The Raven (1935)

Surgeon On The Rocks

The Raven
USA 1935
Directed by Lew Landers
Universal/Eureka Masters Of  Cinema
Three Edgar Allan Poe Films of Bela Lugosi
Blu Ray Set Zone B

Warning: As of some spoiler gently spoiling, spoilering at my chamber door.

So it was time for me to revisit, courtesy of Eureka Masters Of Cinema’s Blu Ray edition of three Bela Lugosi films adapted from the works of Edgar Allan Poe... Lugosi and Boris Karloff’s follow up to their successful pairing in The Black Cat (reviewed here). The Raven is, once again, one of the many Edgar Allan Poe works which really can’t be translated into something cinematic all that well and, despite the number of films with the same title made over the decades (which claim to be just that)... well... The Raven is a poem for starters. Which is just another abstract thing which allows movie makers purporting to adapt it to just do their own thing with the mention of the original material before going over to their own narrative. This one, in the opening credits, says that it’s “Suggested by Edgar Allan Poe’s immortal classic” and, yeah, I guess that’s about as honest a credit as you’re going to get for one of these.

The film starts off with a famous dancer, Jean (played by Irene Ware), crashing her car off a cliff edge and then laying comatose in hospital, at deaths door. Her father, Judge Thatcher (played by Samuel S. Hinds... you know, George Bailey’s dad in It’s A Wonderful Life, reviewed here) insists that the genius Doctor Vollin, played by Bela Lugosi, is brought out of retirement against his will, to save the life of his daughter. He does and, although Jean is due to marry Jerry (played by Lester Matthews), Vollin becomes infatuated with her, despite the disapproval of her father (and with her not realising he is serious in his pursuit of a younger woman).

Then, a criminal on the run, Bateman (played by Boris Karloff, somehow sneaking top billing and billed only as Karloff) tries to force Vollin to alter his appearance. Vollin does so, by cutting the nerves on the back of Bateman's neck, leaving him with a grotesque appearance of a slipping rubber eyeball and slack mouth in what is, frankly, the most laughable makeup I’ve ever seen by the master of the craft, Jack Pearce. In order for Vollin to change Bateman’s appearance to something more appealing, he blackmails him into helping him ‘take care’ of Jean, Jerry and the Judge in a dinner party at his secluded house. There, he tries to kill all his guests with torture devices which he has constructed himself, said to be inspired by the work of Poe but, by this time Bateman himself has fallen for the charms of the girl and helps everyone to escape, crushing the mad Vollin in a chamber with slow closing walls.

It’s a fairly mean spirited film, it has to be said. Not exactly a horror film at all but this didn’t stop the BBFC in the UK using it as an excuse to not allow anymore horror films to be imported into the country for a while. Karloff plays a kind of anti-hero character quite well and Lugosi plays the whole ‘mad doctor’ bit to the hilt, squeezing every drop of insanity out of the role. So from an acting point of view, it’s business as usual from Universal with, you know, ‘a good cast that’s worth repeating’ all round.

That being said, even though there’s no real connection to the story by Edgar Allan Poe, it really does try quite hard to justify it’s title. For instance, when the audience first meets Lugosi’s character, he is sitting by the side of the shadow of his stuffed raven, reciting the words of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem in his own, phonetically learned manner. And it turns out his character has the biggest collection of Poe memorabilia in his house, the envy of other collectors. And, as a surprise to Vollin for saving her life, Jean dances in a ballet sequence based on Poe’s The Raven, with an actor even done up to look like the writer on stage with her at one point.

The last section of the film, dealing with Vollin’s hand built torture chamber and the ‘guests’ he has trapped there has, at its centre piece the slowly descending, pendulum knife from Poe’s The Pit And The Pendulum and, since it so dominates certain scenes of this movie, I have to say I’m surprised that this wasn’t also the title used for this movie. Especially since the last film made with that title prior to this one was all the way back in 1913. So, yeah, not quite sure why that didn’t happen but, well, at least Vollin has a stuffed raven so, yeah, there’s some small tie-in at least. And, at one point, Vollin does try and shoehorn his situation into the famous poem somehow, although it really doesn’t fit things all that well.

And I don’t have much more to say about The Raven, to be honest. The black and white photography, shot design and lighting are all quite stark and interesting, as many films of this era and, if you like the Flash Gordon serials, well a load of the music in this was tracked into the first serial a year later (and reviewed by me here). If you like the old Universal classic monsters, well... aside from not having any real monsters in it and not being a strict horror movie, The Raven is definitely in the same vein and something you should maybe take a look at. Eureka’s new three movie set of this, gathered together with The Black Cat and Murders In The Rue Morgue (reviewed here) is definitely the best I’ve seen these movies looking and, if this is your kind of thing, it's worth the upgrade, for sure.

The Return Of The Vampire

Tesla Foil

The Return Of The Vampire
USA 1944
Directed by Lew Landers
Columbia Region 1

I can’t believe it’s taken me until now to have even heard of this film or get access to it. Thanks to Hypnogoria for bringing it to my attention with a posting of the movie poster.

Made in 1944, just when Universal were getting towards the end of their second wind with their successful box office monsters, The Return Of The Vampire was supposed to be Columbia Pictures direct sequel to the original Tod Browning version of Dracula. However, when Universal did the obvious thing and threatened to sue, Columbia just changed the names of some of the characters, altering what would have been Bela Lugosi’s second shot at Dracula into the more ‘electrical’ sounding Armand Tesla. That being said, he plays him just like Dracula in this, and pretty much in the same costume. It wouldn’t be for another four years before he would actually play Dracula again, this time in comedy monster-mash up Bud Abbot & Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein.

The film starts off in 1918, where a talking and very eloquent wolfman goes to wake his master, Count Tesla, from his sleepy-time coffin. Tesla has already left one person dead in the hands of Dr. Walter Saunders (played by Gilbert Emory) and his assistant Lady Jane Ainsley (played by Frieda Inescort), who both seem to live together in the same house with their respective son and daughter (I’m assuming these two aren’t an actual family unit, due to the son and daughter getting married when they grow up). While the doctor in question reads an interesting book on supernatural lore, ignores his blinded, scientific mind and realises this was a vampire attack, Tesla bites the neck of his little girl, sending her into a coma requiring blood transfusions.

It surprised me a little, not knowing this film was starting on an extended prologue (and since the opening is a good ten or fifteen minutes long) to see the good doctor and Lady Ainsley stake Lugosi’s character through the heart. This breaks the werewolf’s curse from the man called Andreas, who in the intervening years becomes Lady Ainsley’s assistant when the good doctor has died. Lugosi is buried with the stake through his heart and left to his death... but somehow, I knew the movie wouldn’t really be over in a quarter of an hour.

Cut forward to the second World War and an air raid leaves the cemetery where Tesla is buried in turmoil. Two comic, British character actors find Tesla with a stake through his heart and, assuming it’s debris from the bomb, remove it before reburying him in a patch of ground. Of course, once the stake has been removed, Tesla is once more the undead vampire of years ago, ready to take revenge on the family that put him to rest.

Now then. Movie legend in some historical tomes has always been quite quick to say that the first imagery of an undead, or living dead (if you prefer) creature rising from the bowels of the earth is of the zombies in George A Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead. And for many years people have been arguing that the first imagery of undead creatures rising up from the soil is of the more traditional zombie creatures in Hammer’s The Plague Of The Zombies. And for years I have been saying that the first imagery I know of this occurrence is from one of the two Universal Mummy movies made in 1944 (the fifth or sixth in the series), either The Mummy’s Ghost or The Mummy’s Curse (I forget which one). However, since this film, The Return Of The Vampire, was released on January 1st of the same year, I’d have to say that the image of Bela Lugosi’s hands pushing its way out of the earth in this one is, so far, the earliest version of this phenomenon I have seen.

Of course, once Tesla is back in the game, the young child who has grown up (to be played by Nina Foch) is now, once more, under Tesla’s watchful spell. As is Andreas, his rejuvenated werewolf companion (the make-up job on Andreas, which is pretty good, was reused later for The Werewolf, reviewed here). From here on in it’s pretty much a straight remake of Dracula, with a bit of unbelieving police inspector and comedy policemen thrown in for good measure. But you know what? This is a pretty good movie.

I love the Universal monster movies and have found other studio’s films of the time, especially those retreading Dracula, to be quite dull and lifeless in comparison to their Universal counterparts (I might mention the much loved Mark Of The Vampire as being particularly witless and inscrutable in this respect). The only rival they had, for me, are the excellent Val Lewton RKO movies from the same period. This one, however, really is on a par with the best of the Universal monster movies in regards to everything you would want from these films. A bunch of actors taking it seriously, Lugosi reading his lines phonetically (he never really learned the English language and so had to learn all his lines in this fashion... but it kinda works for some of the characters he played), excellent gothic style lighting and a Universal style selection of wrought, pseudo gothic underscore by a composer, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who I’ve never heard of but would like to know better... he gets those fake Salter & Skinner stings just right!

But it’s also got the background of the second war and various found footage of that in it, plus the bizarre shot of a topless Big Ben I’ve mentioned in one or two reviews before (my theory is a model was built to shoot the clock face from and then it was shot further back than the model had been built for... then re-used as a stock insert by everybody and their dog’s movies) and, as far as I can make out in my research, the first ever shot of a disintegrating vampire, melting exactly the same kind of way that Christopher Lee would do many years later (I’m not counting the original Nosferatu as that’s a different and less graphic kind of effect and target)... which is pretty strong and graphic stuff for the time, actually. I’m wondering if this movie ran into trouble with the censors in this country at the time and had to be judiciously snipped.

And did I mention it’s got a talking werewolf? The screen's first and last?

I guess you have to be of a particular mind set to watch these kinds of movies but I know there are a lot of people out there who, like me, love their Universal Monsters fix. If you’re one of them, then you owe it to yourself to give this film a bit of a watch. It really does stand head and shoulders with other classic Universal vampire movies like Dracula’s Daughter and Son Of Dracula.

And you noted it’s got a talking werewolf, right?