Dracula's Daughter (1936)

As a sequel, Dracula's Daughter is overlooked and overshadowed by the Bela Lugosi original. Today it feels like a brave attempt to bring something fresh to the vampire mythology. The pace of the story and editing is snappier than the sometimes sluggish original. It is also loaded with fascinating symbolism and a great performance from Gloria Holden as the title character.

With a quick recap, the plot picks up at the end of the first film. Professor Van Helsing has been arrested (by Yorkshire policemen talking with "gor blimey guvnor" accents) for murder after destroying Count Dracula. He enlists the help of a psychiatrist friend Dr Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger) to try and prove his innocence. Meanwhile, Dracula's daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska has stolen and burnt the Count's body hoping to break free of the curse of vampirism. After a chance meeting with Dr Garth, she enlists him in her efforts. But Zaleska seems unable to curb her blood cravings, and takes to kidnapping young girls from the streets of London 

As much as I love the Universal monsters films, they are a boys club. (The obvious other exception is the Bride of Frankenstein, although the time the title character is on screen is minimal). So, to see a strong female protagonist who is the main focus of the film makes a refreshing change. Dracula's daughter has the same seductive power over both men and women as her father. Of course this raises the question, how did she become a vampire? Through her father? Is this child abuse?

This is very much a film of it's time, not least with it's fascination with psychoanalysis. Zaleska tries to enlist the help of Dr. Jeffrey Garth to cure what she thinks is a mental illness. This is a man who believes addicts should simply use their willpower, without examining the underlying causes. When new victims of the vampire appear the initial assumption is that is Dracula. I mean, God forbid that a woman should have the competence and initiative to stalk their own victims. This is, after all, a psychiatrist who spends his spare time shooting birds with his big gun. He also stumbles over tying a tie. Only Janet, his long suffering secretary, can finish him off.

The Black Sleep (1956)

The Black Sleep is an intriguing and little seen low budget horror film, with a dream cast of genre veterans.

In Victorian England, a brilliant surgeon, Sir Joel Cadman (Basil Rathbone) is trying to find a way to revive his beloved wife from a coma caused by a brain tumor. But, his methods are a little unscrupulous, as Cadman employs a powerful anesthetic from India to induce a death like state in his test subjects. He uses it to snatch a fellow Doctor, Gordon Ramsey, from Death Row, where Ramsey is awaiting execution for a murder he denies carrying out. Cadman wants Ramsay's help, but as Ramsey soon discovers, not all Cadman's previous experiments have been so successful.

Rathbone is on fine form, making Cadman initially seem charming and even sympathetic, but slowly revealing him to be cruel and insane.

His co-stars are not always as lucky. Lon Chaney Jr hams it up as Mungo, a former scientific genius who has been turned into a crazed madman by the good doctor's experiments. But poor Bela Lugosi, in his final filmed role, is left without a word to say. The underwritten character of Cadman's butler feels like it was written to put Lugosi's name on the posters.

Tor Johnson, Lugosi's co-star in the Ed Wood films Plan 9 from Outer Space and Bride of the Monster, has some fun as the sort of lurking bulk of a monster he excelled at.

The highlight comes in the form of John Carradine, playing another of Cadman's victims. Carradine does not hold back, even by his usual standards, as the climax sees the inmates taking over the asylum.

The Body Snatcher (1945)

The Body Snatcher is a classic example of a film that has all the ingredients on paper, but which never comes to life.

The screenplay is based on a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson. The film stars no less than Boris Karloff as the title character, John Gray, a shifty cab driver who has a sideline sourcing and delivering dead bodies for top surgeon Wolfe "Toddy" MacFarlane (Henry Daniell, best known as Goebbels parody Garbitsch in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator). Bela Lugosi has a small role as MacFarlane's other cadaver consultant, but the fact that he barely registers should be an alarm bell for the rest of the film.

Producer Val Lewton had previously given us Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. These films, despite their lurid titles, have an unsettling mix of atmosphere and ambiguity. This kept the viewer intrigued and on edge. Director Robert Wise would go on to have an eclectic career, from editing montages for Citizen Kane, to directing everything from low key noir classics like The Set Up to big budget epics like The Sound of Music and Star Trek: The Motion Picture

 

There are some interesting ideas in The Body Snatcher, particularly with regard to class, and how those at MacFarlane's level feel like they can get away with flouting the law. But, largely it is talk, endless talk, with little or nothing left to the imagination of the viewer, the central strength of Lewton's former work. One for the Karloff / Lewton / Lugosi completists only.

 

 

Mother Riley Meets The Vampire (1952)

One for the Bela Lugosi (or Mother Riley) completists, Mother Riley meets the Vampire is a strange hybrid of English Music Hall and American low budget mad scientist movies.

Arthur Lucan had been playing Mother Riley, an Irish washer woman who gets herself into assorted scrapes and adventures, on stage and screen since the 1930s, but, possibly due to the parochial nature of the character, the films had not really caught on internationally had much success outside of the UK. Enter Bela Lugosi, who had travelled to the UK for a stage version of Dracula that flopped, leaving him penniless and desperately needing money to get back to the US. Producer George Minter must have seen him, even in the twilight of his career, as a big enough name to drum up some business at the American box office.

The sinister Von Housen (Lugosi) has two notable character traits: he is hellbent on seeks dominating the world with an army of 50,000 radar-controlled nuclear-powered robots. He also reckons he's a vampire and has several young women abducted, including one who has a map to a uranium mine that he needs for his robot army. Granted, his army is currently 49,999 short, and to make matters worse, his only functioning robot has been shipped to Mother Riley's store by mistake.

The result is two different film styles that don't really gel together, but it's more entertaining than not. Lugosi seems to be enjoying himself, and, as always, is great fun to watch. Lucan brings a sense of knockabout slapstick and some well delivered occasional salty quips ("May the saints shower you with sailors on shore leave!"), but his constantly shrill delivery means a little goes a long way. Modern audiences may mostly be reminded of comedy character Arthur Atkinson from the Fast Show, with comparable baffling catchphrases and contemporary references.

Dracula (1958)

It is always good to go back to an old film favourite and find something new, and a recent viewing of the Hammer Studios 1958 take on Dracula provided just such an opportunity.

Made nearly 30 years after Tod Browning's equally ground-breaking,iconic and financially successful Universal version starring Bela Lugosi, director Terence Fisher crafts something just as distinctive and unique, helped both by a first rate cast and a punchy script by Jimmy Sangster, one that never forgets that the audience wants to be entertained. Sangster takes the basic premise from the Bram Stoker novel but tinkers with the story quite significantly, stripping the plot to the bare essentials, moving the action from England to Germany, changing some characters (Jonathan Harker is upgraded to Van Helsing’s undercover sidekick, and is fully aware of the Count’s night-time activities), and playing down or eliminating others, such as Dr Seward. 

The main theme of Good v Evil is left in place, along with the absolutist, black and white definitions of each, and this film taps into many of the tropes associated with vampires and Hammer films, such as the gloomy castles, frightened villagers and lush Gothic ambience. However, despite the changes from the source material, the underlying themes are still in place too, and as any media studies student knows, vampires are about two things - addiction and sex. The former is undisguised, with the vampires depicted as slaves to their craving for blood, and Van Helsing explicitly comparing it to narcotic dependence.

Sex is there too, in an overt rather than explicit manner. The main source of the sex is the Count himself, with Christopher Lee lighting up the screen as six feet five inches of charm, testosterone and magnetism. Of course, if you go with the "neck biting as intercourse" theory, he is not only seducing other men's wives, but other men too, (in the climax between Van Helsing and Dracula, after their initial skirmish, look quickly and you can see Van Helsing checking his neck to make sure he hasn’t been penetrated by the Count). This imagery gives a queasy undertone to the sight of Harker’s fiancée Lucy, turned into a vampire by Dracula, trying to abduct her niece and seduce her brother,.

The lurid sexual tone is backed by an equally violent one, albeit tamer than we see nowadays, with lashings of very red blood, and a new slightly extended gruesome sight of Dracula disintegrating, thanks to some recently rescued footage taken from a previously lost Japanese version of the film.

The other thing that I had not properly appreciated is the energy, intensity and swashbuckling demeanour of Peter Cushing. His version of Van Helsing is a world away from the elderly, more academic characterisation by Edward Van Sloan in the Browning film, and the final battle between him and the Count could almost have come right out of an Errol Flynn film.

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

The Ghost of Frankenstein is an intriguing film, which can be loved or not depending on the perspective from which is viewed. While a fast paced, entertaining B-movie on its own, it also shows how far the Universal Horror franchise had moved from its origins, in terms of both character and execution.

Set after the events of Son of Frankenstein, the previous film in the franchise (with a town meeting providing some handy flashback and plot info), the film starts with an angry mob blowing up Castle Frankenstein to finally draw a line under the Doctor's experiments, and those of his son. However, this (somehow) actually has the effect of freeing Frankenstein's monster (Lon Chaney Jr) from the sulphur pits that were trapping him. Frankenstein's assistant Ygor (Bela Lugosi) has also, miraculously, survived and the two flee to the nearby town of Vasaria, where a second, previously unmentioned Frankenstein son lives. He is also a Doctor, working with his assistant Dr Bohmer (Lionel Attwill) on a method for transplanting brains. Seeing an opportunity to test his theories, Frankenstein arranges to replace the damaged brain of the monster with a healthy one – but Ygor and Bohmer have other ideas.

It is hard to criticise The Ghost of Frankenstein for being what it is – a fast moving, atmospheric, hokey piece of entertainment, with all the tropes we associate with the genre, such as monsters, scientists, laboratories, lightning and angry mobs. Despite a fairly high amount of expositional dialogue, the script races through the storyline, and at 67 minutes long, the film does not out stay its welcome.

The star of the show is definitely Lugosi, reprising his role from Son of Frankenstein, giving a playful performance that is great fun to watch. Less successful is Lon Chaney JR taking on the role of the monster, as he lacks the pathos that Boris Karloff brought to the role and the and self-awareness, leaving a creature who is no longer a tragic monster, but simply a monster. Sir Cedric Hardwicke plays Frankenstein as less manic and intense than his predecessors but still gives the character some dignity, while Lionel Attwill is underused, but still makes the most of his scenes, always at his best playing a slimy, power hungry villain.

The direction, by Erle C. Kenton, is competent if unimaginative (apart from a few interesting height perspective shots involving the monster and a little girl), and is certainly no match for the ground-breaking work James Whale did with Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, or the arch humour of those films. However, in fairness to Kenton, his budget was clearly no match either, and he still manages to produce some good model effects with Castle Frankenstein, as well as a laboratory full of gadgets, bubbling beakers and fizzing electrical coils.

One interesting new development from the previous films is the role of the lynch mob and the audience feeling towards this. Whereas it was possible to empathise with the Karloff monster when being hounded by a torch and pitchfork wielding crowd, the Chaney version is less sympathetic, so when a child is threatened and villagers killed by him, the anger and fright felt is more understandable than from those just lashing out at something that they do not understand.

Ultimately, your enjoyment of The Ghost of Frankenstein may depend on the context that you watch it in. Within the cycle of Universal Horror, particularly the Frankenstein series, it can be seen a sad comedown from the glory days of the Whale films. However, watched on its own terms it is still great fun, and a breezy slice of monsters, mobs, and mad scientists.

Bride of The Monster (1956)

Ed Wood seems to have a status as one of the worst, if not the worst film director of the 20th century. This reputation, established by snarky works such as the Medved Brothers Golden Turkey books, and maintained through the likes of Tim Burton's, admittedly well intentioned, film Ed Wood is, to my mind unfair, as a movie like Bride of the Monster ably demonstrates. While I am not suggesting Wood should be put on a pedestal with the likes of Kubrick or Kurosawa, nobody who produces work this entertaining and unhinged can possibly be called a failure.

Dr. Eric Vornoff (Bela Lugosi, in one of his final roles) is holed up in his secret lab with his mute sidekick, Lobo, trying to build an army of atomic supermen so that he can conquer the Earth. Unfortunately, thanks to his decision to use a giant pet octopus to guard the lab, he seems to be attracting the attention of the local police. It seems the creature is responsible for the deaths of some of the local townsfolk, news which also attracts both a determined reporter and a shadowy figure from Vornoff's past.

Now, granted, on a technical level, it is certainly possible to point out some flaws in Wood's approach to filmmaking. His shot compositions are often flat and uninspired, and he seems unwilling or unable to get anything like decent performances from his actors (or hire decent actors in the first place). 

Instead, Wood's skills lie in his montage of ideas, and his relentless energy and enthusiasm. A lesser director might have buckled under the strain of a morphine-addicted star, a minuscule budget, a rancher turned film producer insisting his son take a major part, and a malfunctioning stolen mechanical prop - but not Edward D Wood Jr.  Unfazed, he works like a chef, blending whatever ingredients are to hand. He has Bela Lugosi, so we can have a mad scientist character (he certainly makes a wise choice by giving as much screen time as he does to Lugosi, the film's biggest human asset). It's the 1950s, so he has the perfect subject matter, with everyone thinking about atomic power, and its consequences for humanity - such as giving people superpowers; and he has access to a giant rubber octopus - so that’s the creature for the feature sorted, even if it means that the people being attacked by it have to move the creature's limbs themselves.

In addition, a lesser writer might have made a boring script. So many 50s monster flicks are largely turgid affairs, but not Bride of the Monster. It zips through in just under 70 minutes, and constantly piles in with crazy plot twists and ripe dialogue. As mentioned, much of the talking is wisely left to Lugosi, who seems to relish the chance to get stuck into it, especially the big speech where wistfully he speaks of being “outlawed in a world … which previously honoured me as a genius”

Dialogue like this shows that, although entertaining in its own right, when placed in the wider context of the lives of Wood and Lugosi, Bride of the Monster becomes quite a poignant milestone. Lugosi finally managed to kick the morphine addiction that had plagued him for years, only to be killed by a heart attack shortly after the film was released. Wood would go on to make his best-known film, Plan 9 from Outer Space, but his reckless ways with money and booze would soon kill off his Hollywood hopes forever. 

It would be a shame if people only watch his films in a sneering and ironic fashion, as, for me, the complete lack of sneering and irony in them is what makes his films so endearing. They are heart felt expressions of Wood's love of movies, monsters, and Bela Lugosi.