Film Reviews by Steve

This is the debut as director of legendary cinematographer Karl Freund, who photographed Metropolis (1927) and Dracula (1931). It isn't as visually striking- there is no expressionism. Most of its impact is from the exotic set decorations; the parchments and symbols which embellish the mystery of a terrible curse unleashed after the opening of an Egyptian burial chamber.  

Boris Karloff is the mummy, who in ancient times was bound in cloth and buried alive. Exhumed thousand of years later, the living corpse goes in search of the reincarnation of his eternal love, played by the mysterious, Zita Johann. Who must have the biggest eyes in horror, as well as a precode dress designer.

This is a slow, lethargic film which creates a sense of unease through arcane curses and hypnotic trances. Of course, it's another defining role for Karloff, transformed by Universal's great effects artist Jack Pierce, both into the mummy, and its wizened alter-ego, Ardeth Bay (anagram of Death by Ra!).

Like other Universal horrors of the early '30s, it suffers from a supporting cast of rather effete and theatrical English expats. But Karloff is great and Zita is enigmatically sexy. The occult is challenged by academic rationality, but in Universal horror, superstition is always real and the scientific voice of reason is wasting his breath, and about to die inexplicably anyway.

This explicit precode adaptation of Richard Connell's short story was shot at night on the sets of King Kong (1933) by the same crew. An all American big game hunter (a slim Joel McCrea) is lured onto the rocks of a remote jungle island by a crazy Russian aristocrat (Leslie Banks in his screen debut). So the hunter becomes the game.

The castaway proves a wily quarry, with his experience of bloodsports. He is accompanied by the original Queen of Scream, Fay Wray. As they make their way though the rugged terrain pursued by the Count and his hunting dogs, their clothes get shredded in a way that would lead to extensive cuts by the Hays Office on further release.

This is a tremendously exciting action film with a rich atmosphere as the fog falls on the island at twilight. There are evocative sets and locations. And there's a brilliant display of theatrical overacting by Leslie Banks, who wears the goatee of evil with conviction. A touch of philosophy in the script adds depth, without slowing the pace.

The film's most grisly moment is when the Count shows his prisoner around the human remains mounted in his trophy room. There was much more of this but audiences complained it was upsetting so RKO cut 20m. It has been remade many times, but even with the cuts imposed, it is the touch of the macabre, the feeling of transgression, that makes this the best version.

After Frankenstein (1931), James Whale returned to Universal for this first sound version of HG Wells' sci-fi classic. Claude Rains makes his starring debut as a scientist who invents a formula for invisibility before he discovers the antidote. Big mistake. Unfortunately, something in the elixir turns the doctor insane as he attempts to use his innovation to gain power and wealth.

This doesn't have the visual panache of Whale's other Universal horrors, I guess because of the already complicated process for designing the effects. A major weakness is the amount of knockabout comedy, which the director apparently loved. This hasn't aged well, and actually diminishes the sense of threat and suspense.

The triumph of the film is the astonishing effects. Not only of Claude Rains removing his bandages to reveal... nothing, but at the climax when a dissolve finally exposes the face of the actor for the first time a few seconds before the credits roll. We might not see much of Rains, but his distinctive voice gives the invisible man a valuable presence..

This is the first Hollywood production that feels more like science fiction, rather than a horror film with some sci-fi jargon added on. It looks at the duality of science for good and bad. It's a genre landmark, but a bit of a shame Whale was seduced by the comic potential of Wells' premise above most of the philosophical themes.

Most Hollywood horror films of the early silents were melodramas which included some element of the physically or mentally grotesque. This is unambiguously a horror film. It has the look, with the expressionist shadows and freakish props and sets. And it retains the body-horror motif of the twenties,-perhaps the definitive example- with the grinning death's head of the monster.

The Phantom is a multifaceted figure. He is the satanic Svengali with whom an operatic ingénue makes a Faustian pact. He is also the distressing victim of nature, condemned to be persecuted by the normal world. He is the hideous true face behind the mask that we all hide. It's is a hard act to pull off, but Lon Chaney is sensational. We forget all about the actor under the spell of his creation.

Mary Philbin is attractive and sympathetic in a difficult role as the opera singer. But Chaney is the star. He is mainly supported by the astonishing sets and costumes, with the startling technicolor scene of the masked ball. The recreation of the Paris Opera House is legendary. The impressionistic cellars and the underground river are immensely haunting.

 This original version of Gaston Leroux's classic novel (the author actually worked on the film) has a perverse authenticity shared by none of the remakes. This is partly through its antiquity which gives the film a psychedelic logic where we can accept these sort of events might happen. But it triumphs because of Chaney's extraordinary gift. He creates one of the enduring images of terror.

This lavish adaptation of Victor Hugo's historical melodrama was Universal studio's most lucrative hit of the '20s. It is set in 1482 and focuses on the romance of the gypsy Esmerelda with a nobleman in a socially polarised Paris; of the arrogant, brutal aristocracy and the persecuted peasants.

Patsy Ruth Miller overacts and lacks appeal as the untamed dancing girl. What everyone remembers this for is Lon Chaney's extreme portrayal of the title character, Quasimodo, the ringer of the bells. It's Chaney who makes this a horror film at all, not just for his legendary make-up effects, the deformity and gymnastics, but for the strange, primal enigma of his character.

This is early cinema and it doesn't have the visual expressionism of some of the later silent horrors. But what it does abundantly present is spectacle with its huge cast of extras in period costume and the magnificent sets, particularly of the medieval cathedral.

This is the film where the Lon Chaney became a big star around the world. His Quasimodo remains definitive. This is a silent blockbuster. Chaney's demonic aura and the convincing recreation of fifteenth century Paris makes the original Hunchback the earliest classic of Universal horror.

Occult face off in rural Austro-Hungary between an architect/satanist (Boris Karloff), and a vengeful psychiatrist (Bela Lugosi) who has just been released from 15 years in a Siberian prison after his betrayal by Karloff in WWI, who then married Lugosi's wife and later his daughter... It is the first pairing of the two great horror stars of the '30s.

It's a startlingly transgressive story. As well as the satanism, there is a suggestion of necrophilia. Karloff, inhabits a modernist mansion built on the site of the historic castle where he oversaw genocide. The contemporary style is most unusual for '30s horror. But in the old cellars he keeps the bodies of women he has loved, preserved in their youth, including Bela's family.

The slow pace is its main weakness. Plus the vacuous newlyweds (David Manners and Jacqueline Wells) who stumble upon this house of insanity. She reminds the two rivals of the woman who married them both, and they play chess for her. Karloff intends to sacrifice his prize in a black mass and add her to his gallery of beautiful corpses!

So who wins the battle of the stars? Both overact splendidly.  Lugosi is a limited actor but there is a wonderful moment when he delivers some lengthy dialogue in his own language and he suddenly sounds natural. But Karloff with his lisp and his deco-effect makeup is more memorable. I'll give it to the Englishman.

Charming screwball fantasy about a Puritan in Salem in the 1600s who condemns a young woman to burn for witchcraft. She curses his descendants to suffer from miserable marriages for evermore... In 1942, the spirit of the witch (Veronica Lake) is loosed to spread havoc with the latest heir of her spell (Fredric March) as he plans to marry a spectacularly ill tempered tyrant (Susan Hayward).

Of course, the wedding is called off and the star crossed adversaries fall in love and marry instead. The husband has his eyes on the Governorship of the state and his new wife will use all the guiles of her witchcraft to help him. Yes, it was the inspiration for '60s sitcom, Bewitched.

Some of the fun to be had may depend on a tolerance of Veronica Lake, and I have little. It seems neither did Fredric March... But there is much else to enjoy. Hayward is marvellous and the support is well cast. The script is witty and genuinely funny. The many effects are well done.  

René Clair's touch is light and enchanting, like a Parisian Ernst Lubitsch. He draws a congenial performance March, who is usually known as an intense dramatic actor, and confects a most delightful comedy. Clair had a gift for making decorative frou-frou, and this is a sweet, sugary treat.

Erle Kenton mainly directed Universal monster sequels, but has his name on one masterpiece. Richard Arlen plays a two fisted man of action, shipwrecked on the remote jungle island of the sinister Dr. Moreau, who aims to evolve animals into humans through genetic experimentation. Maybe the castaway can be persuaded to mate with his panther-woman (Kathleen Burke)?

This precode version of the HG Wells story is artfully photographed, and its world of shadows and fog gives it an expressionistic look. The white tropical suits contrast pleasurably with the deep pools of darkness. There's a flavourful picture of the south seas, full of loners in transit, drunk sea captains, discredited medics, way off the map of normal human behaviour.

At the centre of all this atmosphere is Charles Laughton's superbly offbeat portrayal of the mad scientist, his untethered and megalomaniacal moral sickness, naturally, hidden behind a cherubic mask of utter reasonableness. He wears the goatee of evil with distinction and cracks his whip with conviction.

We see the mutations and failed experiments either exhibited or doing the most laborious tasks. The half-human beasts are brilliantly realised by makeup and costuming. It would be amazing to see more of them. But we do witness their famous ceremony of laws: 'Are we not men?'.  This is a horror classic whose transgressive themes never impede the fabulous spectacle.

Faithful adaptation of Oscar Wilde's famous novel with major studio production values. Hurd Hatfield- in the title role- is gifted his most solemn desire, that he may stay young and beautiful while he enjoys a hedonistic lifestyle, and the inevitable signs of debauchery are displayed on the enchanted painting hidden in his attic.  

Hatfield is impassive- little more than mask- which is appropriate for a story about appearances. The epigrams are delivered by George Sanders who does pretty well with dialogue that is easier to read than speak. Angela Lansbury as a Cockney music hall entertainer, and Donna Reed, as an aristocratic beauty, are both archetypes, but ideal for gothic melodrama.  

There is an evocative recreation of Victorian London, particularly the expressionistic dens of vice where Dorian goes slumming. There's a scene in an opium dive/brothel towards the end of the film which is so engorged with louche decadence that it steals the film.

 It is in black and white, but there's a striking use of colour when we first see the portrait and later, when it has absorbed all of Dorian's wickedness. This is the best of Oscar Wilde on screen. While it is heavy with period atmosphere, Albert Lewin doesn't let it slow down his narrative. Despite the typically provocative Wildean irony, it is an enduring and compelling moral tale.

Influential expressionist horror about a serial killer who strangles women with physical infirmities. The murderer ritualistically pulling on his leather gloves before asphyxiating his victims is a  motif often repeated in the Italian giallos of the '70s. And Alfred Hitchcock must have been impressed by the voyeuristic theme suggested by the extreme closeups of the killer's eye observing his victims.

It is set in New England in the 1910s. The story begins in a cinema with a silent melodrama showing a heroine in peril, which anticipates the terror of a mute servant (Dorothy McGuire) in a gothic house of shadows. When she closes the heavy door of the old, dark mansion it is evident that rather than barring the killer's entry, she has locked him inside.

The maniac's obsession is that he must rid the world of people with disabilities. There is a brilliant point of view shot through his eyes of his potential victim without a mouth which exposes his insanity in an instant. Surely the intension was to critique the cult of eugenics, fashionable in the Edwardian era, which nourished Nazi ideology.

This is horror noir, rich in gothic atmosphere and suspense climaxing in a showstopping electrical storm! McGuire is the opposite of the old horror scream-queen. She tries to shout for help, but... isn't heard. It's easy to guess the murderer, and Ethel Barrymore is annoying as the irascible matriarch, but Elsa Lanchester provides comic relief as reliably as ever. And McGuire suffers in silence magnificently.

Val Lewton's final production for RKO's B horror unit is a historical film about the mentally sick inhabitants of an asylum in 18th century London. Boris Karloff is marvellous as the corrupt, devious head of the institution, who shows his charges to the public for tuppence, and is amenable to allowing the enemies of his rich friends to disappear into its dark corridors, for a consideration.

This is an extremely impressive historical drama which isn't scared to show its learning. William Hogarth is given a writing credit and the film recreates frames from A Rakes Progress! The script is witty, intelligent and rich in fascinating historical detail which never even remotely slows down the story. It's not easy to think of an A film that recreates the age nearly as interestingly.

This is a horror film because of the revulsion generated by the enemies of the enlightenment as they not only obstruct change, but imprison reformers within the walls of the living hell. There are brilliant stylistic flourishes: the bare arms snaking out of the bars of the cells in the moonlight; or the flicker of Karloff's eyes as the inmates place the last brick in his tomb.

This is a world of menace and cruelty where evil can be hidden inside a witticism. Where the decadence of the rich is not only accepted, but presumed to be fair. Where the poor suffer unbearably and the pretence of taking care of the sick is a racket. This lost money and Lewton's team was broken up. But his legacy is the best anthology of genre films in cinema.

When the RKO bosses informed Val Lewton he would make his next few films with Boris Karloff, he feared he would have to produce Universal style monster movies. But Karloff didn't change Lewton. The producer wove the lisping Englishman seamlessly into the Lewton style. In return a grateful Karloff gave the best performances of his career.  

This isn't exactly Lewton's usual psychological horror. It is as pessimistic as the earlier films but more conventional. Greece is weary with war. Some travellers are quarantined on a tiny island where plague is killing local residents. The visitors, led by a general (Karloff) are trapped there until the wind changes and the hot Sirocco comes to burn away the disease...

Like all Lewton horrors to this point, this is about rationality against the occult. The officer is a scientist. But as the people die, he puts his faith in the ancient customs of his childhood, and the old remedies. He believes in the Vorvoloka, a malevolent spirit that inhabits and controls the body while it sleeps. Maybe this is causing the deaths, not the plague.

The story lacks originality; the horror set piece is the live burial of a catatonic, which is as old as Poe. With WWII at an end, audiences stayed away from its exhausted fatalism. But it is a haunting experience that leaves behind an uneasy impression of the uncanny, and the appeal of superstition to explain what we cannot understand.

The final two productions from Val Lewton's B horror unit at RKO -with Bedlam in 1946- are not the psychological horrors of the earlier films which are usually located in contemporary America. They are historical dramas set in Britain. They are only in the horror genre at all because of the grotesque themes. Though this may not be quintessential Lewton it is still a magnificent and exciting film.

It is loosely based on a Robert Louis Stevenson story about a grave robber in Edinburgh after Burke and Hare. Boris Karloff plays a cab driver who supplies bodies to a teaching hospital. When supply doesn't meet demand he isn't above creating a few corpses of his own. The hubristic head of the medical school (Henry Daniell), is in too deep with the sinister murderer. 

There are interesting and profound themes not normally found in horror. The script is superb, full of colourful, archaic language, rich period detail, and it looks amazing, borrowing the set of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The noirish pools of darkness are gorgeously sad.

The chilling, supernatural climax is a heart-stopper. The nucleus of the film is the deeply pleasurable head to head between Karloff and Daniell. This is the performance of Karloff's life, as the insidious, leering, morally forsaken killer. And there's a legendary moment for horror fans when Karloff 'burkes' Bela Lugosi in their last appearance together.

This is a remake of a silent film about men who returned from the great war with horrific injuries. RKO updated it to WWII, just as that conflict was ending. Robert Young plays a flyer who suffers facial scarring and paralysis. He finds companionship with the shy, unattractive spinster (Dorothy McGuire) who cares for him as he comes to terms with his injuries.

And they fall in love under the influence of the enchanted cottage, which makes them perceive each other as attractive. He glimpses her inner beauty and she sees the man she distantly loved before the war. Others don't share their illusion, but the lovers are protected by the cottage's mystical, lonely housekeeper (Mildred Natwick) and a blind neighbour (Herbert Marshall).

Clearly, the studio pulled a lot of punches on the couple's appearance. She is so unattractive, soldiers at a wartime dance draw back in horror. But she's just Dorothy McGuire without makeup. He has a scar, but the twisted lip comes and goes. This isn't horror. It's a lush wartime romance which offers comfort to the home-front waiting for its heroes to return. Who may have changed.

It is a lush Hollywood fantasy, conventionally scored by Roy Webb's nostalgic, wistful orchestration, with tasteful photography and visual effects. It's the most sentimental film imaginable, but it conveys a strange ethereal magic, and has developed a small but devoted cult.