Old Dark Capsules: THE GORILLA, WHITE COCKATOO, WHILE THE PATIENT SLEPT, BULLDOG JACK, SHADOW OF DOUBT

Maybe it's an age thing (I've never been this old before, I don't recommend it) but as I careen inexorably towards my half-century mile post I'm blessed with a progressively terrible memory, a cold disinterest in romance, and hence a love of old black and white mysteries. I can watch them over and over as I forget 'who done it' almost before the credits even roll, allowing for cycling through my entire collection every year or so. I love mysteries because they offer heroes who are always a few steps ahead of me rather than three behind, which I find nerve-wracking and annoying. Charlie Chan sees right through every ruse, so I can relax my angst when he's on the scene. Invariably, my binge starts with either The Black Camel or Charlie Chan in Egypt, two beautiful early 30s pics free of #1 or #2 sons, and laden with great art deco design and--in Egypt's case--my dream doorway divide (if I can ever afford an interior designer, this is the room entrance I want, left)

First up on this list three films 1935 I got over Xmas on DVD-Rs from the WB Archive. The first year when the code was all the way slammed down on freedom of expression in Hollywood, Warner Bros, whose name was as synonymous with the suddenly verboten tough talking gangster pictures and vivid social criticism turned. Smartly, they turned to mysteries, a relatively chaste reconfiguration of hands coming out of walls, trapdoors, tossed knives, secret panels, wise guy reporters, murky red herring line-ups, windswept dark mansions, dimwit cops, and bits of string, stray buttons, and tossed knives. As long as the killer was punished or caught at the end, censors said go for it. A built-in audience of mystery buffs was well versed, and the popularity of novels at the dimestore and via mystery sections and some tie-in seen in credits called 'The Clue Club.' What I like about them I think is that they open--usually--with a very dislikable person getting murdered. We seem them being mean to as many people as possible so when they die we feel nor remorse or anger and the suspects are legion. Their death allows the young lovers to finally marry, the one decent girl in the family to inherit the millions, and the butler to be free of his master's indifference. And since there's absolutely no bearing to my own life, I don't feel disagreeable angst or collective guilt, or trauma (as I might watching something like ripped from today's headlines like Law and Order). When you're as sensitive as an Usher, it helps your nerves to see the bad guys die in the library with the candlestick, and to not know who dunnit, and to forget as soon as the credits roll... forget...

A kind of silver and velvet (and lovely lighting) post-code preparation for film noir; its eye on procedural aspects and weird floating acting style; actors hesitantly remembering their lines through thick hungover atmosphere, making sure they're heard with the early sound equipment (was the director German? Sound equipment was fine by 1935 so why the 1929 enunciation?)

Once again the weird Ricardo Cortez seems strangely artificial, his silken voice seeming insincere and sincere at the same time, making him perfect as the enigmatic alleged good guy. When he jokes about having killed his sleazy rival Haworth it registers as very bad taste and unfunny. Are we supposed to think he's demonstrating elan and laugh or get a skeeve in our blood? Does acting a little guilty make him not guilty? That's a tricky line to walk, you silken vaguely skeezy fellow! Cortez doesn't always pass the drunk test, in that respect. Luckily, his weird relationship with his rich dowager aunt (Constance Collier - whom I've always found strangely sexy), a recluse who built a theater in her attic, seems hinged in this moral twilight, does she approve of him or not? He revels in her dubious affection, and it's a great rapport, a clear love between them that expresses itself through constant jabs and parries.

By contrast, the reasoning behind Virginia Bruce's grouchy impulsive decision to marry the sleazy abusive alcoholic filthy rich Haworth (Bradley Page), a kind JJ Huensecker meets Stage Door Adolphe Menjou type, is poorly etched out. Is she just hungover and vindictive, latching onto a guy with a terrible rep for beating up women, a creepy almost Bataille(1) kind of masochism? Or is just to really stick the knife in Cortez and twist it, making Cortez the masochist? Sorry, no, this ain't Von Sternberg and Dietrich. It seems folded in just to make a larger roster of suspects when Howarth is bumped off.

Regis Toomey is on hand as the PR guy who fills in the missing story threads, and the array of involvement in the shadiness with which the butlers of both Howarth and the rich dowager aunt conceal long histories before the code witnessing strange things and keeping mum. Collier is great, acting as a kind of de facto Miss Marple, though as soon as she believes Bruces' sobbing she's all up on her side, even to the extent of hiding the murder gun from the cops (in a great twist she even tells him she has the gun in the plate she hands him under a wet towel while the boys search the apartment).

Once the murder happens the pool of suspects starts immediately shrinking and for most of us the killer will be recognized almost immediately, but hey, it's the mood that counts, and if the film can offer moments we haven't seen before along the way and avoid the bad things, like the tedious inclusion in the post-code era of the fiancee who's a drag and wants our hero to settle down to the picket fence and stop mystery solving, like that's somehow what we want to see, we who love Nora Charles like a holy relic..  Seitz makes sure the velvet ripples and purrs and the burdensome whiny fiancee never obscurants.

Based on a novel by mystery writin' dame Mignon G. Eberhart, this plays like a chapter serial mystery story, or even Tarantino's recent Hateful Eight, set at a windy hotel along the French coast, full of weird statues and secrets (and titular cock), and no one is who they claim to be, and everyone scheming to some nefarious inheritance fraud. Meanwhile the white cockatoo mascot of the hotel squawks, the French police come and arrest the wrong person on occasion, and the ever ambiguous Ricardo Cortez and the always lovely gamin Jean Muir alternately fall in love, suspect each other of murder, and withhold truths that could end the film post haste. A bit like a 1930s predecessor to Donen's Charade, millions are at stake, and no one is who they seem to be.


Despite the great gloomy windswept atmosphere I'm actually not a big fan of this one, due to my intense dislike of curly haired men with loud accents, and when it comes to mysteries I'd rather have a hero who can actually think one step ahead of me, rather than lag reels behind while heroines are endangered by networks of Wilkie Collins-esque villainy, only to turn on their rescuer so no one finds out there was a man in their room, not that they'd care in France, you American stupid person! But Muir is always a feast for the eyes and there's Warner Brothers stock regular Ruth Donnelly as --what else?-- a persnickety tourist. So as long as you don't-a mind curly oily haired hoteliers and thick-headed imbeciles posing as cops, lawyers, and millionaires... ah, screw it.


It's a dark and stormy night and a flock of greedy sinister spoiled relatives are clustering around ill banker at his gloomy mansion, waiting to get their chance to talk to him and prove they're worthy of --presumably--inheritance consideration. Then he gets a telegram from his son--or one of them--and has a stroke while clutching a figure of an elephant! Mystery! Aline MacMahon looking dowdy as hell (was she possibly pregnant, or padded?) is the sent-for night nurse. That night there's a shot in the dark. Bang Bang! The elephant is dropped by the side of a dead man! Wasn't there a movie like this called... Miss Pinkerton? Perhaps, and it was probably better. But this ain't bad, sweetheart. Even if it ain't no Night Nurse. 

So now you know the pros: atmosphere and McMahon. The drawbacks hinge on the overbearing broadness of the cops, especially the obnoxious incompetence from Kibbee's debuty, the ever-present Warner stock dingus Allen Jenkins, who accuses everyone of lying and shouts in a lot of faces, making the Ritz Brothers seem a model of restraint. I always wonder about actors who shout every line they speak. Are they drunk and forgot they're in a movie and not a play? It's very disconcerting,  for example, when Chan's #2 son shouts confidential information at his dad from one foot away, loud enough for even the neighbors to hear. I usually like Jenkins and Guy Kibbee (he's the chief), but they seem to think the key to solving the crime is to force everyone to remain in the house and then lope around in the direction of screams and thumps allowing for evidence to be stolen, butlers to be murdered and nurses to be locked in secret passage attics, and then for the killer to have plenty of room to scram back into the general population. While Jenkins shouts at a bookcase and tries to handcuff a coatrack. He's just that dumb. Meanwhile the nurse is told to hold onto all the accumulated evidence like she's the only one with a purse sneaking snacks into the movies. That ceramic elephant is on her hands a dozen times, allowing for c-c-c-creepy scenes of hands reaching out from between curtains, which she conveniently stands in front of, looking all around but behind her as she backs up to where the killer hides behind curtains. Like I said above, I like there to be at least one non-idiot around in a mystery. No such luck here, alas.


The DV-R looks great, for fans of these things won't mind the constant film pocks and damage (no visible splices) in favor or a clean image that brings out the old dark house atmosphere to a T. Though I don't like they keep a dog chained up in front of the house in the pouring rain, the poor thing, reminding us too much maybe of those anguished ASPCA commercials. Other problems are the plethora of suspects all trundled around with clues which we presume (this being an entry in Warner's "Clue Club" mystery series, whatever that means) we're supposed to be keeping straight in our head. None of that really matters as the suspects flow past in an endless wave of evidence planting, red herring reversal, and petty squabbling amongst the usual Vitaphone suspects: Lyle Talbot, Robert Barrat, Patricia Ellis (as the one good girl), Brandon Hurst as a butler with a rap sheet, and so forth. The good-natured that razzing nurse Aline lobs constantly at Kibbee is pretty cute and they make a potentially great little crime team. All in all it's no classic and as a mystery falls apart under close scrutiny (it's based on another Mignon Eberhart novel, and perhaps they try to cram too many novelistic details into the fairly short running time), but in general it's atmospheric, wry, and innocuous enough I can see folding it into my old dark house / mystery phase repertoire. If you're the weird type like me who considers the 1930s craze for rattling of sheet metal thunder, and old dark staircase, secret panels, shady lawyers and master sleuths etc. a solace, a retreat from the overwhelming mendacity of our age, then fold it in, brother, sister, alien, fold it. Just don't fold it too often, or while hungover.

Patsy Kelly overdoing it as a scared maid, howling out plaintively towards the cheap seats, the three triplet Ritz Brothers oscillating panic like a wave, these are pretty big minuses to any film, in my book (and my old dark house films are literally in a big book). But Bela Lugosi as an "armed" servant; Lionel Atwill as the industrialist threatened with murder at midnight; the ever-gamin Anita Louise as the endangered heiress; dark shadowy lighting, constant thunder, the creeping hairy arm of an escaped gorilla and/or disguised killer --all compensate amply. The Ritzes are so stupid they could be looking at a quarter on the floor then blink and wonder where it went, even though it's still th-th-there.

If you could clip 75% of their shenanigans and 80% of Patsy Kelly's broad shrill business, there might be a damn good old dark house mystery rolling merrily along between the Cat and the Canary pinball bumpers. Joseph Callea shows up midway, ducking in and out of secret passages and occasionally punching out a Ritz (and there was much rejoicing). Lugosi, in the midst of a red herring butler/handyman phase in his career, glowers from the sidelines, calmly offering poison tea to the the comic relief (they don't drink it, alas). It could be just one of his many wasted appearances (ala Night Monster or The 1941 Black Cat, or One Body too Many) but he really stretches out and enjoy himself this time. He gets to scare Jean with his coat ala weird foreshadowing to his coat strangling habit in 1941's Invisible Ghost, and the camera leans back to linger mightily whenever he's around, so dig the works: Bela, Callea and Atwill, a sufficient triad to counter the obnoxious blue collar moron-4-the-kiddies nyuks of the Ritzes, and Anita Louise is cute, so what the hell, go for it, sez I. And try to get the OOP Roan disc for the best quality, though it's PD so no doubt everywhere.

The typical Bulldog Drummond movie is rather incessantly British, not to mention bloodless (the reverse of ours, their censors don't mind blasphemy and saucy bits, but they faint at the sight of blood) and reminder that when the Brits try to do farce it comes off rather heavy-handed, they have their whole own bag of tittering Hugh Herberts, Andy Devines, Stu Erwins, Eddie Brakens, Jackie Oakies and Patsy Kellys. But Jack stars an exception to the usual tired formula, as the massively chinned British fellow Jack Hulburt takes over a case from a wounded Drummond, posing as him to get the story of an endangered lovely (Fay Wray) and her kidnapped father. I like this one way better than the usual Drumonds, a few with John Barrymore aside, which are marred by an annoying fiancee always at him to stop running around saving England instead of gazing tepidly into her limpid pools. What's up with fiancees in mystery series who want their man to settle down? Is it the censor or the producer who think we go to these films to watch a man stop all his adventure and go into the tea business with Uncle John or whatever the pouncey-flouncey colonel's daughter expects in Gunga Din? At any rate, Fay Wray is light years away from that trite nonsense.

The moody, highly atmospheric cinematography and robust performances make this an edge-of-your seater all the way: Ralph Richardson has a field day as the florid villain, and there are a load of trap doors and secret panels and it all ends with a thrilling chase up and down a closed station in the London underground that opens up into a dark elaborately statue and relic-filled British Museum (top), allowing for much sneaking and relic smashing, and there's a cool giant multi-armed Indian statuary to climb on and sneak behind (top). The Netflix streaming print I saw was smashing and the comedy and suspense are expertly blended to the point I felt high afterwards. And hey, it's streaming on Amazon Prime. Man, are you lucky.

NOTES:
"What does physical eroticism signify if not a violation of the very being of its practitioners? — a violation bordering on death, bordering on murder?" - Batailles, Eroticism