Gravediggers of 1933: THE INTRUDER, SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM, BEFORE DAWN, TOMORROW AT SEVEN, SUPERNATURAL

As I've written in the past, 1933 was a magical year for movies, and America: it saw the election of FDR, the repeal of prohibition, and 'ahem' the rise of Hitler into power (that last part, not so magical but the war effort did lift us out of the depression). At any rate -- change was afoot, probably akin to our modern years of Obama, legalization of marijuana, and gay marriage. Or worse, or better. And I myself turn to old dark house movies every May or so, because they understand hay fever, the way allergies imitate the first signs of a cold and make the bright sunny day with the calla lillies in bloom again seem a jeweled scorpion, glistening shiny chitinous flowers on the outside and stinging venom within; and by contrast murky AC darkness an opium den refuge of creaking doors, whistling wind and hands coming out from secret panels behind oblivious heiresses. Or maybe it's that May is on the opposite end of the year from Halloween, and as such I can see it clear across the circle. Here's five from 33, with my ratings for both film itself and DVD or TCM broadcast image quality.

This is one of those largely forgotten shipwreck flicks so big in the silent and early sound era (any excuse for nude bathing, apes stealing clothes, reversion to savagery, and ye olde ape suit). As per usual the survivors include rich ladies, scheming crooks, third class social climbers and a drunk.  Mischa Auer as Ben Gunn type castaway comes in half the way through this weird Allied Pictures cheapie, cabin fever crazy, living with a gorilla and a couple of skeletons on a remote island, but he's not a monster... very often. his gorilla buddy spies though and somehow, just because he's a crazed castaway with a thick beard and he's forgotten how to speak he and his ape are artificially blended for the poster!

Oh well. There's a trick ending to the weird plot: lots of daytime outdoor footage (a minus for ODH fans) and two dames: Lila Lee, kind of like the taller, gawkier older sister to Gloria Swanson; Gwen Lee is a Mae West-x-Pat Kelton-ish gold digger who gets all the best double entendre lines. Some guy named Monte Blue is the nominal hero; William P. Davidson the numb nuts copper; perennial lush Arthur Housman a (what else?) boozy playboy who can barely feign interest in how his girl (or is it his sister?) is being wooed by the square-jawed hero --I think! It's hard to hell who's who when all the heads are cut off half the time. If director Ray knew where to point a camera, he could be up there with William Beaudine. He has the right idea anyway: shoot it outside on some beach and the rest on handful of shipboard cutaways. As it is, it's one of the rare 'forgotten horror' films where the script and acting is better than the direction.

There's one great bit the morning after the shipwreck (which occurs right after the murder!) when the lifeboat survivors all wake up and--silently without others noticing--begin to take stock of where they are, remembering what happened, (or coming out of a boozy black-out) and either forging silent eye-alliances, passing notes about some cache of diamonds, or getting scared, quietly. I learned more of the plot in that one silent stretch than in all the malarkey fore and aft. Four bells! 



I like that the girls sleep in the cave on the beach during the night (the men around the fire) and they wake up to find skeletons of past castaways sitting right near them. It might be cheap but it's never dumb or dull. The real killer's madman menace and when he pulls the two girls deeper into the woods at gunpoint, then oh oh baby. It's wild man Mischa's gorilla and his skeleton crew to the rescue. Or at least... Mischa stands off to the side while the good and bad guys slug it, and on his tiny island with his old age and his wisdom, cries "Mary!" (that's his skeleton's name). And I like how Housman--who's been slowly and on the sly morphing from tipsy to hungover to competent and alert--like three different people, but all without being grandstanding about it-- is so thrilled to be back in the presence of booze after they're rescued he brings the whole tray, whiskey, seltzer bottle, ice, and all, to the inquest.  Prohibition, thou art repealed. Hell, it was probably why they were all on that boat to begin with. The old international waters thing (three miles out?) led to lots and lots of party boats... and bootleggers hiding behind old ghost legends to keep snooping kids away from their stills...

Mischa and Mary (left)

Retromedia's Forgotten Terrors DVD is shit but hey! Hey! It's a genuine effort to pack in some weird old shit you'd never find in a million years on your own, including Tangled Destinies and The 1931 Phantom! They don't look so good but then again, they're at least made available. The fourth title on the single double-sided 4-movie disc is the hardly forgotten Zucco vehicle Dead Men Walk  is avail. elsewhere in better form, hunt down the Roan group disc where its backed with The Monster Maker, which is total shit (so I remember as a bored kid waiting for this damn monster to be made while Luigi sits and listens to about eight fucking operas -or so I remember. I haven't seen it since) but Roan does a swell job, and they're all OOP so snap up!


"Life does continue after death," notes Dr. Carl Houston, the psychologist friend (H.B. Warner) of bereaved heiress Carole Lombard. He wants to experiment on the corpse of soon-to-be-executed murderess/free spirit artist Ruth Rogen (Vivienne Osborne), a kind of prototype for Catherine Trammell or Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander. Her dead brother is used as bait by bogus medium Paul Bavian (Alan Dinehart), an expert at delivering the old glowing death mask /blackmail/lost loved one's voice giving banking instructions via a long horn floating in the air flimflam. His drunken landlady (Beryl Mercer) knows all his tricks but forgot the age old adage for any would-be blackmailer: never threaten to expose a creep right to his face without an exit strategy! But while the seance at Paul's pad seems to go as planned, Lombard stops at Houston's office for a second opinion, right as he's doing life after death electrical experiments on the body of executed murderess and Carole winds up possessed--in one of those 'small world' turns of coincidence--by the very same murderess who swore revenge on Bavian for turning her in.

If the plot sounds familiar, it's because Boris Karloff played versions of the same scenario about a million times all through the late 30s and 40s, indicating America was obsessed with the electric chair and radio, and soul transference (in that order). Sharp eyed fans will note some of the walls from White Zombie reformatted for Paul's seance parlor, with a great touch: the above ground subway runs right past his apartment window, adding just the right amount of tawdriness. The final third of the movie takes place over one long night as the possessed Lombard seduces Paul, ever fighting to refrain from strangling him (for the nonce) while bringing him out on her yacht (easy body disposal) as boyfriend Randolph Scott put-puts to the rescue. Pre-code points for when Paul cups Lombard's breast while they get down to business on the divan, and the general air of sleazy heat between them when they sneak into Ruth Rogen's studio apartment like Marcello and Anouk in the beginning of La Dolce Vita, to fool around in front of her creepy life-size self portrait. I froze the projector and did two paintings off the moment they embrace (acrylic on canvas -2003), to capture a kind of post-modern ghost refraction -ion-ionn.... And Lombard shows her true chops by morphing from killer Rogen and grieving heiress with sensuous conviction.


Minus points for sight of a big dog perennially chained in the psychic's house; I'd have liked to see him getting a nice walk or some affection. Instead the dog conveniently disappears, never to be seen again. I don't have the Universal Vault DVR yet, because I have a pretty solid burn from an old airing, but it's only a matter of time before it too dissolves, warps... wanes.


With its use of Swan Lake over the opening credits (as in Dracula and Murders in the Rue Morgue) you'd think this was going to be a real pre-code Universal horror treat: Lionel Atwill stars as the father of Gloria Stuart, celebrating her birthday in a big cozy castle while the whistling wind howls outside in the night, and three of her suitors are the only other guests (kind of like Lucy Westenra's). The creepiest part is that dad Atwill doesn't mind having these three fools fight over her, sleep over, for who knows how long, etc. as his only houseguests. Instead of ordering them out, Atwill says "Give us all a nice birthday kiss." Yeeesh,

The one with the best chance at Stuart's hand, the clear winner, is an older foreigner, played by Paul Lukas (in one of his flattest performances); the one with no chance at all is abashed adenoidal pup who grew up with her (Onslow Stevens); the middle guy: William Janney, considers himself a mystery writer. He bunks with Lukas, even though there's like 80 rooms in the castle and no one else lives there but servants. What the hell? These strange details are way more fascinating than the titular mystery, which involves each suitor sleeping in the cursed blue room, one by one, to prove their courage. Stevens goes first, and in the morning...

If Stuart and Atwill weren't so imbued with classic horror moxy this would be the smallest, saddest mystery film ever. Characters seem cobbled together to suit the mystery, each utterly void of character details or anything else to talk about beyond the titular secret. There's no other guests, and no other women aside from a maid. Thank heaven Edward Arnold shows up halfway through as the local detective. The ubiquitous Robert Barrat (Babs' pimp dad in Baby Face the same year, extending the pimp dad motif) is the butler who keeps signaling at the window in a red herring bit borrowed wholesale from Hound of the Baskervilles. A

nd if the stakes seem unduly low, like the entire film had no other life in it beyond just telling this dumb 'mystery'- it will still be catnip to fans like me after they've already run the gamut of the other pre-code Universal horror favorites (Frankenstein, Old Dark House, Black Cat, Raven, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dracula, Invisible Man, etc.) and need more, more more! Seems a bit like Laemmle was scraping the script barrel though, and Neumann's direction is slow and pointless - always quick to cut away from any legitimate horror moment. At one point we literally have like a full minute of just Arnold and his cops in a bedroom looking at their watches. It's a remake of a German film, Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers from the year before, so blame the Germans! Soon enough, they'd deserve it. The Universal vault DVR looks great though. So soak up the beautiful black and white photography on a beautiful transfer, then give it to someone you love as a nice birthday kiss-off.