What’s New in Old Movies: October 2024
Don Stradley
A trio of new Blu-rays from the Warner Bros archive celebrates the studio’s contributions to the golden age of horror films. And just in time for Halloween!
In The Walking Dead (1936), we can almost see the studio gears churning. Better known for making gritty gangster films, Warner Bros only had a handful of horror films in its backlog. Yet the studio appeared ready to jump on the scary movie bandwagon. The first step was to sign Boris Karloff, who was hot after a series of horror hits for Universal. Then came a screenplay about a man framed for murder who is brought back to life and seeks revenge on his enemies. The project was given to director Michael Curtiz, who had already helmed two horror films for Warner (Doctor X, and The Mystery of the Wax Museum). Nearly 50 but not yet the superstar director he would become, Curtiz took the assignment like a pro.
The Walking Dead was shot in only 18 days but overcomes its quickie roots thanks to Karloff’s memorable performance. Makeup artist Perc Westmore gave him some Frankensteinish makeup so audiences would take the hint, the laboratory scenes are effective, and our man Boris spends a lot of time skulking around cemeteries and scaring people. To quote Curtiz biographer James Robertson, “rarely has such an effective movie been crammed into a mere 66 minutes.”
Though Curtiz allegedly rushed through the production so he could concentrate on other projects, the film was reasonably hailed in its day. The New York Sun declared Karloff was “at his best,” and the Motion Picture Herald called Karloff “sufficiently weird,” while praising the film’s production values as “excellent.” When The Walking Dead opened at Broadway’s Strand Theater on February 29, 1936, The New York Times treated it like a grand event: “With a blaze of white streaking his hair, with sunken mournful eyes, hollow cheeks, Karloff is something to haunt your dreams at night.”
The cast includes Edmund Gwenn, Ricardo Cortez, Marguerite Churchill and Barton MacLaine, but it is always Karloff’s movie. Some of his scenes are quite stirring, especially when he gives an impromptu piano recital while staring down his enemies. Karloff’s death scene in a rainy graveyard is among the most poignant moments of his career.
The Walking Dead is unique in that it combines a 1930s Warner Bros melodrama about ruthless racketeers in Depression era America, with a sci-fi, supernatural element. Hal Mohr’s spectral cinematography adds to it, while Curtiz avoided the usual rampaging horror movie excess and instead gave it a trancelike atmosphere, all the better to frame Karloff’s peculiar spookiness. The way Karloff haunts his foes, wailing “Why did you frame me!” makes me wish for a version of A Christmas Carol, directed by James Whale with Karloff terrifying as Marley’s ghost.
Karloff made other films for Warners (The Invisible Menace, West of Shanghai, etc.) but The Walking Dead was the best of them. At 48, he was in his absolute prime, confident in his talent and stardom, but not above removing his false teeth if it would make him look creepier. The film also marked a unique meeting between Karloff and fantasy author H.G. Wells, who happened to be visiting Hollywood and was brought to the laboratory set by Jack Warner.
Director Vincent Sherman was one of the workhorses at Warner Bros, directing everything from crime dramas to westerns to “important women’s pictures.” He made his directing debut with The Return of Doctor X (1939), which continued the studio’s off-and-on horror phase. Originally planned as a vehicle for Karloff to be called Witches Sabbath and to be directed by William McGann, the idea was scrapped and rebuilt as a project for Sherman. With Karloff busy that year at both Universal and Monogram, his role was given to none other than Humphrey Bogart.
The film is mostly known as a strange blip in Bogart’s career. Dreadfully miscast, he plays a mad scientist/zombie with a thirst for blood. Bogart once said of the film, “If it’d been Jack Warner’s blood…I wouldn’t have minded so much. The trouble was, (Warner was) drinking my blood, and I was making this stinking movie.” Perc Westmore gave Bogart approximately the same look as Karloff had in The Walking Dead, complete with a stripe in his hair, indicative that the studio was already running out of ideas. Bogart hated the film, at least in part because the highly flammable makeup made it impossible for him to smoke cigarettes without a 12-inch cigarette holder.
Yet the film is regarded as a minor cult object, if only because it was Bogart’s only horror feature. There are also numerous legends surrounding how the role came to him in the first place. It was either because Bogart was being punished for some transgression or, as Sherman would later say in an interview with Films in Review, because Jack Warner didn’t know what to do with him. Regardless, Bogart was soon having a stripe put in his hair and his face covered in chalk-white makeup, all to play the wicked Dr. Maurice Xavier.
The Return of Doctor X is exactly what you’d expect it to be, but it has some charm, namely in Bogart’s attempt to be uncanny. While watching it, you might not be sure if he’s giving a weird performance, or if it is just weird to see him as a mad scientist. Phil Hardy’s Encyclopedia of Horror Movies derides the “lame script and stock supporting characters,” but credits Sherman for his style, and describes Bogart as “wonderfully baleful.” The film is also notable for its excellent supporting cast of future stars, including Huntz Hall of the Dead End Kids, George Reeves before he was TV’s Superman, and Glenn Langan, who would one day be The Amazing Colossal Man.
Bogart’s old pal Peter Lorre starred in The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), one of the better horror features from Warners. It is another one of those stories about a disembodied hand – practically a genre of its own, and I’m sure the French have a name for it – terrorizing the estate of a recently deceased pianist. “Superbly eerie,” said Hardy’s book, with the scenes of the severed hand “as chilling as anything in cinema…” True, the ending is a disappointment, but the build-up is exquisite.
Beast was directed by Robert Florey, by this time a veteran who had worked in multiple genres including spook and suspense films (Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Face Behind the Mask, plus screenplay credits for A Study in Scarlet and The Bride of Frankenstein). The screenplay was by the great Curt Siodmak, who wrote more horror and sci-fi scripts than just about anybody, and the cinematography was by Wesley Anderson, a journeyman whose career started in 1931 and would stretch into the early days of television.
The production, however, was a tortured one. The studio was at odds with Florey’s vision, and Lorre was unhappy with the script. The studio’s decision to release Beast at Christmas time was also a mistake. Still, reviews were generally positive. “Lorre’s maniac,” reported Variety, “is a masterly job,” while the Los Angeles Times called the film “often brilliant technically.” Look for Robert Alda and J. Carrol Naish in the cast.
Learn more about each release below:
The Walking Dead https://shorturl.at/Mwhya
The Return of Doctor X https://shorturl.at/doxpM
The Beast with Five Fingers https://shorturl.at/G0wVh
Each features a new 4K restoration from the original negative. All available Oct. 29.
For the reading room: Stand back everybody and make way for a brand-new biography of Zeppo Marx. Robert S. Bader’s Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother, is a 368-page chronicle of the brother who was just as comfortable around mobsters as movie stars. Longtime Marx Brother enthusiast Bader has written about the comedy team before, but it seems he is running out of brothers. Could a tell-all about Gummo be next?
From the press release: “Comprehensively researched with the full cooperation of Zeppo’s estate, including the first-ever interviews with his two sons, this is a remarkable look at the many lives of Zeppo Marx—even the ones he did his best to keep secret.” (Available in hardcover and kindle from Applause books, October 15.)