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.

Zorro’s Black Whip

 

Whipping Yarns

Zorro’s Black Whip
Directed by Spencer Gordon
and Wallace Grissell
Republic Pictures
Elstree Studios DVD Region 2
Double volume, six episodes on each.

Warning: Some spoilers.

Zorro’s Black Whip is a 1944 Western theatrical serial put out by Republic Pictures, one of their many chapter plays of this period. Although male co-star and surrogate damsel in distress George G Lewis somehow gets top billing as government agent Vic Gordon, the star of the show here is Linda Sterling who plays Barbara Meredith... who, after her brother, the crime fighting ‘Black Whip’ is shot and killed in the first episode, takes up his mantle to continue the legend of... The Black Whip.

Not Zorro’s Black Whip though... as the title would misleadingly have you believe...

Okay, here’s the thing. Zorro’s Black Whip and its crime fighting leading lady has absolutely nothing to do with Zorro in any way, shape or form whatsoever. It’s not set in Spain (the setting is the Old West), there’s no sword play and Zorro is not mentioned one single time throughout the whole serial. Except in the opening credits of each chapter where, in addition to his name bizarrely being on the title, he is also credited as a character to his original creator. But the actual character of The Black Whip in the story has nothing to do with Zorro except... okay, she kinda dresses like him with the black outfit, hat and mask (plus the whip, obviously).

So I don’t know what’s really going on here. It could have been that the producers were too frightened by the similarity of the dress of the character (which probably was just an old recycled Zorro costume) that they thought they should probably give the creator a credit and royalties rather than have to duck a legal fee. Or, perhaps, they were playing the old bandwagon game and riding the coat tails of the popular character. Certainly, you see this done time and time again in the history of cinema, with the Italians being especially good at providing ‘inspired’ rip off non-sequels under the guise of actually being sequels... such as the gazillions of Django movies made with very few of them actually being sequels and not all of them featuring a character with the name Django... for example. I don’t remember seeing it done in the US of A like this though but, perhaps I’m less familiar with the period so, yeah, there were The Creeper movies, I guess, inspired by Rondo Hatton’s ill fated character in a Sherlock Holmes movie (more on that when I put the review of that movie up on this site... hopefully this year, folks). If you know of any other USA knock offs cashing in on famous characters in their titles without actually including that same character, please drop me the info on the comments section below this review.

The story is about a corrupt governor in the sleepy town of Idaho, where they are about to have elections to find out if the people want to make it a state of the union... which goes against this particular high up and less than outstanding citizen’s plans. So he has his thugs go after anything which will swing the vote in the favour of becoming a state and it’s up to The Black Whip to stop all the trouble and give the people a chance to choose for themselves, to go forward into democracy... blazing away for justice with her guns and her trusty whip. Not to mention her horse who, in the denouement of the final episode, saves her life by stomping her main antagonist to death.

Okay, so, that established, this one is a typical Republic serial but with a female lead... kinda. She does fine in the action scenes but George G. Lewis gets a huge hunk of screen time too, mostly so he can be set up to be knocked unconscious or held prisoner in order for Linda Sterling to suit up and rescue him a little later. It’s fast and furious in the way that only the cheaply made Republic serials could be. Universal, Columbia and Fox all have their little identifying features which mark them out as serials coming from a particular stable and, with Republic, it was minimum of plot and characterisation and plenty of action. When I started watching this one with my dad and it was clear the first of many fist fights was about to take place, I reminded him that this was a Republic serial so, everything you see in the room of the fight... every piece of furniture or prop... was going to get broken over someone’s head or flung around and, sure enough, within a few minutes, the room was a total wreck. I’d hate to be the cleaner for a character who lived inside a Republic branded serial, for sure.

And yeah, by this point in Republic’s output, they’d got it down to a fine art... there’s ample chasing, fist fighting and shooting here. In fact, these guns they’re using are less like six shooters and more like one hundred and thirty six shooters. Don’t start counting the bullets because they hardly ever run out of shots... except when it’s dramatically pertinent for them to do so, in order for somebody to be captured by the opposition. Also, these people including the title character, are waving their pistols off dramatically and firing more into the air than anything else, it seems to me. Although, there are some wonderful stunts such as one early on where The Black Whip rolls herself down the slope of a cabin roof, arms by her sides and then lands on her horse and rides it off... nice stuff.

The dialogue is particularly stripped down on this one. Barbara Meredith’s real job is to run the town newspaper, which she does with the aid of her press room guy, Lucien Littlefield as the aptly named ‘Tenpoint’ Jackson. There’s a few comedy scenes with him doing a cut rate Gabby Hayes style comedy scene here and there but, it’s all about the action with just a few lines of dialogue to explain what’s happening, delivered by various characters, before the next action scene is upon us. It gets to the point in the final episode where The Black Whip knows that the masked villain has a welt from her whip on his wrist... so all she and Vic Gordon have to do is go back to town to the committee and see which one of them has the wound which will reveal who the enemy ring leader is. However, rather than have the usual reveal scene, we then just get a newspaper headline summarising that the villain’s identity was uncovered but he escaped, all in order to make way very quickly for the final gun battle where the heroine tracks him down again.

All in all, though, the serial delivers mostly what you’re expecting from it (except Zorro, obviously) and I have to say that Zorro’s Black Whip is a pretty entertaining entry in the pantheon of Republic serials of the time... if you’re not expecting more than lots of punching, shooting and galloping, that is. Eagle eyed viewers will spot one of the committee members in a few episodes being played by none other than John Hamilton, who would of course go on to play Perry White opposite George Reeves in The Adventures Of Superman TV show in the 1950s.

Tigon - Blood On A Budget

The Tigon Empire

Tigon - Blood on a Budget
by John Hamilton Hemlock Books
ISBN: 978-0993054198

John Hamilton’s Tigon - Blood On A  Budget, for Hemlock, is an addition to their library which I personally find fascinating because it tells the story of a studio who I’ve never really taken all that seriously or known much about. Tigon were, of course, the third of the three British studios who were especially known for producing movies in the horror genre, being perhaps the second best competition to the absolute masters in the business of churning out commercially successful product for a longish period of time... the Hammer studios, who became 'Hammer Horror' in a lot of people's minds (and still, to this day, remain so). Of course, Hammer’s main rivals in the terror trade were Amicus studios (you can read my review of the book about their anthology films here) but Tigon also put out some classic rival movies in their time and so, a tome on them was about due, I think.

Now, there’s good and bad with this particular volume and the main problem is the quantity of text. This book is, surprisingly, an extremely thin volume, totalling just 128 pages in length. So, less than the size of certain thick magazines and, while it’s a little oversize in that it takes the form of a square shaped aspect ratio, the design inside the book, which includes a lot of photographs from the various productions, both in full colour and mono, also eats into the amount of room that could have been used for more text. That being said, I suspect the text of this thing was about as much as one could get out of the miniscule amount of information and documentation still left about the studio... so I don’t feel short changed in any way (and especially since it was a birthday present from my cousin). Studios like Hammer and even, to a certain extent, Amicus were probably bound to have more documentation available and so I suspect this isn’t simply a case of not enough time and research being put in.

The writer does a pretty good job on it, in fact... starting with a brief history of the early careers of the people involved in either forming or working with the company and then, once each mini biography is done, moving on to highlight the films they worked on in turn. Of course, as is customary in these kinds of ‘review and making of’ volumes, the writer stops at strategic points to meander a little into the backgrounds of writers, directors, actors and actresses along the way, as and when they come up for the first time in the chronology. Included are some useful snippets of information which I’ve only ever heard made passing reference to in documentaries over the years. For example, the intent and approach of the tragically short-lived director Michael Reeves, whose films I have mostly steered clear of since seeing a version of his much applauded film for Tigon, Witchfinder General.

I have, however, seen one of Reeves other films for Tigon back in my dim and distant past (on late night 1970s BBC television, if memory serves) called The Sorcerers, which starred Boris Karloff and, like Witchfinder General, Ian Ogilvy... who I best remembered as Roger Moore's Simon Templar replacement in the TV show, Return Of The Saint. There are little stories of the ‘behind the scenes’ progress on him and various other directors including a couple of films that I’ve only seen fairly recently from the Tigon catalogue... The Blood On Satans Claw (reviewed by me here) and The Curse Of The Crimson Altar (reviewed by me here). I was very interested to learn some of the things Hamilton has either dug up or confirmed about these and other films such as, in the case of The Blood On Satan’s Claw, the fact that it started off life in script form as an anthology of horror stories and these were later compressed or combined to make up the one tale which we are now familiar with.

The design of the book is quite lively, colourful and more like I would expect a lot of these kinds of books to be presented in the current market place. It’s way more interesting than various others in this niche genre where the designers have maybe gone a little over the top with their aesthetic decisions at the expense of clarity or, as is more often the case, not pushed the boat out enough in terms of making an exciting and attractive package which serves to communicate the content. That being said, there are at least two pages where the designers slip up a little to my mind. One is the standard error of 'first time designers for print' in that the back tone underneath some text has had the usual dot gain on the printing process, whereby the tint used is just a little too strong to be able to easily read the text over it.

The other problem lies on a page where the designer has tried to wrap the text around a complex shape and opted to have the lines split vertically by a cut out object but, rather than running the text down either side in columns, has left the split so the reader has the mighty hard task of reading the text from left to right over the two lines split horizontally, forcing the eye to constantly jump in the middle of each line of type. Sometimes designers forget that their number one job on such projects is to make the communication easier, I think. In these two instances I’ve highlighted above, it makes it a heck of a lot harder to read. However, these two pages are in a minority and, for the most part, it’s a well and excitingly designed book which serves the text very well.

My biggest gripe about the actual content is that there is not really much mention of the scores for these things and their composers. I have the music to The Blood On Satan’s Claw on a CD, for instance, and although it's currently out of print, I understand that it’s a well thought of score. Although that, of all the films covered n this book, does get a mention in the main text, it really is just a passing name check and so some composer-centric observations really wouldn’t have gone amiss in the book as a whole, I think.

Still... assuming you’ve got the inclination to read something about Tigon and the money to justifiably buy such a slim tome, the book won’t let you down if you want a taste of what the only other credible UK rival to Hammer and Amicus was. I would hope that, somewhere down the line, more material will be unearthed and a more encyclopaedic volume can be written about the rise and fall of the Tigon studios. However, until such a time comes, Tigon - Blood On A Budget is certainly the best book of its kind on the subject and I’m pleased I got the chance to read this one. While it didn’t, unlike the Amicus anthology book, furnish me with a list of movies from the studio that I need to add to my 'to watch' list, I think it’s a nicely written and informative book that people who have an interest in horror films will be able to treasure for years to come. So if you find yourself matching that description... miss it at your peril.

Shadows Over Chinatown

Toler Powered

Shadows Over Chinatown
1946 USA
Directed by Terry O. Morse 
Monogram - Warner DVD Region 1

Shadows Over Chinatown is the penultimate of the Charlie Chan films to feature Warner Oland’s replacement, Sidney Toler. I reviewed his final film in the role, before Roland Winters continued in the series, in my review of The Trap (here).

The film starts off very promisingly... 13 passengers on a bus in a rainstorm, including Charlie Chan, Number Two son Jimmy and regular chauffeur Birmingham Brown (as played by Victor Sen Yung and comedian Mantan Moreland), are forced in to a stop to sort the bus out. This is almost a perfect recipe for a murder mystery, I thought to myself, as I was expecting the whole film to be set in the large passenger waiting room... however, it was not to be and is only a brief stop to get the plot up and running and also have someone make an attempt on Charlie Chan’s life.

Two things happened in this opening sequence. One was that I spotted, right off the bat, that one of the background passengers, who even has a couple of words, is an uncredited appearance by John Hamilton... who would, in later years, go on to play Perry White opposite George Reeves in the 1950s TV series, The Adventures of Superman. So it was nice seeing him for the brief amount of screen time he gets here.

The other thing that happened, which popped me right out of the movie, is the little bit where the passengers come into the interior of the bus station. In long shot, the aforementioned Hamilton is seen making a show of taking off his light grey raincoat, to reveal a much darker suit, and then removing his hat before sitting down at the right of the screen. However in the next shot, which is a close up grouping of the same set of characters, he is sitting with his raincoat on and all done up. If I could spot that on what may be my first viewing (I may have seen this one back in the 1980s, I’m not sure) then I’m sure audiences back in 1946 seeing it on a much larger screen would have spotted that error as well. It’s a big one and I had to wind it back to make sure I hadn’t got confused with the characters and believe what I’d just seen. Such a shame.

And then, after an attempted murder in which Chan is saved from certain death by the birthday watch his son gave him stopping a bullet, the bus journey continues and the plot switches to the big city... which is a shame really.

Now then, this film is really not terrible and had me entertained throughout... but it did seem a little tired and lazy for a Charlie Chan mystery, to be sure. For instance, the identity of the killer, who I’m not about to reveal here, is someone who I was suspicious of throughout the whole movie and so it came as absolutely no surprise when the killer is finally revealed. Which is a shame because I was really hoping I was wrong and there are enough suspects in this one... at least at the start of the film... by the end they’ve kinda thinned out a bit due to either transforming themselves into allies of Charlie Chan or turning up on the receiving end of a bullet or knife blade.

The usual comedy shenanigans of Victor Sen Yung and Mantan Moreland are all present and correct, although in some sequences they are starting to get a little surreal and, in all the sequences, I’m afraid that they feel like exactly what they are... comedy padding to puff up the running time.

All the performances are fine, though, and if the script does seem very lacking at some points, it’s at least convoluted enough to keep the characters up to various pursuits... even if the identity of the killer seems to be more and more obvious as each fresh corpse turns up. The dialogue seems equally jaded, for this humble viewer, too... with the usual Chan aphorisms and retorts seeming a little less cute or charming and a far cry from the sparkling pearls of wisdom that had turned up in other films starring either Oland or Toler in the role.

All in all though, this is not a spectacularly dull film and the overall feel, while maybe not a solid, mystery thriller, is still one of “they don’t make movies like these anymore”... while at the same time begging the dubious question of... “But, should they?”

I am, however, very pleased that Warner Brothers have seen fit to release this Region 1 boxed set of four, previously unreleased on commercial DVD, Charlie Chan films, which includes this Toler film and three of the Roland Winters entries. I’ve only ever seen one of Winter’s films, in a previously released box set, so am looking forward to watching the three in here to see how well he does in comparison to his predecessors. Reviews of those three will be coming soon... watch this space.

Mr. Moto’s Gamble

Memento Moto

Mr. Moto’s

Gamble

1938 USA

Directed by

James Tinling

20th Century Fox

Region 1

Well that was an interesting little movie experience.

Courtesy of the numerically challenged 20th Century Fox, I cracked open the second of their two Mr. Moto boxed editions and began by watching this one, the third entry in the series. Yes, that’s right maths fans. Due to the what-the-fudge-are-you-smoking nature of the people who put together and marketed the two Mr. Moto Collections, Box 1 contains movies 1, 2, 4 and 5 (but not in that order, just to confuse you even more) and Box 2 contains 3, 6, 7 and 8 (again, not in that order). Fans of sequential numbering systems and chronological continuity had best avoid Fox box sets unless they want to wade into the research first, methinks.

Anyway... Mr. Moto’s Gamble, the third in the Japanese detective’s film series as played by Peter Lorre... is certainly the oddest of the Moto films I’ve seen so far and, I suspect, certainly the most “out of kilter” one I’ll see. Why? Well because it’s a Charlie Chan movie, that’s why! No really! It’s quite literally a Charlie Chan movie... here’s the story behind the movie as I understand it.

Warner Oland’s Chan Movies were making big money but Oland was drinking more and going through a messy divorce with his wife. He walked off set a couple of times on his new film Charlie Chan at the Ringside due to disputes with the studio over the condition of the working environment and only the best part of 3 days were in the can before the plug was pulled.

When it became clear that Oland wasn’t going to come back easily, Fox retooled it to be the third in their new Mr. Moto series. And by retool I do mean literally cross out a couple of names on the script and hand it back to everybody to carry on filming... there’s nothing like subtlety when rewriting a script - and this was nothing like subtlety. Filming resumed, the film was released to critical acclaim and good box office, Oland was wooed back to Fox and signed for three more Chan pictures but before starting work on them he went to spend time with his mother in Sweden and promptly died from Bronchial Pneumonia... enter Sidney Toler!

So what does that mean for Mr. Moto’s Gamble, as Charlie Chan at the Ringside quickly became?

Well, it meant quite a lot actually in terms of the tone of the film and, also, a character crossover from the Chan series. In the Moto films which came before and after this, and as I’ve noted in my reviews, Moto is nothing like the Charlie Chan character. He doesn’t do things according to the law, quite often killing a suspect to further the investigation of the truth in the most ruthless manner while “getting away with it” and often getting into quite physical Judo fights with any opponents stupid enough to take him on...

But not in this one. This one, while he does retain quite a bit of the mannerisms and character of the Moto we have known from before (Peter Lorre is too great an actor to let that kind of stuff slip) he is more Chan like in his detachment from the physical action... something Oland’s Chan usually left to Keye Luke, playing Lee Chan (Number One Son). A couple of Judo sequences have been hastily injected into this one but you can tell that these weren’t part of the original set up and they kind of hang about on the fringes of the movie and could easily be spliced in independently of the main narrative.

Another Chan characteristic is the amazing aphorisms that the Chan actors always delivered. Like I said, they just crossed out the Chan name in the script and wrote in Moto’s because on any number of occasions, Peter Lorre delivers, in his own style, a number of those little sayings that make Chan fans smile.

Thirdly, but by no means lastly, we have Keye Luke. Here we have a crossover movie created by the rewrite, because in this movie Keye Luke is in it and, yes, he is playing Charlie’s Number One Son Lee Chan... Moto promises to write to Lee’s illustrious father to cover for him coming to Moto’s detective lessons.

So yeah, the film plays out like a standard Charlie Chan film but this is a Chan film from the Oland era... and as such it is top notch.

There’s some great stuff shoehorned into this tale of murder at the boxing ring, including one of the most creative newspaper montages I’ve yet seen in one of these old black and whites. Instead of spinning or dissolving or wiping, in one sequence the newspaper front pages are cut into four horizontal strips. Four rectangles which are rotated to bring up the next newspaper edition on the next rectangular strip-face. Brilliant and creative stuff from when it was cheaper to do stuff in-camera.

Also, there are some amazing faces turning up in this one. It wasn’t long after I’d recognised that the thug/heavy standing in the background and occasionally saying a few words was a pre-fame Lon Chaney Jr, that I realised another major player in this movie was John Hamilton... who a decade or two later would be filling the shoes of Perry White opposite George Reeve’s in the hit TV show The Adventures of Superman. And then, if that wasn’t enough, you’ve got Ward Bond and Chan regular character actor Howard Huber playing this movies frustrated police inspector! Brilliant stuff. And then.... and then I recognised that John Hamilton’s employee was played by... oh, heck I don’t even know his name. But he was the financial clerk in the Bailey’s Buildings and Loan in It’s A Wonderful Life. What a great cast!

Mr. Moto’s Gamble is a great film, if not a great deal like a regular Mr. Moto film. Definitely one to watch if you’re a fan of either the Chan or Moto series though. It’s definitely entertaining in that way that only a pre-1940s, cynical but funny detective movie can be. Check this one out if you only ever want to watch one of them. Looking forward to watching the sixth in the series sometime next week!