What's News in Old Movies: August 2024
By Don Stradley
A pair of Blu-rays from Universal’s classic monster period, coming August 20, is a celebration of America’s haunted past, a Halloween party for the eyes. The two films launched Universal’s most dynamic era just as sound films were taking hold. Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, and Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff, still offer a rare kind of subversive power. To see them is like walking into a vintage car show and realizing, with awe and a bit of sadness, that they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
America’s fascination with monsters at the height of the Great Depression is a topic worth exploring. Dracula and Frankenstein, both released in 1931, seemed to mirror various American preoccupations, everything from sexual degeneracy (male monsters chasing female victims) to a kind of intuitive normalizing of the carnage brought on by the first World War. “With their replaceable limbs and brains,” wrote David J. Skal in The Monster Show, “man-made monsters were the perfect toy soldiers to battle semiconscious fears.” And of course, there was the always pervasive wariness of the “other.” It’s always the eccentric character on the fringes who caused the trouble: the weird man in the castle; the mad scientist; the gypsy fortuneteller. As our country reeled from a staggering economic collapse, maybe filmgoers felt some solidarity with the angry mobs, their torches ablaze, as they rallied together to destroy these outsiders. The tricky part was that the monsters possessed a kind of sinister glamor, like the villains in crime movies. Even Dracula, who seemed like a jerk, was a sharp dresser and never lacked company.
If you think you know these movies well, there’s always something new to discover. I’m always surprised at how quickly Karloff moves in Frankenstein. Karloff was only 43 at the time, not yet slowed by the physical problems that would make the Frankenstein sequels such a challenge for him. He’s agile here, as if he might lunge across the room like a leopard at Mae Clarke. That makes him even more frightening. And imagine how he must’ve appeared to moviegoers of 1931. A critic from the San Francisco Examiner captured the mood of the day when he wrote, “Karloff is splendid and terrible as the monster who awakes under the scientist’s hands; his death mask face is something to have nightmares about.”
When Frankenstein premiered in November of that year, there was a sense that director James Whale had unleashed something remarkable. Universal's film adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel was, on the surface, built to produce thrills and scares, complete with hired ambulances parked outside theaters. Shelley’s gothic styling was replaced with a very American type of story, the creature being as unstoppable as a tank and as unpredictable as a mad dog, a killer fiend who at times was vulnerable and confused. The film was also a leap forward in the movie industry. The Examiner called it "a work of art, a milestone in cinematic progress." With its thundering sound and extravagant laboratory scenes, Frankenstein represented state of the art filmmaking. Not surprisingly, it was one of the top box office attractions of the year. Dracula, released earlier that year, was nearly as successful but feels like a silent movie in comparison.
Yet Dracula also crackles with weirdness and evil. Director Tod Browning was a veteran of the silents, and as he made Dracula it seemed his heart was still in the 1920s. The sound seems added begrudgingly. Yet the mere creaking of a door must’ve held considerable menace for a 1931 audience. Bram Stoker’s novel presented a much different Dracula, a sort of shabby old man who appeared younger as he drank the blood of his victims. Lugosi’s interpretation – suave, weird, slick as a stage magician – became the standard for many decades.
Dracula also benefits from being a pre-Code feature. Here’s a guy who can turn into a bat and fly into a woman’s bedroom. Moreover, the women seem to enjoy his visits, and follow him around with glazed, highly satisfied expressions. Legend has it that Lugosi became such a sex symbol that women attending stage performances of Dracula would swoon at the sight of him. It’s also part of Hollywood lore that he had a torrid fling with Clara Bow. Indeed, the vampire king was hot stuff. What might Dracula have been like if it had been made after the 1934 Production Code? I imagine characters wandering aimlessly in the fog, lots of atmosphere, but not much to fear. And it’s doubtful that Renfield, Dracula’s bug-eating lackey, would’ve been so outré in a post Code production.
Though they have been made available dozens of times since the inception of “home entertainment” back in the late 1970s, Frankenstein and Dracula are coming back yet again. These 4K Ultra HD Blu rays will be in limited edition “SteelBook” packaging aimed at collectors. There are plenty of extra features included for each title, and Dracula even comes with the legendary Spanish language Dracula, filmed on the same Universal set with different actors. The SteelBook cover art by Alex Ross is also intriguing. Ross is among the most revered comic book artists of the past 30 years, and his approach to Universal’s classic monsters is unique.
You can learn more about Frankenstein and Dracula releases from these links.
If you’re in the mood for another 19th century novel turned into a 20th century film, John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956) might satisfy your hunger. Billed as “The mightiest adventure ever seen!” the film was a major Warner Bros endeavor with a hefty $5-million production cost. Though early reviews questioned the casting of the urbane Gregory Peck as the seafaring Captain Ahab, and the film’s rather massive running length of 116 minutes, most agreed that Moby Dick was spellbinding. Time magazine called it “a brilliant film,” while The New York Times dubbed it “one of the great motion pictures of our time.”
Fantasy author Ray Bradbury was recruited by Huston to adapt Herman Melville’s novel for the screen. After spending several months in Ireland to write the screenplay, and then a two-year wait for the film’s premiere, Bradbury was stunned when Huston took a co-writing credit, putting his name before Bradbury’s. “I hit the ceiling,” Bradbury told his biographer, Sam Weller. Bradbury grew to appreciate the film and the life-changing effect it had on him, even if his relationship with Huston was difficult. “As John said himself, we all have our foibles,” Bradbury said. “If we judge our friends by their faults, we’d have no friends.”
Orson Welles also had plans to develop Moby Dick into a film – he’d played Ahab in radio productions as well as on the London stage – but bowed out when he heard Warner Bros had linked Huston to the project. It is believed that Huston had Welles in mind for Ahab but the studio would only finance the project if a screen idol such as Peck was in the lead. Huston obeyed the studio’s wishes, and then installed Welles as Father Mapple, the fiery New England preacher. Sources differ on whether Welles accomplished his brief scene in one take or two, but he was perfect. Welles’ biographer, Charles Hingham, called Welles’ turn in the pulpit “probably the greatest acting tour de force of his career.”
Moby Dick was a modest success, nowhere near the year’s biggest hits, The Ten Commandments and Giant, but it did reasonably well stateside and has grown in stature since. It was a personal film for Huston, a pet project that saw him tinker with the color for months to get the right hue of weatherbeaten whaling vessels. According to legend, one of the 92-foot-long rubber whales made for the movie broke loose from its mooring and drifted away, never to be found. Some have said the missing whale is a myth, but I like to think he is still out there, off the coast of Holland, waiting for his closeup. (Sandpiper Pictures, single disc Blu-ray, available Sept. 3)
From Under the Floorboards: Undercrank Productions’ newest Blu-ray offering is The Craving (1918), a horror/mystery from Francis Ford. Prior to becoming known only as the older brother of John Ford, Francis Ford was a prolific actor/director in the early days of cinema and is certainly due for this homage from Undercrank. Along with The Craving, the release includes three rare shorts, all from the 1911-1917 period and newly restored. In all, you’ll get 107 minutes of some long-forgotten material, with new musical scores by the always busy Ben Model. Available July 30.
From the Reading Room: Burt Kearns, dubbed by Vanity Fair as “a show business and pop culture savant,” has finally turned his talents to a worthy cause. After producing books about Marlon Brando and Lawrence Tierney, Kearns now gives us SHEMP! The Biography of The Three Stooges’ Shemp Howard, The Face of Film Comedy.
While many authors have contributed to the mountain of Stooge literature, this new take sounds impressive. As we learn from the press release, Kearns reveals “the surprising and often troubling facts behind the man’s unlikely story: how the child of Jewish immigrants, supposedly racked by debilitating phobias, could conquer show business; the behind-the-scenes machinations that pushed him to return to the team; and the circumstances surrounding his untimely death.” Light on his feet, deceptively brilliant (“You’re crushing my eyebrows!”), and often in the shadow of his more gregarious brothers, Moe and Curley, Shemp was a fighter determined to succeed. He deserves a good bio. (Applause Books, Hardcover, 280 pages, available Oct. 1)
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