear her scream a second time. But... hey there Mr. Director... she’d already feinted.

Secondly and, as far as I’m concerned, much more interestingly... when Banning investigates Silvani he replaces what looks like his lifeless corpse back on the bed. Even though they both have a line of dialogue! Well, since Silvano does look so lifeless here, my guess is those two lines were added in post synch to pull together continuity. I don’t know what the script was like in terms of changes on a day to day basis but later on, when Banning tells Marta that her father is going to be okay, when he’s trying to rescue her from the clutches of Kharis, I suspect that the decision had been made to have Silvani’s character survive too. However, I also suspect when the scene was shot with Kharis in SIlvano’s tent earlier, the idea was probably that the father would be the next victim of... The Mummy’s Hand. Somewhere before filming the later scene, the decision was made and they overdubbed the dialogue in on the earlier scene to try and hoodwink the audience. That’s completely a guess, by the way and, I’ve not seen it mentioned anywhere else but... that’s my deduction as to what happened here.

And then, of course, there’s the really alarming thing. Not for this movie but for the next three sequels... some of which would also compound the problem themselves. From the contract Banning draws up with Silvani in a bar near the start of the movie, it’s clear that the film is set in 1940. However, when the next mummy film came out in 1942... well, I won’t jump on that one just yet, I’ll wait until my review of The Mummy’s Tomb before I spring that one on you.

Nevertheless, for all it’s faults , The Mummy's Hand is also, as I said, quite influential in its own right and, perhaps more importantly, a very entertaining film with some stand out performances from the principal actors. As always, a pleasure to watch and recommended viewing for anyone who wants to take in these classic, Universal monster movies. A gift-wrapped bundle of joy.