The Mummy (1999)

In My Humble 
Opinion... Tep!

The Mummy (1999)
USA 1999
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Universal UK Blu Ray

I remember when this version of The Mummy first came out in cinemas. I was worried about it because I love the Universal monster movies of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and I was concerned that Stephen Sommers, who was said to be making more of an action adventure film, would be doing the concept a disservice. Then I went to the cinema and saw the finished product for myself and, wow, I absolutely adored this right from the start. I remember The Matrix was released in the UK about a week later and I remember hating that one and thinking, why didn’t I just go see The Mummy again rather than pay out for that. I did see this film a few more times at the cinema though and, even though it has several mistakes (which the director gleefully points out in his informative old US DVD commentary... I’m assuming this is the same one ported over for this Blu Ray) it’s still an absolute masterpiece.

So, the film is a strange tonal hybrid in that, yes, there are certain scenes, mostly in the first half, where Sommers is definitely playing with the film in terms of the horror genre and, although there are a few great fight sequences in the first hour, he really does push the creepiness of the concept a lot more than, I think, people realise once they get caught up in the next hour. So, for example, the sequences where The Mummy is first brought back to life and runs around in the tomb as panicked archeologists and treasure hunters try to escape him are the film very much going into good old fashioned horror mode. There’s even a creepy prelude culminating in a jump scare in an early scene which takes place in a library and sets up one of the characters.  

But there’s more to this as the film is injected with a good dose of old 1930s-50s adventure movie serial components, pushing the Indiana Jones aspects of the film and ratcheting up the action and nostalgia stakes that come with that territory. And it’s done with a huge dose of humour which, yeah, could have gone terribly wrong for the movie but, because the script on this one is so good and, because the various actors are so brilliant in this, Sommers manages to pull it off with ease and, in doing so, he created a lasting classic which still endures and holds up now. 

As for those actors.. we have Brendan Fraser who is, frankly, brilliant in the role of adventurer Rick O Connell, playing him with a lot of humour and confidence. We have Rachel Weisz as librarian Evie, who is a kind of feminist version of a 1920s heroine and gives as good as she gets and, indeed, even has a penchant for inflicting eye injuries on her foes (in at least two scenes). We also have John Hannah playing her kid brother Jonathan, who is used as comic relief and is a nice contrast to Fraser’s leading man, the two playing off one another nicely. 

Arnold Vosloo as title character Imhotep is absurdly good in this role and almost a likeable and sympathetic character, if he wasn’t so determined to kill everybody in horrible ways. Kevin J. O'Connor as the weaselly Beni (who had the best line in Sommer’s earlier movie Deep Rising and steals many of the greatest scenes here) is probably the absolute greatest thing about this movie, playing a character so disloyal he ends up helping Imhotep in order to both stay alive and make off with a load of treasure but who, to paraphrase the words of lead character Rick O Connel, gets what’s coming to him. 

Lastly, there’s Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay and the gorgeous Patricia Velasquez as Princess Anck Su Namun. Both of these characters and their respective actors would get much bigger roles in the first direct sequel, The Mummy Returns. 

As for the direction, editing, cinematography etc... this is also a technical masterpiece... despite the mistakes which have either been edited around or, in some cut sequences, actually created by the editing with shots that either don’t quite match or defy logic if you happen to latch onto them (again, Sommer’s commentary is really worth listening to, if it’s the same one that he did for the initial DVD release). 

For instance, when everyone is running around and trying to escape the mummy’s tomb when he is first revived, one of the characters loses his glasses. What happens next is that when the camera is a point of view from that character or from just behind the character looking away from him, he blurs the focus to imply a POV shot. But here’s the thing, the camera then pans around to this character and the shot changes into sharp focus... within that same uninterrupted shot (and he does this a couple of times in this sequence). So, yeah, that’s the first time I’ve caught a director literally implying a change of POV within the same shot... brilliant stuff. 

He also uses the camera and editing to give us some nice transitions. Such as a moment where Evie and Jonathan are looking at the map. We then cut to a close up of the map before cutting away to Jonathan and Evie and a third character talking about the map in a different location. It’s not a new way of doing things but it’s a nice bit of visual shorthand and it works very well. 

As do some of the visual wipes used in the film. For instance, when Fraser jumps diagonally down into a chamber entrance in the ground, into a tomb in the city of Hamunaptra, a visual wipe follows him diagonally down, revealing him and Weisz already in the tomb. Nice stuff. 

Another thing the director does which really helps lift the film where others trying to capture the same magic have failed, is that he lets the audience in on the joke. For instance, the sudden appearance of wind and atmosphere going nuts when anyone says anything dark and filled with foreboding is certainly a genre cliché and here Sommers does it at least three times. But, here’s the rub, he does it so unsubtly and so self consciously, that the audience realises right off the bat that he’s doing it tongue in cheek. It’s like he’s winking at the audience and saying, it’s okay to not take this seriously... we certainly aren’t. And to spell that out even further, there’s even a scene where it happens yet again and Brendan Fraser says... “That happens a lot around here!” It’s a nice touch and makes all the difference to the way the film is received... the audience are invited to laugh along at the absurdities and genre clichés right along with the actors on screen, elevating the experience accordingly. 

Another great thing about this movie... Jerry Goldsmith. I was at one of many of his concerts I attended over the years and, in at least one of them, he played a suite of music from The Mummy. He told the audience he was really struggling with it and didn’t think much of the movie until he at last found a way to have fun with it. When the sequel came up, he turned it down citing scheduling conflicts and, while Alan Silvestri provides a great score for the sequel, it means the franchise suffers from the same lack of musical continuity that modern Marvel and DC movies have... which is a shame. Even so, Goldsmith’s score for The Mummy is outstanding and, for my money, in the top twenty scores of his long career. The camel race is especially beautiful, as is the heavy percussion which comes in right at the end and the shot transitions to everybody setting up camp in Hamunaptra. It’s easily one of the greatest scores he did around this time and the modern, expanded version of the CD with the entire score on it means I no longer have to leave the old US DVD on the languages menu if I want to hear it in total... as the full score playing from start to end was an easter egg on that disc if you stay in that menu. 

Oh, and about the old DVD... for the British readers here. The Mummy was uncut at our cinemas but had some cuts made for the UK home viewing versions at the time. For instance, the extended hanging scene from near the start of the movie, which in real life caused Brendan Fraser to pass out, was heavily truncated on the UK home video releases. Which is why I would only touch the American release of this movie back in the day. I’m pleased to report that the UK Blu Ray (which is now in a single clasp case with the two direct sequels), has had those cuts waived, so it can be watched properly again in this country now. 

And that’s me about done on this one. Rewatching it now was a real trip and the film holds up very well. I’m looking forward to revisiting the sequels very soon... well, the first sequel at any rate. I’m hoping that the third movie will maybe have grown on me over time. I’ll report back here on those soon.

Pursuit To Algiers

Clues On Cruise

Pursuit To Algiers
Directed by Roy William Neill
USA 1945
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Just two of the regular characters are in this, the 12th of the ongoing Sherlock Holmes series, those of Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson although, saying that, a lot of the recurring actors who have been popping up in several different roles as part of the repertory company which populates these movies are still on hand. No Mary Gordon though, since none of the action takes place near Baker Street. Nor indeed is Dennis Hoey on hand to have Lestrade give any of his dubious but entertaining assistance.

Pursuit To Algiers starts off with Holmes and Watson being recruited by a foreign government to escort the son of an assassinated king back to his homeland in a bizarrely convoluted manner, in which Holmes has to solve clues both in the street and in a local fish and chip shop in order to piece together the information that he is wanted at a certain address at a certain time. It’s all good secret agent style stuff and lots of fun although, in the context used here, it very much seems like unnecessary overkill, to be honest.

Once they are on the case, Holmes takes Nikolas, the heir to an empire (if Holmes can get him to said empire unscathed) with him on a three manned plane while Watson is sent to their destination in Algiers by cruise ship, to act as a decoy. Alas, after only a short while Watson is faced with the knowledge that the plane Holmes and his client were on was shot down above treacherous mountains by unscrupulous villains. It’s not long, however, before Holmes and Nikolas are found waiting for Watson in the adjoining cabin, as Watson had been used as more than a dupe than he thought, in order that the two could take a safer but slower way of travel and avoid the plane tragedy that Holmes expected to happen all along.

After that it’s a joyous affair, as the three stay on the cruise ship for the remainder of the film and try to ward off various assassination attempts while Holmes indulges in verbal jousting with his would be assassins... in a strictly gentlemanly way, of course, since everybody knows he knows but, they don’t want to say it out loud.

Well I say gentlemanly but, when Holmes figures out that one of the assassins is recruited from a circus act where he uses his skills at throwing knives, he not only avoids being a pin cushion himself but manages to break the gentleman’s hand as it comes through the cabin porthole to make the kill. Which is unusual for Holmes but it’s good stuff and certainly Holmes character doesn’t lose any of his credibility pursuing such quick justice in a certain scene.

This is what I call a comfy film. For some reason I feel relaxed when watching movies that take place on a cruise ship and this one follows the old Agatha Christie method of populating the cast of characters with a number of possible suspects who all look like they’ve got something on their minds and could be a possible threat to the main protagonists. This proves to be the film’s undoing on a certain twist near the end (which I won’t spoil here) as one of the more twitchy fellows in this, one of the stewards, is acting too suspiciously to be a neutral member of the cast and, since the director almost goes out of his way to make you assume he’s a villain, he’s obviously not and, by a certain point in the film, you realise that there’s only one person who this person could now be revealed as. There’s more than one dupe on the ship, for sure.

One of the characters in this is a singer who seems to be in a state of distress whenever she is near Holmes but who makes friends with Dr. Watson. What this means practically is that, for the first time since the second film in the series by 20th Century Fox, The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (reviewed by me here), there are a fair few musical numbers but producer/director Neill doesn’t allow them to slow the film down and often concentrates on the histrionic tension of some of the characters watching and listening, as he allows the audience to wonder who is friend or foe. It also means we get a chance to hear Watson sing. Now, the dub as he warbles Loch Lomond is so intensely different in terms of the background ambience and clarity of the sound, I was convinced this was a comical overdub from a professional singer but, according to a couple of sources, this was Bruce singing himself. Now, I’m not so sure of that but can’t disprove it either so... hmm.

Bruce’s Watson is the usual tip top comic performance that mixes the characters less smarter aspects with alert caution... caution enough to save the life of one character, in fact, when he spots something wrong with a person’s coffee. He throws salt over his left shoulder as he should when some salt is spilled and, since this necessary custom to ward off bad luck has, I suspect, fallen by the wayside in recent years, one wonders what the younger section of modern audiences might make of this moment in the film.

And talking of things which have fallen by the wayside, one thing which I loved is that Watson reminded me of a phrase I’d not heard in a long time... ‘to sleep like a top.’ However, when I looked up the derivation of the word, first known to be introduced in a Shakespeare play, the deduction that a spinning top appears completely still when it’s spinning seems to me to be somewhat stretched as an explanation. I suspect that there was once a more satisfactory explanation for the phrase but, alas, that it’s been lost in the mists of time.

And that’s me done on Pursuit to Algiers... not based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story and stretching the characters to a point where, I believe, Rathbone was now getting very tired of playing the role (the role, of course, for which he will probably always be best remembered). I think this is just another wonderful film in the series and, although the restoration of the print doesn’t seem to be as brilliant as most of the others in this set, it’s still better than it’s been in the past and another worthy addition to the series. Two more left to go.

The House Of Fear

Pipped At The Post

The House Of Fear
Directed by Roy William Neill
USA 1945
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Inspired rather loosely by Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure Of The Five Orange Pips, The House Of Fear is the tenth of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes featuring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as his loyal friend Doctor Watson. It also bizarrely, given the circumstances of the story, features Dennis Hoey returning as Inspector Lestrade but, since there’s only one scene near the start of the picture which features Holmes’ 221B Baker Street address, this is the second (I think, by my count) of the films to not include a brief appearance by Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson.

It starts off, somewhat unusually, on a longish sequence with a voice over narrative setting the scene about a group of men living in a large house in Scotland who are each, night after night, getting delivered an envelope containing a steadily supply of diminishing orange pips as a forewarning of their horrible death in the next few hours. Each body is found mutilated beyond recognition, due to some grisly fate but identifiable due to a personal item or feature of the body (which immediately put me on my guard not to trust any one of these corpses... I won’t spoil the ending for you here though),

It then turns out this narrative set up is actually being spoken by an insurance agent at 221B Baker Street, as he has been telling Holmes and Watson the tale and calls them in to investigate. They arrive just as a third murder has been committed and they set about investigating, both in the house and the local village in this fun filled movie which, again, showcases all that’s best with these particular Holmes movies.

Being as it’s Universal, everything is lit by longtime director of the series Roy William Neill in that crisp but sinister looking, shadowy style which helped make their monster movies such a hit. Indeed, Neill directed the first of the monster mash ups, Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (reviewed here) for Universal a few years earlier (if you look closely near the end, you may be able to spot the wolf man’s cane). He even uses a nice Dutch angle at one point, as Holmes and Lestrade descend a staircase into a smugglers cave near the end of the movie.

There is a definite budget conscious re-use of sets and model shots etc on this one. For instance, the house in long shot is the old ruined church establishing shot from Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror (reviewed here), which makes no sense and doesn't tie in with the interior of the house (which I think is from at least one of the others). And the village and the pub sets will also absolutely feel like old friends to watchers of these Holmes films by this point too.

There are some clunky but fun parts here too, of course. I mean, why would Holmes call on Scotland Yard to come and give him aid when he’s in Scotland, when the local constabulary would surely do just as well? And why, in this case, would it be the always ineffective Inspector Lestrade who they send to help him. Not that I mind of course, Dennis Hoey was very much part of the team by this point and watching him bounce off the two principal leads is great fun. He also a nicely silly line in this when, in his confusion, he utters, “Suffering cats! What’s going on here.” Although, this is nowhere near as silly an exclamation as when Dr. Watson, true to form after he and Holmes are nearly flattened by a particularly nasty boulder pushed off a cliff at them, cries out, “Great Scott Holmes! That was meant for us!”

Other than this though, apart from a woman sporting the double bun style of hair which was popularised again by Carrie Fisher in the first Star Wars movie in 1977... and the novelty of the ending which I won’t reveal to you here (although you may well begin to suspect the final solution long before it’s revealed), The House Of Fear is another brilliant piece of classic mystery movie entertainment which I could revisit year after year if I didn’t have so many other movies to watch. So a short review for a short but sweet movie in this wonderful series of Holmes movies. Four more now to revisit. 

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.

Red Barry

Barry In Haste

Red Barry
USA 1938
Directed by Ford Beebe
and Alan James
VCI DVD Region 1

Well this one’s a bit of a clunker, I’m sad to report.

Of the five Buster Crabbe serials I’ve reviewed here this week, Red Barry was the only one I’d not seen before or was familiar with. Nor am I familiar with the newspaper strip on which it was based so, yeah, I don’t know if this is an accurate fit or not.

Apparently it took fifty or so years for this to get any airplay on television, which would explain why I had to wait for a DVD release to get a look at it. Now I’ve seen it I can almost understand why. People get used to seeing continuity mistakes on the old serials, most commonly it’s rare that the stuntmen doing the fistfights look anything like the people they are doubling for. However, in this one, there are some really stupid things happening and, frankly, I can see how the people responsible for this high spirited mess may have been embarrassed if this serial was ever seen again.

Okay, so the main protagonists are police detective Red Barry played by Buster Crabbe, newspaper reporter Mississipi played by Frances Robinson, Russian ballet dance Natacha played by Edna Sedgewick, Red’s boss Inspector Scott played by Wade Boteler and... well there are way too many principle characters to list here but, also from Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here) is Philip Ahn as Hong Kong Cholly (who was Prince Talon from Saturn) and William Gould as the Police Commisioner, who would go on to play the leader of the Hidden City in Buck Rogers (reviewed here).

Okay... so the serial is at least well paced, a little like the ones Republic used to make but, this one seems much sloppier. The two best things about it, apart from Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe’s absolute conviction in the role are 1) the opening episode recaps which are of a similar idea to the ones used in Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars, where comic strip artwork is flicked through from a police cabinet of files (instead of a televiewer) and 2) a really great looking, fire breathing Chinese Dragon on the post cliff-hanger, ‘Coming next week to this theatre’ cards (theatre spelled correctly, for some reason, which is unusual for an American serial). This dragon never appears in the serial in anything other than these end cards but it’s so well done for the time... it’s rumoured to have been created for another production, possibly an earlier Flash Gordon serial, but was left unused.

Okay, those are the only nice things I’ve got to say about this one, unfortunately. Lets look at the negatives...

The plot is convoluted, revolving around 2 million dollars worth of stolen bonds which at least four different parties, five if you count the police, are after (although one of those parties doesn’t reveal themselves as a bad guy until episode 11 of the 13 ‘exciting’ chapters (you'll see it coming though). So it gets a bit complicated to try and pin down the real villains of the piece, especially since one of the characters disguises himself as a Chinese gang head but is really some other guy when he takes the make-up off, even though it’s clear that the same actor is not being utilised for both parts. It’s interesting also that Philip Ahn’s character speaks fluent English, as he does later as Prince Talon in Buck Rogers, except for when he’s around his American friends when he speaks some kind of fake, pigeon-English attempt at sounding ‘properly Chinese’ so they don’t feel threatened by him. There’s a lot of this kind of thing going on in the serial... with some of the Chinese people also clearly being played by Western actors in ‘yellow face’ (or black and white face, I guess) and I can imagine that this would be difficult for younger, politically correct audiences to find acceptable in this day and age (I just think everybody should calm down and appreciate entertainments within their historical context but, to each his own I guess). This may be another reason why this one doesn’t get a lot of airplay, I suspect.

I knew I was going to have trouble with this one when, in the first episode, a diver is sent into the sea to fetch the bonds which have been thrown overboard from a ship in a waterproof container. Except... the guy in the big diving suit is clearly just being lowered into a standard set with a fish tank (with oversized gold fish) being placed between him and the camera to give the, not very good, impression that he is underwater. Oh dear. And then, in the second episode recap, there’s an important plot point shown in a drawing of... a scene which never happened. I’m guessing they forgot to shoot it or had to cut it for whatever reason and were just relying on audiences to not remember exactly what occured the week before. Can’t think of any real reason for this other than that kind of scenario.

But this is nothing to the blatant issue which plagues pretty much every single car chase in the entire serial. In fact, it’s almost difficult to believe that this wasn’t done deliberately but then again, why would you let prints go out to cinemas in this shape... I’m talking about the close ups of various characters in their cars. They car interior shots are obviously done in a studio with the landscape whizzing by the windows in back projection... and nothing wrong with that, that’s how it was in those days (David Cronenberg uses this particular effect in a brilliant, metatextual way in his movie eXistenZ). However, fully half of the shots of characters, mainly Buster Crabbe, have no back projection at all. It’s just a grey background with the screen turned off behind the character... with the car being pursued usually having the characters with the proper rear projection so... yeah, there are a lot of car chases utilising these kinds of shots throughout and it makes absolutely no sense. Did they just use rehearsal footage because the money ran out? Was the machine broken but they needed to hit deadlines anyway? I guess we’ll never know but, wow, how did it get released at all in this state?

And I don’t have much more to say on this one, I reckon. Which is a dampener considering the other four serials I’ve reviewed this week are all worth your time if you are a fan of cinema history and any one of them could be a good jumping on point if you’ve not seen anything like them before. Red Barry, however, I would say would be more likely to turn you off before you’ve even given other serials a chance so... yeah, if you’re a die hard Buster Crabbe fan (and why wouldn’t you be?) then maybe give this one a go just to see what he looks like in a regular suit and hat but, honestly, approach with caution.

If you’ve liked this week’s look at the old 1930s/40s theatrically released chapter plays then, I’m hoping to watch some more of these for the blog before the end of next year so, yeah, more serials forthcoming at some point. Meanwhile, back to normal schedule for a bit.

 

Buster Crabbe Serial Week at NUTS4R2

Flash Gordon (1936)

Flash Gordon's Trip To Mars (1938)

Red Barry (1938)

Buck Rogers (1939)

Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (1940)

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D

Creature’s Pet

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D
USA 1954 Directed by Jack Arnold  
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

There’s a reason why I took my Universal Blu Ray box set around to a friend’s house and stayed the weekend just so I could watch one of my favourite Universal monster movies on her television. It was pretty much to relive, to a certain extent, a moment from my childhood. I’ve probably blogged this story before somewhere on NUTS4R2 but since this is one of the films in question, I think it’s worth repeating here...

When I was a youngster in the early to mid 1970s, when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, my parents took me into London to see a very special screening. It was in, I believe, a cinema in Piccadilly which was better known for screening “adult movies” and it definitely wasn’t the kind of place you’d expect to see this happening. The screening was a double bill of two movies projected in their original 3D format... Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. Now, you have to remember that this was the 1970s... 3D was a phenomenon pretty much unseen in cinemas since, maybe, the late 1950s? It was a few years before Star Wars would come out and make a splash on the art of cinema and a rare screening of a 3D movie was definitely something which was an education for this mere slip of a boy.

And this wasn’t the polaroid glasses of colour 3D movies or even the red and blue glasses that came out in the 1980s for certain 3D novelties... these were original prints from the 1950s and we had cardboard glasses with red and green surfaces in them. Now I have to say the fact that these were old movies certainly showed somewhat... It Came From Outer Space was pretty crystal clear but the Creature From The Black Lagoon print was kinda faded, from what I can remember. That didn’t necessarily make the movie lose its 3D but it was more of a struggle to watch without giving yourself a massive headache. But it really didn’t matter... I must have been the only kid in school who saw a 3D movie at that age (let alone two) and I’d always loved these kinds of movies anyway. I think it was the first time I’d seen either of these two, perhaps.

And that’s why, when I found out the basic set of Universal monster movies released on Blu Ray had an option to watch this one in 3D... I immediately rang up my friend and invited myself around. Now, I have to say that it’s ten times better here than I ever remember seeing it. Presented in its original widescreen aspect ratio, which means you don’t get to see the telephone poles rearing up above the undergrowth in the uncharted Amazon in certain scenes, the 3D on this one pops out like it’s not done in a long time and gives me a closer experience, I would suspect, to the movie if I’d seen it on it’s original run, some twenty years earlier than the screening I attended in the 1970s (for the record, I wasn’t born until 1968, people!). Certainly, the whole movie on this newish release looked crisper and more vibrant than I’ve ever seen it looking before and the lady I was watching it with was totally blown away by it, judging from her comments. And not, I hasten to add, on the quality of the 3D (although she did specifically mention how good that was compared to recent movies she’d seen in the format) but also the movie itself... which is nice.

So about the movie... I’ve always had a lot of love for the classic Universal monster movies and this one goes in the same niche as all the others... one of my “comfort horror movies” which I like to watch, not to be scared of (they really aren’t that scary these days) but as something I can sit back to and lazily drift along with, without having to think too hard. Being as it’s the first of the Creature From The Black Lagoon trilogy we’re talking about... I guess you could call it my creature comfort.

The film is based on a tall tale/urban myth that producer William Alland heard at a party one night about a ‘real’ half man/half fish creature and thought the concept would make a great horror movie. Alland went on to produce a lot of sci-fi tinted 1950s creature features but, if readers want to put a voice (at least) to the name, then he played the faceless voice of the interviewer who links all the pieces of Orson Welles classic movie Citizen Kane together... the newspaper reporter, hot on the trail to find out what Kane’s dying word meant.

Anyway, the film was scripted out, cast and produced in 3D and it was a fairly modest hit...  at least enough of a hit to spawn two sequels, Revenge Of The Creature (also originally released in 3D and a great follow up to the original) and The Creature Walks Among Us (which I think is the worst of the three, especially in terms of the monster make-up devised for this third outing).

The film starts off with the birth of the planet and explosions... well, it’s a 3D movie after all. They are constantly having to find things to chuck out of the screen at the audience. This is followed up with the discovery of a 3D ‘popping’ fossilised hand, a clawing living creature hand, the death of some explorers at the hands of the unseen creature and a new expedition to find the rest of the fossilised creature. This takes our fish scientist leading man, played by Richard Carlson, his boss played by Richard Denning and the object of both their affections, Carlson’s fiance played by Julie Adams, on a journey that takes them into close contact and unparallelled peril as they first try to catch the creature, who is fixated on Julie Adams’ character in much the same way that the titular giant ape was fixated on Fay Wray in King Kong. And after the reality of their situation becomes somewhat clearer, then they are just trying to escape it as the creature blocks off their exit from the lagoon which he calls his home.

While the film does trade in the whole beauty and the beast angle which set the cinema screens alight over twenty years earlier in King Kong, it doesn’t follow the same template where the creature is brought back to civilisation, escapes and goes on the rampage... they saved that one for the first sequel. That being said, the creature, beautifully designed by Millicent Patrick (mostly), certainly elicits the same kind of sympathy from the human audience that Kong did back in 1933. That’s one of the strengths of Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Another great strength of the movie would be the underwater sequences which are truly amazing and were the first of their kind in 3D. It was groundbreaking stuff and you can’t help but admire the amount of effort that went into these underwater shots... especially for the various actors in the creature suit. It was very much a case of shoot, air hose, shoot, air hose etc. A truly gruelling time from what I understand. However, when you see sequences like the “underwater ballet” as the creature swims below Julia Adams and her stunt double, mimicking the movements of the character just under her... and then gets bolder and touches her ankle... well, it’s totally worth all the effort and its a truly startling film, for its time.

The music in that particular scene is a little reminiscent of the two note motif John Williams used in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and one wonders if he was aware of that at the time. Certainly the music of this movie is excellent, produced as a patchwork by various composers (as was the norm for these kinds of productions) by the likes of Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner and even a young Henry Mancini. I was particularly please when I watched it again this time around that my friend actually agreed that the music was pretty good and, seriously, the three note stinger theme for the creature, played over and over throughout the course of the picture, is definitely not going to be something you’re going to forget in a hurry. If you want to get a really faithful rerecording, miked in the right way, then you can grab a beautiful CD of some selected highlights from the score by clicking this link to the record label Monstrous Movie Music here.

The film is an absolute pleasure to watch every time and with character actors like Whit Bissell popping up, it’s one I’m never going to get tired of, especially when the design of the creature itself is so provocative and beautiful. And having this new 3D transfer finally makes it worth having the scene near the end when the terrible, terrible bat special effect pops out of the screen to startle our creature hunting crew... it doesn’t make the effect look any less cheap but, hey, at least now it’s serving its practical function once more.

Honestly, I can’t heap enough praise on this movie and, frankly, nor do I have to. If you like the movie or have enjoyed this review, there’s a big behemoth of a book currently available at the time of writing this review called The Creature Chronicles: Exploring The Black Lagoon Trilogy by Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg which can tell you all you’d ever want to know about this particular series of films. The book is available from amazon here (UK) and here (US) and my review of it is here. I’m pleased to say that I had some feedback on that particular review in an email from one of the writers and they seemed pretty pleased with what I had to say about it so, seriously, if you trust me and you like these kinds of movies, go check the book out for yourself.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about Creature From The Black Lagoon. A truly beautiful, black and white movie with a team of rugged scientists, a beautiful woman and a wonderful gill man at the heart of the story... all hanging together pretty well, very entertainingly performed and with a score as ear catching as Julie Adams is eye catching. Definitely a fine moment in horror history and one to watch if you’re into cinema in any way, shape or form. A genuine classic and always a pleasure to watch... in its 3D or 2D version.