THE CORPSE VANISHES & BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT

The horror films produced by Monogram in the 1940s lie somewhere between the lurid horror pulps of the 1930s and those ghastly black and white horror magazines from the late '60s and early '70s, the ones published by Myron Fass and Stanley Harris, the really cheap ones that consisted of public domain reprints with a mix of new, substandard art. Yeah, those, the ones I never bought, opting instead to purchase the far superior product published by James Warren (CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA). But I digress.

Monogram, an outfit which honestly earned the sobriquet of a poverty row studio, produced a slew of extremely low budget cheapies in a variety of film genres. The Monogram pictures that I've seen have all been marked by dark, murky cinematography, wretched library music (which in no way matches the onscreen action), flimsy sets, acting on the level of a UIL one act play competition and narratives that are about as solid as a loaf of bread. I dearly love the Universal horror films and I recently watched a couple of  the Mummy films from the 1940s (with Lon Chaney Jr. as Kharis) and as cheap as those films are, they look like something produced at MGM in comparision to your average Monogram programmer.

I know there are legions of "monster kids" who share my love and devotion to all things Universal but come on, are there any fans out there who feel the same way about the Monogram horrors? If so, I'd love for someone to comment on this post and make the case for these films. 

I watched a couple of Monogram chillers the other day, BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT and THE CORPSE VANISHES. Both of them were made in 1942 and both star horror icon Bela Lugosi. I love Lugosi and he's always fun to watch but it's sad to see him working for relative pennies in third rate productions shot in a manner of days (hell, hours!). He needed the work and the powers that be at Monogram (including legendary cheapskate producer Sam Katzman), were canny enough to know that Lugosi's name on the marquee was all that was needed to sell tickets and turn a profit on these bargain basement thrillers.

In BOWERY, Lugosi runs a soup kitchen for the down and outers. He's assisted by a pretty young nurse who provides minimum health care to the men of the Bowery. The soup kitchen is really a front for Lugosi's crime ring. He recruits derelicts to aid in his jewel thefts and then kills the poor unfortunates when the jobs are done. Lugosi is also assisted by a mad doctor of an assistant who keeps the corpses of the dead bums in marked graves in a basement (how convenient!) where he also experiments on resurrecting the dead. Lugosi has a day job teaching at a university(!) and one of his students just happens to be the fiance of Lugosi's nurse. The young student (who looks far too hold to be a college student), decides to write his paper on the poor and visits the soup kitchen for material. Meanwhile, Tom Neal (wearing the same outfit he later sported in DETOUR (1945)) shows up at the kitchen. He's a tough gangster who kills anyone who gets in his way.

That's a lot of plot elements to cram into an hour's worth of film but it gets better. The narrative in the last reel is nearly incoherent as the boyfriend appears to be killed by Neal, Lugosi is thrown to the now reanimated, zombie like bums who were shown dead and buried earlier and the film ends with the student alive and well and now married to the pretty young nurse. I suspect the production code demanded that the film have a happy ending rather than stopping with Lugosi being killed by his victims. It's abrupt and confusing and even rewinding and watching it over failed to make it any more understandable. 

THE CORPSE VANISHES is marginally better than BOWERY. Lugosi again stars, this time as a mad scientist who causes young brides to go into suspended animation at the altar (thanks to a special breed of orchid). Everyone believes the young women to be dead but they're only in deep comas. Lugosi steals their "corpses" and extracts serum from their glands which he injects into his 80 year old crone of a wife to restore her lost youth and beauty. Of course, the change is only temporary so Lugosi must have a constant supply of fresh brides. 

He's aided in his evil pursuits by both a hunchback and a dwarf (!) and a bitter old woman (the hunchback's mother). The laboratory set has a back wall of painted stone blocks and Lugosi forgoes any proper medical procedures when administering his life sustaining injections. A plucky young reporter ala Lois Lane and a local doctor become suspicious of Lugosi's shenanigans and investigate. All of the evil doers are killed in the end and the brides are restored. 

If you're a die hard horror movie fan or Lugosi aficionado you might want to give these films a look. If not, move along, there's nothing to see here.  

Thumbs down. 

HORROR HOTEL

The 1960 British horror film THE CITY OF THE DEAD was released in the United States under the rather generic title HORROR HOTEL (the film was also cover featured under that name in FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #40, which is where I first learned about it). THE CITY OF THE DEAD is a far better, more evocative title although if truth be told, the city in which much of the narrative takes place, an ancient town named Whitewood, Massachusetts, hardly qualifies for the misnomer "city". But I'm sure the producers realized that WIDE SPOT IN THE ROAD OF THE DEAD or FLY SPECK OF A TOWN OF THE DEAD, just didn't have the right rings to them and opted for CITY OF THE DEAD.

Speaking of the producers, two of the gentleman that put this film together, Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky (who also contributed the story upon which the screenplay by George Baxt was based), would later form Amicus Productions, a British film studio that specialized in horror films, ala the studio's "older brother" Hammer. Amicus gained fame for producing several portmanteau/anthology horror films along with other productions.

CITY OF THE DEAD focuses on Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), a graduate student doing research into witchcraft in old New England. Her professor, Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee), directs her to Whitewood with very specific directions about where to stay and whom to talk to. Whitewood, as shown in the opening sequence of the film, was the setting for witch trials in 1692 in which a witch, Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel) was burned at the stake. Whitewood is a fabulously creepy place, constantly covered in thick ground fog day and night (and it always seems to be night), sparsely populated and sporting a cemetery in the center of town. As Nan begins her research, she's quickly drawn into the clutches of a modern day coven of witches who need a fresh, young sacrifice as part of their evil rituals.

After Nan disappears, her brother, Richard (Dennis Lotis) and her boyfriend, Bill (Tom Naylor), journey to Whitewood to begin a search. Bill is injured in an automobile accident while Richard finds a willing helper in the form of Patricia (Betta St. John), who owns a local bookshop and whose father is a blind priest.

Of course Pat is targeted to be the next sacrifice and it's up to Richard and Bill (who makes a last second appearance) to defeat the witches by using "the shadow of the cross."

It's hard to watch CITY OF THE DEAD without seeing parallels to Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (released that same year). Both feature a lovely young blond woman taking refuge in a out-of-the-way hotel only to be summarily dispatched at the 45 minute mark of the film. And both films have relatives of the dead woman coming to investigate the disappearance, with both parties encountering some rather outre goings on.

Produced on a very small budget, CITY OF THE DEAD rises above financial limitations to deliver a solid chiller. The presence of Christopher Lee is a plus, as always, but it's the stark black and white cinematography by Desmond Dickinson and creative set design and art direction that really give this film a punch. The entire film is shot on sound stages but rather than exposing the cheapness of the village sets, the indoor setting creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic doom.

Whatever title you find it under, HORROR HOTEL or THE CITY OF THE DEAD, this one is a first rate little horror film.

Highly recommended.

IN THE MIDST OF DEATH

I tore through IN THE MIDST OF DEATH (1976) in a matter of hours. It's the third novel in Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series. I've read several other Scudder novels and I've enjoyed each and every one of them but I have not read them in order of publication so I found Scudder's situation in this novel a bit jarring at first.

In later books, Scudder is a recovering alcoholic, constantly dealing with his own personal demons and the oh-so tempting promise of release and escape found in a bottle of booze. But in MIDST, Scudder is just beginning his long, slow slide into alcoholic oblivion. He drinks. A lot. But he's still capable of solving a well plotted murder mystery.

A high-priced call girl (with equally high priced clients) is murdered. Her body is found in the apartment of an NYPD detective, a cop with dreams of being the next Frank Serpico by exposing the corruption within the department. He's innocent, of course, but he turns to ex-cop Scudder to find the real killer and escape the frame-up.

Scudder does so but not before a couple of other people are killed. Along the way, Scudder beds the wife of his client, not always the smartest move in the old private detective playbook.

The mystery here is a good one and you get a chance to see Block setting up this durable character for his ultimate fall and later redemption. A good, solid "quick and dirty" mystery novel in an outstanding series that is best read in the order in which the books were  originally published.

Oh, and pay no attention to the cover art of the Avon paperback edition pictured above. It's designed purely to sell the book (and it does an admirable job of doing so), but no such scene occurs in the book.

Recommended.

THE DEVIL'S BRIDE

I've seen a lot of Hammer horror films in my 62 years. Also Hammer science fiction, film noir and adventure films. But the little British studio produced a vast number of films during the 1950s, '60s and '70s and I must confess, that although I've seen many of them (some several times over), there are still Hammer films out there that I have yet to see.

Case in point the two films I watched this week. The first, SCREAM OF FEAR is a black-and-white psychological thriller from 1961 that I watched the other day with my buddy Kelly Greene. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of viewing for the first time THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968) (released in the U.S. as THE DEVIL'S BRIDE).

This film, my dear readers, ranks as one of the greatest Hammer horror films ever made. It's an insanely ambitious undertaking, on a par with the same year's production of FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH. This is a literate, straight-faced thinking person's horror film that never panders or condescends to the audience. Everything is played straight and seriously and the final product ranks as an undisputed masterpiece.

Part of the success of DEVIL'S is due to the talent behind the camera. Genre veteran and Hammer workhorse Terence Fisher directed many of Hammer's best films and DEVIL'S BRIDE is surely among his very best work. That's in large part due to the first rate screenplay by horror maestro Richard Matheson. The script is based on the book, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT by Dennis Wheatley. I've not read the book so I can't compare Matheson's screenplay to the source material but taken solely as an exercise in cinematic horror, Matheson's screenplay is first rate.

The film is commanded by the regal, magisterial presence of Christopher Lee, who, for a change, plays a good guy. He's Nicholas Duc de Richleau and he's the only thing that stands between a mad cult of Satan worshippers (led by a suavely sinister Charles Gray) and the demonic possession of two innocents, Tanith (Nike Arrighi) and Simon (Patrick Mower). de Richleau is aided by his friend, Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene), who is skeptical at first but soon comes to believe the powers in play (along with falling in love with Tanith).

There are several remarkable set-pieces in the film that produce genuine shocks and jolts. The climax involves a literal rending of space and time before everything comes to an end.

Both Christopher Lee and Charles Gray would later play James Bond villains. Gray starred as Blofeld in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER while Lee played Scaramanga in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974). An odd thought I had while watching DEVIL'S BRIDE. If someone had wanted to make a film based on Marvel Comics' character, Doctor Strange, the sorcerer supreme, in 1968, Christopher Lee would have been a great choice.

Alas that project must forever remain in the realm of unwrought things. In the meantime I encourage you to relish the brilliance of THE DEVIL'S BRIDE. This one is truly a masterpiece.

Highest Recommendation.

MJ-12 INCEPTION

The set-up is simple but ingenious. Imagine the X-Men being formed by the U.S. Government during the Cold War as a special ops team, ala MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. That's the premise of MJ-12 INCEPTION (2017), the first novel in a new series by Michael J. Martinez.

I just finished reading this one this morning and it's a corker. It's the first book by Martinez that I've read but rest assured, it won't be the last. Martinez does a first rate job here creating an interesting team of "Variants", meta-humans who have gained their special powers, or "enhancements" due to two related but unexplained phenomena that appeared at the end of WWII. The "anomalies" as they're called, appeared in the ruins of Hiroshima and in the basement of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. They appear to be portals to another dimension as well as conduits for controlled blasts of energy that grant the target human a specific super power.

The U.S. agents include a man who can absorb the entire knowledge of a person moments before their death and consequently has multiple voices in his head at all times. Another man can transmute matter, while a third has the ability to steal life energy from living subjects (humans and animals). The fourth member of the team, a woman, is perhaps the most powerful of the Variants as she can manipulate people's emotions. They're gathered and trained by a fifth Variant, a young Naval officer who has the power to detect Variants. And, of course, the Russians have a team of their own, each with his or her own unique powers.

Most of MJ-12 INCEPTION is set up for the series that follows. And that's okay because Martinez has done his homework exceedingly well, mixing real life people (President Truman, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal among others), real places (Area 51) and a well grounded history of the early days of the Cold War. The Variants do eventually get to undertake a couple of missions designed to extract a Soviet scientist who has knowledge of the Russian Variants and what they're up to. Of course, things go wrong on the mission, leaving one U.S.Variant dead and bigger threats hinted at. INCEPTION ends on a cliff-hanger which makes the next book in the series, MJ-12 SHADOWS a must read.

A canny blend of super-heroes and super-spies, MJ-12 INCEPTION is a winner.

Highly recommended.

AND JUST IN CASE...

Ms. Carter, if you're reading this.....

ILLEGAL

I watched ILLEGAL (1955) for the first time yesterday with my buddy Kelly Greene. It's a minor film noir that features a terrific cast and narrative full of twists and turns.

Edward G. Robinson stars as Victor Scott, a district attorney with both a sterling record of convictions and political aspirations. Scott hopes to run for governor one day but when he sends an innocent man (DeForest Kelley in a small part), to the electric chair, his career and standing crumble. He turns to the bottle for solace and decides to give up the DA's office and return to practicing civil law. The new district attorney, Ralph Ford (Edward Platt), is a tough, by-the-book prosecutor who has husband and wife Ray Borden (Hugh Marlowe) and Ellen Miles (Nina Foch) on his team. Both Ray and Ellen worked for Scott.

Scott quickly returns to criminal law and demonstrates an ability to get any and all clients off. When he defends a young embezzler with mob connections, Scott is suddenly thrust into the operations of crime boss Frank Garland (Albert Dekker), who wants Scott to work for him as his "fixer". Scott refuses to do so. But there's a rat in the D.A.'s office in the form of Borden who is secretly working for Garland. When Ellen finds out about her husband, Borden tries to kill her. She shoots him in self defense and guess who gets to represent her in court?

Things come to an exciting climax in the third act with a gun battle, car chase and a dramatic courtroom testimony that seals the fate of the mobsters.

With a screenplay by genre veteran W.R. Burnett (along with James R. Webb) and confident direction by Lewis Allen, ILLEGAL is a good little crime drama that takes a while to get going. It's Robinson's film from beginning to end in a role that allows him to play both tough and tender. He's a treat to watch as is the stellar supporting cast.

ILLEGAL is not a major film noir but it's definitely one worth seeing. Thumbs up.

NOSFERATU

Years ago, back in the '70s, when I was in high school and college, PBS would occasionally run silent movies as part of their programming. Understand, these were not the best quality prints but they were the best (and in some cases) only prints that existed of certain films at the time. This was long before the days of full digital restoration, complete title cards, full orchestral (original or newly composed) accompaniment, etc. In short, it wasn't the best way to see some of these films but at the time it was, for some of us, the only way to see some of the silent classics.

Among the films I saw under these circumstances were Fritz Lang's immortal masterpiece METROPOLIS (1926) (in a vastly truncated form) and F. W. Murnau's groundbreaking Gothic horror film NOSFERATU (1922). Even as bastardized as these films were, they were still powerful viewing experiences at the time.

It would be years later that I would finally have the chance to see these films (and other silents), the way they were originally meant to be seen. I've since seen the fully restored versions of METROPOLIS (and what an awesome spectacle it is!) and NOSFERATU. My buddy Kelly Greene and I had the opportunity to see NOSFERATU on the big screen at the Paramount Theatre several years back. I watched it again last night and it has lost none of its' shocking power as a major and important landmark in the development of the horror film.

Based on Bram Stoker's novel DRACULA, NOSFERATU is an adapted version of the classic tale of Count Dracula (here, Count Orlock), who travels from his home in Transylvania to a small German village, bringing his blood sucking ways with him along with pestilence and plague. Orlock, played by Max Schreck, is a rat faced monster, vermin in human form, totally and completely alien. It's one of the great cinematic depictions of a vampire in film history. There's not a whiff of Bela Lugosi's urbane, continental manners and brooding sensuality. Orlock is no gentleman. He's an unholy fiend that lives to kill. 

Even if the story is familiar, Murnau does a terrific job of orchestrating the action, bringing everything to a feverish conclusion where a beautiful young woman Ellen Hutter (Greta Schroeder), literally sacrifices herself to the vampire in order to save the town. Note: there's a technical goof here as Orlock's reflection is seen in a mirror. According to vampiric lore, the undead do not cast reflections.

However, Orlock is no shape-shifter. He never takes the form of a bat and it's not clear if he is indeed the werewolf (actually a hyena), seen in one shot. Nevertheless, he is truly one of the great monsters of the cinema.

NOSFERATU is a magnificent film, one that absolutely must be seen by horror movie fans and this restored version (with overture, new title cards, full orchestral score, tinted scenes and several Acts) is the one to see.

I've seen hundreds of horror films over the years but this one still has the power to genuinely creep me out. It's that great.

Highest recommendation.

YOU NEVER KNOW

I never know who might be reading this blog.

For instance, the other day I posted a review of DEATH PULLS A DOUBLE CROSS by Lawrence Block. The next day, I notice that there's a comment on my review.

 From Lawrence Block.

So, just in case Ann-Margret is reading this......

DEATH PULLS A DOUBLECROSS

In my estimation, Lawrence Block is simpy incapable of writing a bad book. I've read many of his novels over the last several years and each one was a winner. And the amazing thing is that he started out as a very good writer and has only become better over time to the point where he now ranks as a true master of the mystery/crime genre. 

Case in point, DEATH PULLS A DOUBLE CROSS, a 1961 paperback original published by Fawcett Gold Medal. The cover photograph evokes a strong detective magazine vibe and what's behind the cover is a first rate mystery novel starring New York City private eye Ed London who has a soft spot for pipes (the tobacco kind), cognac and beautiful women.

London is called to the aid of his brother-in-law when the man's mistress is found murdered in her apartment. She's been shot in the head and is found wearing only a garter belt and stockings. The brother-in-law is innocent but can't afford to be connected to the dead woman so London agrees to remove the corpse and dump her in Central Park to take the heat off.  Before long, London is up to his neck in a twisty case that involves a missing briefcase, a fortune in jewels, an ex-Nazi, a mob boss and his gorillas and other assorted dangers.

London handles everything with aplomb and hardly breaks a sweat while solving the case. DEATH PULLS A DOUBLECROSS is a fast paced, tightly plotted, "quick and dirty" crime novel, the kind I love. It shows Block in solid form early in his career and provides a couple of hours of great escapist entertainment.

Thumbs up.