The final film on this collection is also tonight's film. Instead of straight up horror we get Lugosi and Karloff in a film-noir gangster version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The film opens with Karloff playing a condemned man heading to the chair. On his way he passes his notes to a reporter. Through this diary we are told the strange case of Professor Kingsley and Red Cannon. Instead of a potion to transform one man into another, the professor is hit by a car and expected to die. The man who ran the professor down is the escaping gangster Red Cannon. In order to save the professor's life, Kingsley's best friend Dr. Sovac is able to save his life using an illegal brain transplant using Cannon's brain to save his friend's life.

At first everything goes as planned. The professor recovers and yet he starts to now possess some of Cannon's traits. Things are complicated further when Dr. Sovac discovers the now dead Cannon has half a million stashed.

Lugosi isn't present for most of the film. His role of Eric Marney the gang leader is brief yet it has the classic Bela touch. His performance here really displays how much of a tragedy it was that Lugosi was never challenged with the great roles that he was capable of playing. He isn't a scientist or a vampire here and despite the role being minor, he certainly adds a presence to the film that would be lacking without him.

As tonight's film isn't so much a Lugosi film, it's not even a much of a Karloff film. Black Friday is a Stanley Ridges film. While today he is one of the many now forgotten character actors, Stanley Ridges shines here and his talents are stretched to their full potential. His double role as the kindly Professor Kingsley and the ruthless Red Cannon is played so well that I almost thought it was two different actors.

This film is definitely worth watching. Check it out sometime!

Labels: 31 days of film, Bela Lugosi, sci-fi

From 1936 is yet another Lugosi/Karloff collaboration. Unfortunately unlike The Raven or The Black Cat, this one is rather dull and is full of boring unlikeable characters. Still, you get to see Lugosi as a benevolent doctor as opposed to a mad scientist.

Boris Karloff plays Dr. Rukh, a scientist who has discovered a new element he calls Radium X. This super-metal can be used to create powerful destruction or to heal the sick. It also has contaminated the doctor's body causing him to kill anything he touches. With this new power he seeks to destroy his colleagues whom he feels have exploited his discovery as well as his adulterous wife and her new suitor.

This gives me an excellent opportunity to bring up a stock character from many 30s horror films: the young romantic lead. Here we are supposed to feel sympathetic to Rukh's wife Diana and for her star crossed lover Ronald. Instead I find myself repeatedly hoping that Rukh murders them both, especially Ronald.

Ronald, as portrayed by Frank Lawton, is a bland and yet insanely annoying character. He seems to represent all that was bad about studio pictures from the 30s. The notion that every film must have romance has always bothered me. He is much like the smarmy replacement Zeppos of the MGM Marx Brothers movies. Lugosi and Karloff could have easily carried this film without him.

Lugosi, by the way, is a bit out of character here. He's not exactly the hero but he is decidedly good. He uses the Radium X only for curing people and not for destruction or personal gain as Rukh does. He is the one likable character is this rather bland and predictable film.

Labels: 31 days of film, Bela Lugosi, Horror

The master of horror, Bela Lugosi is back in this exciting and surprisingly chilling horror film. Although it shares the title of the famous poem it is merely "inspired" by the masterpiece of Poe.

Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Vollin, a madman who is obsessed with the macabre works of Edgar Allen Poe. He obsesses with Poe so much that he builds life sized replicas of the Pit in the Pendulum and the closing walls from the same poem. He entraps several of his house guests in an attempt to kill the father of a woman with whom he has an infatuation for.

It's all very exciting and Lugosi is at his madness. This was Lugosi before he had gone totally off the deep end into addiction and yet it's obvious here that while he is the main character the attention was focused on his off-screen rival, Boris Karloff. The opening titles even list Karloff, who is only a supporting actor, above that of Lugosi. It is sad that the studios and audiences of the time had such favor for Karloff and ignored the genius of Lugosi in his peak.

Labels: 31 days of film, Bela Lugosi, Classics, Horror

Yesterday I decided that after watching a great film by a legendary and celebrated director I decided it might be a good idea to go to the proverbial opposite end of the film spectrum. I wanted to see a movie that was so well known for being terrible that it has achieved almost cult-like status. Yet even after sitting though Child Brides, Manos: Hands of Fate and Titanic even I was still unprepared for the horrors I was about to face in the Ed Wood classic, Glen or Glenda.

Glen or Glenda started out as a cheap film made to cash in on the sex change of George/Christine Jorgensen. Director Ed Wood, himself a transvestite, decided to take the film in a completely different direction to talk about transvestism. He even played the main character of Glen(da) under the pseudonym of Daniel Davis. He even hired one of his heroes Bela Lugosi (now down on his luck and heavily addicted to morphine) to play a scientist. Lyle Talbot makes an appearance leading me to think that he either loved working or had no pride in what films he made.

This film is, in many ways the true testament of the talents of Mr. Edward D. Wood Jr. He should have kept those talents to himself as this film is almost totally incoherent. The film is told in a series of flashbacks by a doctor to a police inspector who wants to know what would lead a local transvestite to commit suicide. We are told of the story of Glen who, after being neglected by his father and mother, decides to become a girl. After this tale is over the story of Alan/Ann is told and the real Jorgensen exploitation begins.

Wood's "talents" as a director are further showcased by his refusal to use any symbolism that makes sense to anyone who hasn't been sniffing glue. Many surrealistic and symbolic images appear at totally inappropriate times (e.g Satan being at Glen's wedding) that it feels as though Ed just opened a textbook of film techniques and just decided to use whichever one he found whether they made sense to use or not.*

Several points in the film are interrupted by Lugosi rambling on about "puppy dog tales and big ugly snails" or simply with inappropriate lightning or stock footage if, for nothing else, just to extend the length of the film. One particularly awful scene is when a serious conversation is cut short by stock footage of a buffalo stampede!

Glen or Glenda certainly is an enigma. On the one hand the film is so terrible that no one would ever watch it as a serious movie. Many parts of the film left me openly disturbed, creeped out and just feeling rather uncomfortable. Yet I have not laughed as hard and and long at a film in ages.

If laughter is the best medicine, I truly hope that it means that the therapy required after watching this film will be lessened.

Do not watch this movie unless you have a twisted sense of humor or you are extremely curious. If you do decide to watch it, be sure to watch it with friends. The pain is less when shared with others.

* Ironically this is the same technique that Quentin Tarrantino uses. ^

Labels: 31 days of film, Bad Movies, Bela Lugosi, Crap

Today's film continues the large hairy creature theme of yesterday in the form of a murderous ape in this, the first film adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's classic mystery tale and one of the classic best of Lugosi films.

Bela Lugosi plays the mad scientist role which, after Dracula, was to be his most remembered role. Here he is Dr. Mirakle who kidnaps women with the help of his ape companion in order to perform his bizarre experiments to prove that man and ape are related.

Fans of Lugosi will find much to love here. You get to see a young Lugosi before his tragic fall to Z grade pictures and morphine addiction. He's at his peak here showing his range acting range as the psychotic doctor obsessed with proving his science with total disregard for human life. Contrast this to the handsome, charming vampire of Dracula. It's such a pity that Lugosi never got to play a romantic lead. It would have been wonderful to see what range of acting he had.

Much of the film seems to be inspired by the horror classic, "The Cabinet of Dr. Calidare in that the mad scientist uses an unwitting creature (in this case an ape) to perform his murders and that both are part of side show acts. I do not know if this was intentional or not but it does seem rather interesting.

Speaking of Dr. Calidari, there's a film I have never seen in its entirety. Perhaps I will rectify that this month.

One last note, if Pierre Dupin looks familiar and the name Leon Waycoff means nothing to you, well he later would change his stage name to something a bit more memorable, Leon Ames. Ames would go on to be a founding member of the SAG and appear in over 150 roles. To me though, he'll always be Judge Holmsby from Merlin Jones and the father on Meet Me in St Louis.

Labels: 31 days of film, Bela Lugosi, Horror

Black Dragons: Bela Lugosi stars as a mad doctor intent on killing people who wronged him. Of course, the twist to this is that these people are not just any old people but they are Japanese men he made, somehow, to look like doughy white guys. The film is filled with plot holes and the whole film makes absolutely no sense with a "terrible shocker" at the end which I won't give away.

Black Dragons was one of Bela Lugosi's "Poverty Row" pictures. He made this film, like many others, during a low period in his life when he was addicted to morphine to treat the terrible Sciatica which left him constantly in pain. Yet throughout all this, Lugosi's charm and film presence shines through and he certainly gave his all, even for crap like this.

One side note, the film also stars a young Clayton Moore. If you ever wanted to see the Lone Ranger without his mask, here's your chance.

Labels: Bad Movies, Bela Lugosi, Cult Films, Dollar DVD