YouTube Eurekas: Robert Siodmak, Richard Oswald and more

Hans Stühe in the title role of Richard Oswald's CAGLIOSTRO (1929).

This continues to be a tremendously healthy period for new and remastered films on Blu-ray and DVD, however there comes a time in almost every budget when our appetite for new discovery is held in check by fiscal limitations. With such cold reality in mind, it's heartening to realize there are means out there of placing some rare, arcane treasures within our reach, not so well known because it has no proper publicist - one of which is YouTube, no longer the comfortable dumpster of public domain eyesores. I've been noticing that YouTube has been undergoing a rather quiet redefinition of itself, especially if your voracious appetite for film exceeds the mainstream into more international waters.

The problem with YouTube, of course, is that your discoveries there are often limited to what you type into its Search engine, or what is recommended to you on the basis of your most recent search and past algorithms. With this in mind, I thought I would point out some of the treasures I've discovered over there, hiding as it were in plain sight, which can now even be transferred from your computer or iPad to your largest television screen given technologies like Apple TV's mirroring option. Be that as it may, some of the copies they've made available are less than ideal so a certain amount of visual compression might not be a bad thing. Beggars can't be choosers, you know. 

Fernand Grave and Louis Jouvet in Robert Siodmak's MISTER FLOW (1936).

You must know about the films of noir specialist Robert Siodmak, whether you do or don't. A number of his better-known films are readily available on Blu-ray and DVD here in the US, such as PHANTOM LADY, THE SUSPECT, THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, THE DARK MIRROR, THE KILLERS, THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF UNCLE HARRY, THE CRIMSON PIRATE, as well as very early work such as PEOPLE ON SUNDAY and his latter day Cinerama epic CUSTER OF THE WEST. I recommend them all - but, happily, YouTube is a valuable source for some of his harder-to-see titles, including LOOKING FOR HIS MURDERER (Der Mann, der seine Mörder sucht, 1931), a contemporary retelling of Jules Verne's THE TRIBULATIONS OF A CHINESE GENTLEMAN written by Billy Wilder and Curt Siodmak, in German with French subtitles); his first French film Tumultes ("Tumult," 1932) with Charles Boyer and Florelle, in French with English subtitles (yes!); Le sexe faible ("The Weaker Sex," 1933) with Pierre Brasseur, in French with Spanish subtitles; MISTER FLOW (1936) with Louis Jouvet, Fernand Gravey and Edwige Feuillière, in French without subtitles - a light suspense thriller based on Gaston Leroux's two-part novel THE MAN OF A HUNDRED FACES and LADY HELENA, OR THE MYSTERIOUS LADY - which was in fact Leroux's thinly disguised sequel to the long-running series of FANTÔMAS novels abandoned by Marcel Allain after the death of his collaborator Pierre Souvestre. 

Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly in Siodmak's startlingly subversive CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY (1944).

I understand that the lack of "English friendly" options can seem an insurmountable hostility to some people, but the films made in the 1930s were not so distant from the silent era and every film I've listed here is a master class in visual technique, even if you can't follow the narrative as closely as you'd like. However, if you're looking for an obscure Siodmak title that's as English friendly as you could hope, find the right night for CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY (1944) starring a pre-MGM musicals Gene Kelly, Deanna Durbin and Gale Sondergaard. Ignore the highly subversive title of this W. Somerset Maugham adaptation and be astonished by this story of a young wife who discovers that her devil-may-care husband may be a serial killer. This deeply troubling masterpiece, made at a time when women were welcoming their homecoming husbands and boyfriends at the end of the war, not knowing how many lives they might have taken, deserves to be much better-known than it is.

Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel in Richard Oswald's EERIE TALES (1919). 

Another maestro from the cusp of sound whose work I've been exploring in recent weeks is Richard Oswald, the father of OUTER LIMITS director Gerd Oswald. Oswald père was responsible for making the first horror anthology film, EERIE TALES (Unheimliche geschicten, 1919), which is rarely seen in America but is available on YouTube with an engaging musical accompaniment English subtitles. It contains five stories, the sound version three, both incorporating Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Suicide Club.” For a film now more than a century old, it feels remarkably contemporary in its filmmaking techniques, production design, and the close attention it pays to facial acting. Three archetypal figures - The Flirt, The Devil, and Death (respectively Anita Berber, Reinhold Schünzel, and Conrad Veidt) - step out of their portraits, which adorn the walls of a used book store, scaring the owner and availing themselves of stories in the books on display. The three of them appear in each of the stories, playing different characters roughly within the same archetype, providing the actors with chances to flaunt their dramatic range. Veidt is predictably outstanding, but Schünzel is a revelation. His Devil is a clear antecedent of the Lugosi vampire image, with his black cape, pasty face, and widow’s peak; his crazy husband character in the first story is the prototype of Cousin Eerie (!); and Peter Lorre clearly had his performance in mind when he essayed the same role on Roger Corman’s TALES OF TERROR almost 50 years later. There are two different uploads of this film on YouTube, but only one has English subtitles; I have linked to the preferable one.

Maria Kopenhofer as "The Black Cat"'s murdered wife in the sound remake.

When the sound era commenced, Oswald remade his groundbreaking film (under the same title, Unheimliche geschichten) with the Paul Wegener (THE GOLEM) in the lead as a crazed character who connects the stories in his mad meanderings. The silent version is excellent, but this - the first sound horror anthology - may be even better; I think there’s a good case to be made that it’s also the first feature-length surrealist work. Its stroke of genius is that there is no framing device; the stories flow one into the next like twists in an already delirious tale. It opens Paul Wegener, truly a great and versatile horror star, starring in an adaptation of the subsequently oft-filmed “The Black Cat,” who makes his escape from the police and hides in a waxworks. Lots of creaky thrills in that before he wriggles his way out of an arrest by being committed to an asylum where the inmates have taken over in an adaptation of Poe’s “Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather,” which may be the film’s highlight - what we would now call Buñuelian. Wegener foils a dedicated newspaper reporter pursuant and disappears for six months, when he is discovered as the ringleader of an ultra-sophisticated suicide club, in an adaptation of RL Stevenson’s classic story whose look anticipates Edgar Ulmer’s feature of THE BLACK CAT in 1934. This segment also includes a very Lugosi-like performance by Wegener and an actual shot that would be repeated in 1935’s THE RAVEN. Also known as THE LIVING DEAD, the version on YouTube also carries English subtitles.

Conrad Veidt and Fritz Schultz in Oswald's groundbreaking DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS (1919).

Also by Oswald and available on YouTube are DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS (1919) with Conrad Veidt and Anita Berber, surviving now only as a 50 minute fragment but said to be the first film ever made about LGBT lives and adversities (it's with English inter titles though sometimes overprinted with unremovable Russian titles); LUCREZIA BORGIA (1922) with Liane Haid, Wegener, Veidt, THE GOLEM's Lothar Müthel, and future director William Dieterle (with English inter titles); and CAGLIOSTRO (1929), Oswald's last silent and an impressive achievement fusing German Expressionism and the 18th century costume romantic heroism mastered during this same period by Abel Gance. It's got French inter titles and Spanish subtitles, but an easy adjustment under Settings allows the user to "auto-translate" the subtitles into many other languages - including English. 

In closing, I'll add one more link to a film I only discovered while rooting around for links for this blog entry. Here's your ticket to the 1919 Thomas Ince silent FALSE FACES, starring Henry B. Walthall as Louis Joseph Vance's heroic spy/detective/master of disguise Michael Lanyard, aka The Lone Wolf! It's apparently a sequel to an earlier film, but this one has special historical interest in that the second male lead is the silent screen's master of false faces, none other than Lon Chaney!


(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.  
  

VIDEO WATCHDOG At 30

It was on this date thirty years ago - June 15, 1990 - that the first issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG was delivered to our home to be shipped out to points all over the globe. It's a bit sobering to realize that our debut's anniversary is already half as distant from us today as tomorrow's 60th Anniversary of the World Premiere of Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960); I was around at that time, if not fully conscious, and wouldn't actually see PSYCHO till later in the 1960s when it first made its way to television.

My aptitude for missing dates by a day and years by a year, at least thinking off the top of my head, led me to announce this anniversary yesterday on Facebook, where it was met with a very warm reception from satisfied readers going all the way back to this humble but signal beginning:

"You helped create a whole culture and the canon of that culture. Bravo!" - critic Adrian Martin

"I bought this off the stands on my first date with my wife and told her how important this stuff was to me! Your mag was sharp and smart and she thought well of me because it elevated this type of stuff to literary consideration. Thanks, Tim - for this, the best of its kind mag in my life!" - comics legend Kelley Jones

"I started reading VW with the FIRE WALK WITH ME issue, and then quickly bought all the back issues, as this was the genre magazine I'd been waiting for my entire life. The moment I started writing for film magazines, I realized that I was unconsciously employing VW's house style. Getting invited to be a regular contributor was seriously one of the highlights of my life." - VW's own John-Paul Checkett, now writing regularly for SCREEM

"[I have] every single issue in binders... a magazine that completely changed how we view fantastic cinema." - Dave Kosanke

"It's the gold standard of magazine quality, the magazine all other magazines wish they could be. Still have all mine. Invaluable!" - Wayne Shellabarger Fox

"It would be impossible to overstate how much I've learned and how many films, directors, actors, genres, etc. I've discovered via this amazing magazine. Thanks for the long run, it was a pleasure with every new issue."- Tim Spears

There were dozens more along similar lines, but these are happily representative of the great feeling that still endures for VIDEO WATCHDOG out there, for which Donna and I remain eternally grateful and appreciative.

Of course, we're no longer publishing but most of our back issues remain available. If you are missing back issues, if you've lost some to flood or fire or covetous "borrowing" friends, or if you happen to be one of those unfortunate millennials who came along too late and missed the boat, Donna and I would like to make it easier for you to experience our legacy of publishing the best available writing and thought about international genre cinema. In commemoration of this 30th Anniversary, we're making all extant print back issues - and all digital back issues, with their additional bells and whistles - available at half the usual cost. 

That's right, 50% Off!

Just check the Back Issue details on our webpage and use the special coupon code 50MINT at checkout. It's easy as that.

I have made this claim before, but I was so energized and inspired by yesterday's outpouring of affection and respect that I want to devote more time to keeping this blog more active. I do a lot of writing on my Facebook wall that never gets shared here, which is frankly bass-ackward. It should appear here first and linked over there. And I should be more attentive to sharing notes here on the new and old discoveries I'm making - not just in video but in the ancillary areas of books and music. I am also going to invite some former VW contributors to make guest appearances here in the near future. So bookmark this page, subscribe, or just check back with some frequency. 

As ever, we aim to engage your interests and to please.

Leonard Maltin as "The Movie Police" in GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH.

PS: Happy 30th Anniversary to Joe Dante's GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, also born on this day back in 1990 - as apt a spiritual "twin brother" as I can think of!

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.


  

   

COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE At 50

I was there!

It was fifty years ago this week that Bob Kelljan's game-changing  COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE first went into theatrical release. I was there, half a century ago, in a car with my mother and sister at Cincinnati's Twin Drive-In and wasn't really aware of how totally invested the three of us were in the movie until Robert Quarry's elegant, eponymous bloodsucker got staked in the climax, which caused every car horn assembled there to honk on earnest approval. It remains the only "standing ovation" I ever witnessed in a drive-in - a sudden, joyous realization that everybody out there under the stars had been caught up in its spell as much as we had - and we enthusiastically joined in.

I tend to remember it as a bigger, more mainstream film than it actually was - probably because it carried the AIP imprimatur; on renewed acquaintance, I see it's really a very early example of the kind of 1970s film Stephen Thrower herds together in his magisterial volume NIGHTMARE U.S.A.; that is, a DIY independent horror picture with rough edges and moments of dated silliness, but also some startling moments of grace, that uses the known clichés of the horror genre against its knowing audience, resulting in new kinds of tensions and shocks. When Yorga responds to a handmade crucifix being wielded in his direction with mocking laughter, I remember the bottom of my 15 year old stomach dropping out and a new feeling of terrible exposure to monstrous evil. It was what the atheism subplot of DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE hinted at, but didn't have the courage to enact.

"May I?" asks Robert Quarry.

Robert Quarry justifiably gets most of the attention the film does, but I think it’s Roger Perry as the doctor who carries the picture. Particularly impressive is the moment when Yorga disarms him by casually asking “May I?,” thereby taking physical possession of the busted chair leg he’s brought to stake him; it's a remarkable show of Evil effortlessly trumping Good by abusing Good’s tendency to civility, especially when he then returns the weapon to him in an elegant gesture perfectly timed to his remark that the intelligence of vampires is such that they can make the most intelligent mortal look a fool.

Producer Michael Macready’s humorless, hunch-over-and-stare acting remains one of the film's few demerits; it’s a shame when he outlives the more capable actors, presumably for financial reasons - another reason why Perry’s contribution is so important. What surprised me most unfavorably on renewed acquaintance is how shaky (and frankly, overlit) so much of Arch Archambault's hand-held photography is, but there are just as many impressively observed shots - like the one of Yorga's hand softly lifting the edge of a drawn window shade to see what's happening on his grounds. (Archambault subsequently shot ANGELS DIE HARD and THE JEKYLL AND HYDE PORTFOLIO.)

I felt certain that Bob Kelljan would go on to become a major new horror director, but despite fairly strong follow-up efforts THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA (1972) and SCREAM, BLACULA, SCREAM (1973), this didn't happen. He subsequently moved into series television, racking up eight episodes of STARSKY AND HUTCH, five CHARLIE'S ANGELS, and numerous one-shots before his premature death at age 52 in 1982. I'd like to see FLESH OF MY FLESH, the erotic film made by Kelljan and Macready prior to YORGA in 1969, to see if it holds any indications of the promise found here. Of course, as the story goes, YORGA (or IORGA, as Michael Murphy can sometimes be heard pronouncing it) was initially undertaken as an adult film until Robert Quarry persuaded the filmmakers that horror films could be commercial as well. 

Roger Perry, Michael Murphy and Donna Anders.

As I recall, COUNT YORGA VAMPIRE was restored to its original title (THE LOVES OF COUNT IORGA... VAMPIRE) and length sometime around the turn of the new century. The AIP cut was a few minutes shorter, reducing its raw sensuality and violence to a GP level - which certainly worked to the film's commercial benefit. It was the #1 box office champion of its opening week and, according to Quarry, the film went on to become the third highest grossing film in AIP's history. To watch THE LOVES OF... shows us that restoration can sometimes be a mixed blessing; it’s great to have the more graphic horror material intact (the discovery of Erica feeding on a kitten remains a shocker - and further empowers the transfusion scene, which nicely mirrors and updates Mina's "Unclean! Unclean!" scene in Stoker's novel), however the inclusion of some lame content that I remember as absent from the theatrical cut - like the stupid redhead in Perry’s bed, and the stupid but “efficient” blonde working as his receptionist - make me wonder if the AIP cut didn’t do the film some favors that should be preserved as a variant for historical reference. I believe the now-uncirculated AIP cut last appeared on home video on laserdisc.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. 

Birthday With the Big G

It's my 64th birthday today, May 30th. After Donna went to bed this evening and left me to celebrate alone, I felt a sudden strong urge to revisit the film that was once known as GODZILLA VS. THE THING. I watched a bit of the English version but then switched to the Japanese, MOSURA TAI GOJIRA. Watching it again, I realized that it was one of my favorite childhood memories - I actually saw it four times in one weekend back in 1964. (I guess I was revisiting 1964 From the new vantage of 64.) The Japanese version is not just the best story of all the Toho films, with arguably the best monster effects of the bunch, it is a reprimand addressed to all politicians, businessmen, and military leaders (not least of all their own) whose decisions betray the common good with selfish, divisive dreams of avarice and conquest. Godzilla here is the incarnation or result of misguided power, while Mothra epitomizes green peace, Mother Nature. I found it not just nostalgic but profoundly moving, due in no small part to the purity of Eiji Tsubaraya’s special effects, Akira Ifukube’s heart-wrenching score, and the sweet duets of the Peanuts.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

The Big Pink From Third Window

British Blu-ray label Third Window Films has initiated a new series of "pink" double features to bring some of the more interesting examples of Japanese erotic cinema to a broader audience in the west. For those in need of further background, "pink" films were introduced in Japan in the mid 1950s and were so called because they aspired to compete with Scandanavian cinema of the time by featuring incidental nudity. They didn't really flourish until the early 1960s, when they became rougher as well as a Trojan Horse of sorts for exposing radical stylistics and political content to their unsuspecting public.

Third Window's PINK FILMS VOL. 1 + 2 (Region Free) provides inescapable evidence that the "pink" movement was not just about arousing its audience but also challenging them, not only in terms of what it was possible to depict onscreen but also in terms of genre-hopping, wild (even mad) filmic experimentation, and conveying bold political messages. Included in this first set are Atsushi Yamatoya's memorably titled INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS (Kôya no Dacchi waifu, 1967; listed on the IMDb as DUTCH WIFE IN THE DESERT) and Masao Adachi's GUSHING PRAYER (Funshutsu kigan - 15-sai no baishunfu, 1971 - to which the IMDb adds the subtitle "A 15-YEAR-OLD PROSTITUTE"). Approached simply as films, without predominantly carnal expectations, both films show a noticeable affiliation with the French nouvelle vague, where nudity was also intermittently found; while they both have their moments, they are not sexually arousing so much as wildly inventive and intellectually invigorating.

Yuichi Minato is weaned away from his gun by the amorous Noriko Tatsumi.

Yamatoya's INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS would make an interesting companion piece to Riccardo Freda's DOUBLE FACE. It's essentially film noir, filmed in B&W scope, and tells the story of Sho (Yuichi Minato), a private detective and expert marksman, who is hired by businessman Naka (Masayoshi Nogami) to rescue his kidnapped fiancée Mina (Miki Watari) from her abductor, gangster Ko - also known as "The Flying Dagger" (Shohei Yamamoto). Ko has been periodically torturing Naka and Mina's aging, gibbering father by sending them 16mm films that show her being manhandled and raped by hooded men. The father has been driven so far around the bend by filial remorse and inadvertent lust that he's become neurotically attached to (not-so-inflatable) department store mannequin he uses as an adult pacifier, or sex doll. Sho's path to Mina - which comes with a next-day deadline of 3:00pm - is barred with danger, obstructed by the seductive ploys of Ko's moll Sae (Noriko Tatsumi), and fraught with increasing delirium leading to erotic fantasies concerning his bond with his possibly-dead quarry.

Director Yamatoya is best-remembered as the screenwriter of Seijun Suzuki's gangster masterpiece BRANDED TO KILL, and he made this film in tandem with another, the brazenly titled AMOROUS LIQUID aka LOVE'S MILKY DROPS (Tajo na nyueki, 1967). He was obviously very much under the spell of Godard's ALPHAVILLE when he made this; there are individual shots that could easily be shuffled into the earlier work without detection, and Sho is very much an Eastern Lemmy Caution, gumshoe in a cheap hat, wearing a wrinkled raincoat over a jacket and a necktie dickie. Yamamoto mixes his fictional narrative with documentary shots of his actors moving through documentary street scenes, which exert a quite different fascination of their own, and he reaches for some startling effects concerning the presentation of action and violence. At one point, a suitcase is flung so that it accidentally wings the camera, and the accident is left in; in another moment, a group of thugs bursting through our hero's barricades are shown in different feigned freeze-frame positions, incrementally advanced and adjusted as he sizes up his options for retaliation. The closer Sho comes to finding Mina, the more Yamatoya's technique adopts the technical recklessness of the home movies documenting her abuse. While I can't say the film's story is particularly memorable or even clear, it's a fascinating document and - for all its deliberate ugliness - appealing in the way it subverts its hardboiled drama into a kind of delirious poem about alienation and the need for human contact. Yosuke Yamashita's score adds a lot to the experience, heaping on some splashy, wailing, free jazz very much in the vein of John Coltrane's Quartet.

Aki Sasaki as the tragic heroine of GUSHING PRAYER.

The second feature, GUSHING PRAYER, is very much the other side of the coin. A more serious film, its protagonist Yasuko Aoyagi (Aki Sasaki) is not what we assume from the designation "15 Year Old Prostitute." First of all, she is not at all your typical 15 year old, as the non-stop conversations between her and her three best friends Koichi (Hiroshi Saito), Yoko (Makiko Kim), and Bill (Yuji Aoki) are intellectual, philosophical, and rigorous. In fact, their discourse is so relentless and mutually bullying, especially toward Yasuko (ironically the most sexually experienced of the group) that it attains a kind of abstraction separated from anything warm-blooded. They are also anti-sex, despite a shared sexual obsession induced by their young bodies and inherent friskiness, with the four of them determined to find ways within their rebellious fellowship of "beating" sex (which they perceive as a commercialized invention of predatory adults) and finding a way back in touch with their natural feelings. Yasuko would seem to have little chance of attaining this goal as, at 15, she finds herself pregnant from a covert relationship with one of her teachers (Shiganori Noda). The sometimes conflicting dogma of her fellows, not to mention her elders, makes it difficult for her to decide what her options are for the future.

Director Masao Adachi (still active as of 2016) was one of the more dedicated writers and directors of the pink cinema movement, having written the scripts for Koji Wakamatsu's reasonably well exported THE EMBRYO HUNTS IN SECRET (1966), VIOLATED ANGELS (1967), and GO, GO, SECOND TIME VIRGIN (1969), sometimes working under the alias "Izuru Deguchi." What he achieves with GUSHING PRAYER is anything but erotic; there is nudity and a few instances of animal rutting between people but we are only made to feel distanced from it and somewhat repelled and confused by it and what unsated greed or curiosity drives those involved.

Like its co-feature, GUSHING PRAYER takes advantage of some documentary locations where we see its characters passing among real people, and the silent spaces between forward jumps in the narrative are filled with quotations - tragic, despairing yet still inquisitive, and sometimes poetic - from the suicide notes of various teenagers, male and female. Filmed in black-and-white scope that occasionally jolts into bold color duotones (again, showing a debt to Godard) and a couple of shifts into full, if somewhat anemic, color, this is very much related to such grim teenage tragedies as Uli Edel's CHRISTIANE F. (1981) - and if its vomiting scenes are comparatively coy, at least one other instance of graphic body horror may serve you more than you're ready to see.

Both films are newly remastered and show just enough faint surface abrasion in places to remind us that these bizarre creations were actually shown to audiences in theaters, once upon a time. There is no commentary or essay material mentioned as part of this set, which would have provided some helpful context; however, Third Window has obtained the indispensable services of BEHIND THE PINK WINDOW author Jasper Sharp for their next round, which streets next week on May 25. VOLUME 3 + 4 will feature Masayuki Suo's ABNORMAL FAMILY (1984) and Kan Asai's BLUE FILM WOMAN - which I hope to write about soon. Here's a promotional image to tide you over, as well as this helpful link to more information.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

The Misery of Marie Roget

Found a somewhat blurry copy of Phil Rosen's Universal B-picture THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET in my DVD-R collection and decided to give it a spin. I hadn't seen it since childhood and all I could remember of it were shots of a racing horse drawn carriage - which turns out to be because it's virtually the only thing in the film that's not talk. 

The movie opens with a discerning hand plucking a thick hardcover copy of Poe's short story from a piddling display of classic literature. The first thing the 60-minute film shows us is a Paris newspaper headline exclaiming the murder of Marie Roget - a simple perfume salesgirl in the story, but here an exotic music hall singer who is the toast of Paris! "Prefecture of Police BAFFLED!" we are informed. But Maria is soon revealed to be still alive, not the dead disfigured girl dredged up from the Seine. She and her sister's fiancée are plotting to murder her sister, a plan overheard by the grandmother who asks our hero Pierre Dupin to protect her. Dupin, the character Leon Ames (as Leon Waycoff) played in 1932's MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, is played by the woefully bland Patric Knowles and he's continually being congratulated on solving that legendary case. The evil Maria's musicality is explained by the fact that Universal cast Maria Montez in the title role; but what is not so easily explained is that Maria is the granddaughter of Maria Ouspenskaya and the sister of Nell O'Day - so the three members of the Roget family living under the same roof have wildly different accents - and not one of them French! 

Nelly O'Day, Lloyd Corrigan, Patric Knowles, Maria Ouspenskaya and John Litel.

The other French roles are played by those beloved Gallic performers Lloyd Corrigan, John Litel, and (as a zoo keeper) Charles Middleton. Corrigan is the foolish Prefect ("Pre-fey") of Police, who has to be reminded more than once in his impulsive attempts to arrest people that it would help to have an airtight case against the suspects first. He gabs so relentlessly and pointlessly he must have been paid by the word; his fussy, comic, impatient window dressing crowds the film so badly that our hero-genius Dupin is reduced to standing around mixing chemicals and slyly testing theories he confides in neither the Prefect nor the audience, so his general lack of charisma is compounded by the no more than vague sketch we're given of this celebrated detective. The movie lifts whenever Madame Ouspenskaya puts him in his place. At a party, Maria makes everyone swoon by singing an interminable song in Spanish. When someone tries to poison her and Dupin (perhaps a music critic), it looks like Phil Rosen himself stepped up to tap the powder into their untended drinks. In a last act confession of creative bankruptcy, Dupin deduces that the cause of the shared facial disfigurementa of the female murder victims is a common hand garden rake - the very same prop used as the signature weapon of the killers in Universal's THE SCARLET CLAW and SHE-WOLF OF LONDON, made around the same time. The film's only persuasive whiff of France comes from a climactic rooftop chase as Dupin and the Prefect chase the skulking shadow figure from HORROR ISLAND over the rooftops of Paris. His defeat doesn't bring us much closure; we're told who this cloaked phantom is by name, but we're not given a shot of his face to confirm which of the cast members he was.

On the very narrow plus side is some occasionally striking photography by Elwood Bredell (THE MUMMY'S HAND, HELLZAPOPPIN!, PHANTOM LADY), which must be even better served by a proper presentation. Entertaining in its general ineptitude, and the inability of the actors to speak either believable English OR French, I'm sure the reason why my childhood memories of THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET are so limited is that it must have driven me to raid the refrigerator.

Having fallen back on my old DVD-R out of mistaken desperation, I now see that it's been available from Universal since 2014 as part of their Vault Series. If my notes have intrigued you, you can find it here.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

UNHEIMLICHE GESCHICHTEN, Sight and Sound

Rudolph Schündler, Richard Oswald, and Conrad Veidt.

I had never seen either version before, so I was delighted to find the 1919 silent and 1932 sound versions of Richard Oswald’s seminal horror anthology UNHEIMLICHEN GESCHICHTEN (EERIE TALES) on YouTube. The silent version contains five stories, the sound version three (or four, it's hard to tell), both incorporating Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Suicide Club.” The 1919 version is quite impressive; I think 1919 feels longer ago in the past because it links us to period films more often than not, but EERIE TALES (while covering different time periods) is surprisingly contemporary in its filmmaking techniques, production design, and the close attention it pays to facial acting. Three archetypal figures - The Flirt, The Devil, and Death (respectively Anita Berber, Rudolph Schündler, and Conrad Veidt) - step out of their portraits, which adorn the walls of a used book store, frightening the owner and taking over the shop, availing themselves of stories in the books on display. 

Schündler, Berber, and Veidt as Literature's arcana of Evil. 

This unholy three appear in each of the stories, as different characters but sometimes within the same archetype, providing the actors with chances to flaunt their dramatic range. Veidt is predictably remarkable, but Schündler is a revelation. His Devil is a clear antecedent of the Lugosi vampire image, with his black cape, pasty face, and widow’s peak; his crazy husband character in the first story is the actual prototype of the aptly-named Cousin Eerie (!); and Peter Lorre clearly had his performance in mind when he essayed the same role on Roger Corman’s TALES OF TERROR almost 50 years later. The closing story, an original by Oswald told in verse, shows the chameleonic Veidt in a performance that serves as a dry run for his celebrated Gwynplaine/Lord Clancharlie in 1928's THE MAN WHO LAUGHS. In a surprising early gesture of auteurism, Oswald shares the screen briefly at the outset of the film in celebration of his partnership with the two principal actors. 

Domestic discord as mise en scène in the 1932 version.

The silent version is among the best of its kind, but the 1932 sound version (sometimes called THE LIVING DEAD) may be even better; I think there’s a good case to be made that it’s also the first feature-length surrealist work. Its stroke of genius is that the stories are presented as a single fluid entity; there is no framing device as in the previous version, so the stories flow one into the next like twists in an already delirious tale. It opens with Paul Wegener (THE GOLEM), truly a great and versatile horror star, starring in an adaptation of the subsequently oft-filmed “The Black Cat,” a touchy inventor who murders his wife, whose final scream is overheard by crusading on-the-spot reporter Frank Briggs (Harald Paulsen). Rather than submit to inescapable arrest as in the Poe story, Wegener (whose character is given no name other than Mörder, or Murderer) escapes the police and hides amid the figures in a waxworks. The film is said to consist of only three stories, but this waxworks segment has the feel of an uncredited fourth. Briggs trails Mörder to this shrine to dead criminals and their fistfight culminates in a switch being thrown that activates the figures' mechanical movements. Lots of creaky thrills before our villain wriggles his way out of yet another arrest and inevitable execution by arranging for his commitment to an insane asylum where, as it happens, the inmates have taken over in an adaptation of Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather,” which may be the film’s highlight - it's the sort of thing we would now call Buñuelian. Wegener foils Briggs once again and disappears for six months, when he reappears as the mysterious ringleader of an ultra-sophisticated Suicide Club, in an adaptation of Stevenson’s classic story. The ultra-stylish design of this episode is almost alarming to discover in a 1932 film; its look  anticipates Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1934 feature version of THE BLACK CAT. The segment also includes a very Lugosi-like performance by Wegener, scenes in which he interacts with fellow GOLEM actor Ferdinand Hart (who would later essay the title role in Julien Duvivier's sound version of 1936), and an actual shot that would be repeated in Lew Landers' THE RAVEN from 1935. 

Paul Wegener - a great horror star. 

Director and co-scripter Oswald - whom I believe was the father of OUTER LIMITS director Gerd Oswald - is an under-appreciated craftsman and early horror specialist. These two films, though dealing to a fair extent with the same material, not only stand uniquely well on their own but they bear favorable comparison to most of the many horror anthologies that followed through the subsequent decades. They are both captivating entertainment, cleverly and stylishly served up, and feel more effectively organic than most of their imitators. We’re very much in need of definitive presentations of both films; they would make a marvelous double feature set.

UPDATE 05/14/2020:
Since posting the above, I have learned that YouTube also has a subtitled presentation of Richard Oswald's 1930 remake of ALRAUNE available for viewing here. Additionally, for those who haven't seen Henrik Galeen's 1927 silent original, that is also uploaded over there at this link. Both versions star Brigitte Helm, the Robotrix from METROPOLIS. The subtitles on the silent version (which also features Paul Wegener) are Russian, but if you go into Settings over there, you can reset them for Auto Translate into any language you wish.
    
Furthermore, from reader Volker Stieber:

"Hi, Tim - , I read your review of UNHEIMLICHE GESCHICHTEN and wanted to let you (and your readership) know that a restoration of the 1919 version was released on German DVD in 2013. It looks very nice and it is estimated to be missing only about 4 minutes. Cheers!"

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Friday the 13th Greetings

I apologize for my absence here of late. I've been working on more audio commentaries, and I'm knuckling down to a particularly ambitious one now. But I thought I really should pop in to let you know about some new work I've generated elsewhere online. 

I was recently interviewed by the online arts journal THE CHISLER. You can read our conversation here.

Apparently it was well received by their readership and I've been encouraged to contribute more regularly. Still not decided on whether to approach this challenge as a column or as a series of independent posts, but I did test the waters over there with a first contribution about director Al Adamson, whose entire surviving body of work is going to be released in a staggering box set from Severin Films next month. You can read it here.

I was recently invited by Shane Hazen and Ted Haycraft to be a guest on their podcast THE PHI PHENOMENON. We recording our conversation last night, talking for about 90 minutes; they may be breaking up the session into two episodes. I'll let you know when I know it's been uploaded.

In other news, this is shaping up to be a remarkable year. I've been pursuing my fiction career of late with more determination and, last week, I signed a contract with Lori Perkins' Riverdale Avenue Books, which will be publishing two of my novels - THE ONLY CRIMINAL and THE ART WORLD - later this year. Legendary BATMAN artist Kelley Jones has promised me a piece of original art for THE ONLY CRIMINAL. Additionally, I hope to have an announcement soon about the publication of my most recent novel, a novelization of the film script THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES.  

You may also recall that my novella THE SECRET LIFE OF LOVE SONGS is due out from PS Publishing later this year, and work has been continuing on the musical soundtrack intended to accompany the book. There will be five songs I've co-written with Dorothy Moskowitz Falarski (formerly with Columbia recording artists, The United States of America) and the songs will not only be graced with vocals and piano by Dorothy herself, but also by legendary guitarist Gary Lucas (Jeff Buckley, Captain Beefheart's Magic Band) and the fabulous multi-instrumentalist Mike Fornatale (Murderer's Row and the reunited Left Banke and Moby Grape). Gary just turned in his tracks, and we're still waiting for one from Mike. It's been a long, slow process but it's exciting to see and hear it all coming together. We're just about at the mixing stage.

Other than that, I've been reading lately much more than watching films. I got through WAR AND PEACE finally, with great admiration for it, and I've been reading a good deal of French pulp and literature, some SHADOW, some DOC SAVAGE, and Edgar Wallace's THE DEVIL MAN - far and away, the best work I've yet read by him. Just finished DEATH PACKS A SUITCASE, the debut novel by his son Bryan Edgar Wallace, who I found to be a far more lucid and vibrant writer though the novel ultimately succumbs to a too hasty final couple of chapters. A great deal at stake is written off rather glibly, but I was still impressed by his skill at writing character - fairly dimensional women as well as men, even if they are prone to throwing tantrums and committing murder. I also recently got around to reading Black Coat Press' THE DAUGHTER OF FANTOMAS, which I should write about here soon at some point, as I've covered the previous ones in the series on this blog. By an absolute coincidence, I picked this book up on what this blog later reminded me was the second anniversary of finishing its predecessor, SLIPPERY AS SIN. 

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.  

Return of THE WHITE SPIDER (1963)

Last night I decided to refresh my memory of THE WHITE SPIDER (Die Weisse Spinne, 1963), one of several adaptations of early pulp crime novelist Louis Weinert-Wilton (1875-1945) made in response to the success of Rialto’s popular Edgar Wallace franchise in West Germany. It may seem a flagrant intrusion given that the film's producers hired nearly all of Rialto’s star players (Joachim Fuchsberger, Karin Dor, Werner Peters, etc), had Rialto’s star composer Peter Thomas score the film, and handed its reins to director Harald Reinl, who had initiated the Wallace series with its first few films - but in fact the two franchises were not in literal competition, both being manufactured for distribution through the same company, Constantin Film. All four of the Weinert-Wilton adaptations are now available on Blu-ray in Germany (alas, without English audio or subtitles), but I was able to find the English dubbed version of THE WHITE SPIDER (prepared for Canadian television) over at YouTube, where at least one other of the Weinert-Wiltons (SECRET OF THE BLACK WIDOW) is available in its English dub.

Halfway through THE WHITE SPIDER, I realized I was grooving on the atmosphere rather than following its story, but it wasn’t hard to catch up. Dor plays a destitute widow trying to claim her rightful inheritance after the apparent death of her husband, a gambling addict whose good luck talisman was a decorative white spider on his keychain, likenesses of which are turning up as signatures at various murder scenes, causing Scotland Yard to doubt his demise. The murderings by lasso were subsequently adopted by Rialto for their two Wallace MÖNCH ("Monk") movies (known here as THE MYSTERIOUS MAGICIAN and THE COLLEGE GIRL MURDERS). The fine cast shines somewhat less here than elsewhere, but this outing also boasts Horst Frank and SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES’ Dieter Eppler, who steals the picture as the titular criminal master of makeup, modeling various disguises à la Fantômas. It’s not as well produced as the Rialto Wallaces but it's fairly eventful even at its more generous running time (about 103 minutes) and still worth seeing. At several points, one realizes that Dario Argento’s greater influence was from films like this, rather than the works of Bava or Freda.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

RIP: José Mojica Marins (1936 - 2020)

Your Humble Blogger, with José Mojica Marins and Barbara Steele.
Chiller Theater Expo, New Jersey, October 1994. 

I've just heard that the great, impossible, absolutely individual Brazilian actor, writer, and filmmaker José Mojica Marins has passed away. He first made his mark in South American cinema with his Zē do Caixāo character in the early 1960s and some stray, bizarre photos from them drifted up North, but the films themselves remained lost to us until Mike Vraney's Something Weird Cinema came along and struck up a deal with him. As a perk of that deal, I got to meet him in 1994 at the Chiller Theater Expo, where Barbara Steele was also guesting. José extended me the gift of being allowed to gently shake his left hand, the one with the very long, highly brittle nails of which he made such chilling use onscreen - something he did not permit the eager general public. A bonafide original, a revolutionary, Hellfire incarnate, a master of narcissism and the darkest satire, we will not see his like again. He was 83.

You can search this blog for earlier postings about this important figure.  

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.