Dead Men Walk (1943)

The Evil Elwyn Clayton is dead, murdered by his twin brother, the good doctor Lloyd Clayton. But evil doesn't stay dead long. Elwyn rises, with help from his faithful servant Zolarr, as a Vampire! Dr. Clayton's niece Gayle, played by the hot Mary Carlisle, is in danger. She is to be married to the wooden Dr. Bently, but o'll dad has plans to make her his vampire servant.

After Dr. Clayton realizes his Evil brother is a vampire, he knows he must find the body during the daytime and burn it. He does everything he can, including searching the entire town for the body. No, wait. Everything EXCEPT actually search for the body. Instead he just rubs his chin. Until the end, that is, when he searches for it AT NIGHT! Way to go, Doctor Action.

This film has a lot going for it. George Zucco as both Claytons, the hot Mary Carlisle in the last movie of her career, and even Dwight Frye (Dracula's Renfield) as Zolarr. Less than seven months after this film came out, Dwight would be dead, another happy customer of the Christian Science Healthcare Plan. One wonders if health concerns explain his muted performance. Fern Emmett, looking like a simple minded and good intentioned Elmira Gulch, was a crazy townswoman who knew Elwyn had risen. Three and a half years later, she too would be dead.

The story was fair, the script ok, the setting good. Why was the movie so ... flat? First might be the quality of this public domain film. The contrast seemed a little weak. A good filmmaker can do wonders with black and white, shadows and highlights. See The Day The Earth Stood Still. This movie didn't have any of that. A black screen is good for dark, brooding dialog, but no good for fight scenes. I also think it could have been edited a little better.

What it was truly missing was a proper score. A good score goes a long way to build suspense and creepiness. The score was a total dud.

I fell asleep during parts of Dead Men Walk, so I watched it again online, skipping the parts I saw. I wanted to like this movie, but I never felt involved with the characters. George Zucco was great, but his vampire fell flat. Put a proper soundtrack on this film and clean it up, and you'd have a real good movie. I wanted to give it a 3, but as it is now, the best I can do is a 2.5.

Watch it here.

The Corpse Vanishes (1942)

Young women are mysteriously dying at their wedding alter. Stranger still, their bodies are stolen before they get to the morgue. The police, brilliant as they always are in old movies, are clueless how to stop it. Fortunately, a society reporter who covered one of the weddings, is on the case.

Cub reporter Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters) finds a strange orchid at the alter and decides to ask the creepy Dr. Lorenz (Bela Lugosi) who lives in a creepy castle miles from town. You can guess the rest.

It's well known that if you extract ... something out of the neck of beautiful young virgins (they were taken before their wedding night, you know ...) and inject it into the neck of your old, vain, and creepy wife, she becomes young and beautiful again. It's a scientific fact. Of course you'll need a steady supply of hot young virgins because it wears off over time.

Bela sleeps in a coffin and has a dwarf and gimp as servants, so they tried to pump up the creepiness. I'll give them some credit, but not too much. So Bela Lugosi draws the life force out of young women like one of those ... what do you call them? I forget. Bela in the role he was born to play, and had to continue playing even after he died.

Not scary, not funny, not thought provoking. Mostly forgettable. AMRU 2.5. See for yourself.

King of the Zombies (1941)

Three people on a plane over the Caribbean are blown off course and land when they hear a radio broadcast. They become the guests of the mysterious Dr. Sangre. The passengers manservant, played by old friend Mantan Moreland, becomes convinced the mansion is crawling with zombies.

Mostly predictable story. Not too funny, not very original, not at all scary, it would seem this film has little going for it. The one thing it does is Mantan. He has quickly become my favorite racial stereotype. Another good point is Marguerite Whitten, who plays a maid who feeds Mantan zombie stories and pie. The whities in the story, mostly forgettable. The poster doesn't show the darker actors, so I have to include a photo of the people that made this thing work.

Here is what sticks in my memory: Dr. Sangre requiring Mantan to sleep in the servants quarters. It seems that the movie makers wanted to take half a stand against racism. A forgettable film if it weren't for the black actors. Shockingly enough, this movie was nominated for an Oscar. So, where do I put it? 2.5? 3? I'm a bona fide fan of Mantan now. AMRU 3.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

Here's a breakdown of the story: upstanding scientist does research on the dark side of man's nature, and creates a potion that transforms him into a bad guy. What happens next? Read the book. Seriously. It isn't that long, and it's good. Look into it.

This silent version stars John Barrymore. His transformation from upright scientist-gentleman to ugly hedonist was remarkable. I wasn't sure it was the same actor. But here's where my biases come into play: I don't like silent films. When I started watching it, I didn't realize it was that old. There is a 1931 version that I understand is very good.

I watched the unimproved public domain version and found it rather tedious. The music track was terrible and never matched the action on screen. I turned the volume down almost all the way. Ten minutes shorter would have been ten minutes better. I don't think a fully restored copy with a new score wouldn't have made the difference for me. I should have skipped this one. AMRU 2.

Still interested? Watch it here.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

What is the best Sci-Fi/Horror hybrid movie ever made during the 1950s and financed by a Baptist Church? If you said Plan 9 from Outer Space, then you probably read the title.

Plan 9 has to be the most famous, obscure, low budget film ever. It is known for it's sloppy editing and lousy acting and has become a cult favorite for those reasons exactly. Allow me to sum up the plot:

Aliens are afraid that Earth will create a Solaranite bomb, which will destroy the sun and all planets that suns rays reach. Their plan (numbered 9, in case you were curious) is to raise the dead to kill off ... all humans? You know, I'm not really sure how that would work. They only raised three bodies. Maybe it was a proof of concept test. An airline pilot, an Air Force colonel, and a detective investigate and eventually find the saucer.

Anyhow, that's it in a nutshell. What worked: The story. It's no worse than many B sci-fi movies of the day. Also, the special effects and makeup. Really, they were on par. You could see the strings on the space ships, but most low grade sci-fi films never even tried to show the ships in motion. And Tor Johnson's makeup was rather scary looking.

What didn't: the script. Writer/Director/Producer Edward Wood had no talent for writing dialog. There are times where the sentences seemed to be out of sequence. The entire conversation simply made no sense. In at least one scene the actors ad libbed because the script was so bad.

The acting. If you go to an amateur community theater and the acting was this bad, you'd be disappointed. Did they even rehearse? Even the "real" actors in the movie seem to have forgotten how to act.

Combine those two fatal flaws with Wood's refusal to reshoot scenes when there was a flaw and his rather poor use of stock footage, and you get Plan 9. I contend that one could recreate an almost scene for scene version of this film, completely rewriting the dialog and upgrading to mediocre actors and you would have a successful movie. Not a great one, but good enough. Oh, yea, and lose the narrator. In fact, two remakes appear to be in development right now. Grave Robbers from Outer Space (the original title) and Plan 9. I am somewhat curious.

All that said, Plan 9 is a very watchable movie. The flubs become Easter Eggs and for some adds to the enjoyment. My version was colorized, which annoyed me initially, but does make it more accessible to the younger ones in the family.

I watched Plan 9 as a boy on late night television. I've seen it lampooned over and over again in works like It Came from Hollywood and the like. Regarding the visual flubs, I remember Wood being quoted as saying that nobody notices those things. Maybe that was in the movie Ed Wood. In fact, he might not have been far off. As a boy I didn't notice them. I remember liking the movie. As an adult, I think I've seen it enough. AMRU 3.

Grand Hotel (1932)

1933's Best Picture about the Grand Hotel in Berlin was very Grand, and very ... hotely. For the first time ever, an ensemble cast of top actors was brought together. 

Greta Garbo, the prima donna actress who was not as good as she thought she was, plays a prima donna ballet dancer who is not as good as she thinks she is. John Barrymore plays a "Barron". I don't want to spoil anything, but since when as a character introduced as a Barron actually BEEN a Barron? Let's pretend, shall we?

John's slightly older brother Lionel plays the aged Otto, an office worker with an unnamed terminal illness (AIDS? Nawww ...) who is blowing his life's savings to enjoy himself, for once. Wallace Beery (Uncle of Noah Beery Jr from Inherit the Wind) plays Otto's boss, The Angry German Giant, who is trying to make a very important business deal. Joan Crawford is his hot young stenographer who spends much of the time scrubbing toilets and screaming about coat hangers.

The Giant wants to plow Joan, who might be willing because she "needs the money". But Joan would rather be plowed by the Barron, who was initially very agreeable. But the Barron instead falls in plow with Garbo, who charmed him with her mediocre looks and bad acting. Garbo falls for the Barron because his mother used to call him "Flix". This made sense in 1932, I'm guessing.

The Barron, who also needs money, finds it easier on his conscience to steal it rather than accept hand outs from Otto and Garbo. Doing the Giant is entirely out of the question. Then we have a climactic scene, comeuppance comes up, situations are mostly resolved, and no one gets plowed. I think. Oh, yea, and there's this morose doctor who bookends the film by saying "People come, people go. Never ever happens." That's called irony, boys and girls.

First let's chat about Joan Crawford. I'm old enough to remember the OLD Joan Crawford from the 1970s. Nasty, ugly, severe. I didn't expect to like her. But the young Crawford was hot and charming on screen. I had never seen Greta Garbo before except in very short clips. Clearly she cut her acting teeth during the silent film days, where over-the-top acting was de regueur. 1932 audiences certainly ate this up, but I found it comical. It is in this film that she recites her signature phrase "I want to be alone".

John Barrymore was a stage actor, so he knew how to talk on stage. He's the grandfather of Drew Barrymore, so forget what I said in "You Can't Take it With You". Lionel seems to play the same character. Old and amicable, even though he was only a couple years older than the dashing Barron.

There's a lot of scuttle about the film. Because Joan and Greta did not get along, they had no scenes together. The director feared they would try to upstage each other. A fearful arms race to be sure. Beery initially rejected the assignment, but was convinced to stay because his character would be the only one with a German accent, even though ALL the characters except Garbo were German. This also stands as the only Best Picture winner that didn't get nominated for any other award.

Grand Hotel is a good film and I'm glad I watched it. I don't see renting it again. AMRU 3.5. Hey, it's October. I'm going to stick to horror for now.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Initially I had little interest in covering movies like this, wanting to focus on movies I HAVEN'T seen, but it was on TBS the other day, and what the hell ...

Just about everyone has seen the Wizard. It has become part of our cultural language. It has been referenced, spoofed, and copied in more places than can be counted. The movie connections link on IMDb goes on and on, and I'm certain I can find references that were missed. But, for the benthic organisms in the audience, allow me to summarize the story.

Hot chick runs away from home and finds a lonely old con man and says she wants to run away with him. He, for reasons that escape me, convinces her to go home. During a tornado, no less. She returns home and cannot find her family. She gets knocked on the head and falls asleep. She wakes in the technicolor land of Oz. Midgets and a drag queen tell her that a lonely old con man might help her get home, so she goes looking for him after stealing the shoes of a woman she killed.

Along the way she meets up with three magical creatures, one that represents a heartless father figure, another a mindless sack of hay, and a third the courage to do the deed. After a pit stop in an opium den and an experience with some "snow", they arrive at the Emerald City to beg free gifts from the wizard. He asks for an old woman's broom in exchange.

Off they go to steal the broom from the sister of the murdered woman. After the hot chick is captured by flying monkeys, the magical creatures go in to save her. During the rescue the hot chick dumps acid on the old woman, killing her. The guards quickly realize that they aren't going to get paid anymore, so they let her plunder the castle.

The con man of Oz tries to renege on his agreement, so the magical creatures rough him up. They get their booty, but before the hot chick gets safe passage back to Kansas (seriously, she wants to go to Kansas), he makes his escape in a hot air balloon. Just then the drag queen from earlier arrives to tell her he's been jerking her around the whole time and she always could have gone home, phych! Meanwhile, the magical creatures take control of Oz and rule it with an iron fist.

I have a few observations from this viewing. While there are many elements that make this movie work, one I don't think gets enough attention is the work of Margaret Hamilton. As Elmira Gulch, she's a nasty bitch. As the Wicked Witch, she deliciously evil. An unattractive woman, even in complementary makeup, Hamilton was captivating in every scene she was in. If there could have been any acting awards (there weren't, let's be serious), it would have been for her. I would totally buy her crappy coffee. I will say, however, that the witch constantly calling Dorothy "pretty" made me uncomfortable.

One more thing. Early in the film, Glinda establishes that only bad witches are ugly. She then proceeds to ask Dorothy if she is a good witch or a bad witch. Hmmmm. Sounds to me like the old lady had an axe to grind.

AFI called it the number one fantasy film. I don't know about that. Premiere Magazine, however, rated it as one of the 20 most overrated films of all time. That may be so, but it's still a good movie. While watching it I wondered if the Wizard of Oz would have been the Wizard of Oz, if it weren't the Wizard of Oz. Something to think about. AMRU 4. You must see it again. You have no choice.