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 Great 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. 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, since it varies so crazily in quality, transfers.

This weird Allied Pictures cheapie is one of those largely forgotten shipwreck flicks so big in the silent and early sound era, providing as they did an excuse for nude bathing, reversion to savagery, (inexpensive) beach location films and ye olde gorilla suit. The castaways always include one rich lady unaccustomed to 'roughing it,' a sea dog who does the roughing, a virgin and a party girl who become buddies (ala Mary Anne and Ginger) and a comic relief drunk. Here there's also stolen diamonds, and a murder aboard ship shortly before she goes down. The killer is.... right in this boat. Mischa Auer saves the day as a Ben Gunn type who's been stranded there so long he's started talking to the skeletons in his hut, but he's not a monster... His gorilla buddy keeps an eye on things, but from a distance, so his howls keep the girls on edge. Just because he's a crazed castaway with a thick beard is no reason to portray him as a monster on the poster! He doesn't even do his gorilla impression like in My Man Godfrey. Just beats up a skeleton when the communication gap proves too much.

Of the cast, Auer is the only familiar face (to me) but that can be a good thing: The good girl, Lila Lee, seemed like the taller, gawkier older sister to Gloria Swanson; Gwen Lee is a Mae West/Pat Kelton-ish gold digger who gets all the best double entendre lines. Monte Blue (who got his start with D.W. Griffith) is the nominal hero; William P. Davidson the numb nuts copper; perennial lush Arthur Housman 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 tell who's who when all the heads are cut off either by inept camera work or frame cropping.

Director Ray does deliver one masterful scene: the morning after the shipwreck, 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.



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. And there's a lurid, sexual almost HBO-level roughie vibe when the killer forces the two girls deeper into the woods at gunpoint, and it's wild man Mischa's gorilla and his skeleton crew to the rescue. Or at least... Mischa stands off to the side, waiting for Ray to give him some direction, 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 by a French steamer; 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 films 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 on disc. (P.S. It's also on on youtube)


"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 tells her "Give us all a nice birthday kiss." Yeeesh, incest she wrote!

The one with the best chance at Stuart's hand, the clear winner alas, an older foreigner played with by Paul Lukas (in one of his flattest performances); the one with no chance at all is the 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 stays 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... he's gone!

If Stuart and Atwill weren't so imbued with classic horror moxy this would be the smallest, saddest mystery film ever. the cast is utterly void of character details or anything else to talk about beyond the titular secret. There's no other guests, and no other women characters aside from a maid. Thank heaven Edward Arnold shows up halfway through as the local detective; he alone seems to have a life beyond this half-baked mystery story. 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.

Despite these quibbles, it will still be catnip to Universal pre-code horror fans like me after they've already re-run the gamut (Frankenstein, Old Dark House, Black Cat, Raven, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dracula, Invisible Man, etc.) and crave more, like a junky. Seems a bit like Laemmle was scraping the old dark 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 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 it up, junky...