Parky at the Pictures (DVD 25/10/2012)

CLASSICS.

When Universal chief Carl Laemmle, Jr. bought the rights to Bram Stoker's Dracula, he hoped the title role would be taken by Lon Chaney, who had almost single-handedly been responsible for establishing the horror genre in American cinema. However, the `Man of a Thousand Faces' succumbed to cancer before he could don the count's cape and Laemmle was reluctantly forced to offer the part to Bela Lugosi, a Hungarian who had headlined a successful Broadway adaptation of the classic Gothic novel by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston.

Director Tod Browning was supposed to be so bereft at the passing of Chaney (who had been a longtime friend) and so dismayed by the calibre of the screenplay that he delegated much of the direction to cinematographer Karl Freund, who had shot such landmark German pictures as Paul Wegener's The Golem (1920), FW Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Thus, he emphasised the chiaroscuro lighting that had been such a key component of the Expressionist style and made the sets designed by Herman Rosse and John Hoffman under the supervision of art director Charles D. Hall all the more memorably atmospheric.

The performance of Lugosi as the killer whose courtesy and refinement make him so fatally effective is complemented by fine turns by Dwight Frye as his demented sidekick Renfield, David Manners as the hapless Jonathan Harker, Helen Chandler as the alluringly innocent Mina and Edward Van Sloan as a Professor Van Helsing who is much more a scientist fascinated by an unnatural condition than a Buffy or, for that matter, Abraham Lincoln-style vampire hunter.

Lugosi was slated to re-team with Frye and Van Sloan on Frankenstein, which had been adapted from director Robert Florey from a play by Peggy Webling that took several liberties with Mary Shelley's source novel. However, Lugosi was unhappy that he would be unrecognisable beneath the now legendary flat head and neck-bolt make-up designed by Jack Pierce. Consequently, he quit the project and was replaced by a mild-mannered Englishman who had changed his name from William Pratt to Boris Karloff. Taller and capable of subtler shades of menace and susceptibility that would make his Creature so definitive, Karloff worked with replacement director James Whale to ensure that the audience empathised with the lumbering innocent fashioned from spare body parts by fiendish scientist Colin Clive, while also still dreading the appalling violence of which he was so unpredictably capable.

The scene in which Karloff tosses young Marilyn Harris into the lake because her beauty matches that of the flowers she had been scattering on the water caused uproar with the BBFC. However, the scene is central to Whale's depiction of a brain-damaged being groping to fathom both its identity and the clash between tradition and progress that had fostered its genesis. The reanimation sequence in a laboratory brilliantly designed by Hall and Rosse owes much to the electrical effects devised by Kenneth Strickfaden, Frank Graves and Raymond Lindsay. But its real power comes from Karloff's rigor mortised stirrings and Clive's triumphant cry of `It's alive!'

Four years later, Whale, Karloff and Clive reunited for Bride of Frankenstein, which follows on directly from the climactic action in the village mill. Despite the hopes of the locals, both Clive and his creation survive the fire and the former not only continues his research into immortality, but he is also coaxed by colleague Ernest Thesiger into producing a mate for the affection-starved Karloff. However, with her inspired lightning bolt beehive hairdo, Elsa Lanchester takes one look at her intended and lets out a piercing scream that sends a distraught Karloff into the forest, where he is befriended by blind, violin-playing hermit OP Heggie, who is simply grateful for a companion to relieve his pitiful isolation.

Naturally, the idyll cannot last and Karloff becomes a fugitive again after an encounter with a pair of hunters. But what is so moving about this fine film (whose emotional timbre is delightfully modulated by Franz Waxman's score) is the fact that the rescue of drowning shepherdess Anne Darling shows that the Creature has learnt his lesson, while his supposedly educated master continues to be driven by ego and ambition in seeking to solve  the mysteries of life.

Whale's fascination with this subject is also in evidence in The Invisible Man (1933), which was adapted from the HG Wells novel by the tantalising trio of RC Sheriff, Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges. Karloff was initially to have taken the title role for director Cyril Gardner, but he took exception to Laemmle's repeated attempts to cut his contractual salary and the part passed to Londoner Claude Rains, who is invariably credited with giving an outstanding performance in his Hollywood debut as a character who is either entirely transparent or swathed in bandages topped off with a trenchcoat and some sunglasses. However, Rains (and his stunt double) were vital to the success of the special effects, as they sported the black velvet suit that enabled by John P. Fulton, John J. Mescall and Frank D. Williams to employ a series of matte and travelling matte shots to create the illusion that props were being manipulated by an unseen presence.

While admiring the visuals, Wells took exception to the notion that the chemicals in the monocaine serum would inexorably drive a scientist insane. But, while this was a wry treatise on `things that man must leave alone', Whale was also keen to explore the human side of horror and placed as much emphasis on Rains's relationships with employer Henry Travers's besotted daughter Gloria Stuart and his envious assistant, William Harrigan. Thus, this is as much a romantic morality tale as a venture into chilling science fiction, although the Universal front office was so delighted with the exploitable technology that had made Arthur Edelson's photography seem to authentic that it released four spin-offs (which are available in a legacy boxed set): The Invisible Man Returns (1940); The Invisible Woman (1940); Invisible Agent (1942); and The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944).

Boris Karloff was reported to have baulked at playing a loquacious character who would scarcely be seen because he was frustrated at being cast as near-silent monsters. However, he evidently found the balance more acceptable in Karl Freund's The Mummy (1932), in which he first appears as the resurrected cadaver of a mummified priest before he assumes the disguise of a suave Egyptian who offers to help British archaeologists Arthur Byton and Edward Van Sloan locate the last resting place of the princess who was once the lover of his ancient alter ego. However Karloff's convoluted scheme to kill lookalike Zita Johann and revive her embalmed corpse is ultimately thwarted by a sudden recollection of her past life that prompts her to utter a prayer to Isis that reduces Karloff to a pile of dust and buys Byron's son (David Manners) the time to restore her to life using sacred Scroll of Thoth.

The name of the parchment rather betrays the fact that John L. Balderston borrowed heavily from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story, `The Ring of Thoth', in transferring a story by Richard Shayer and Nina Wilcox Putnam about 18th-century occultist Count Alessandro di Cagliostro to the Egyptian setting demanded by Carl Laemmle. However, in his former incarnation as a journalist, Balderston had covered the unearthing of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 and he invests the action with a modicum of authenticity that atones for the lacklustre nature of Freund's direction. Karloff revels in the machinations of his creepily solicitous guide, but Jack Pierce's bandage make-up deprived him of the opportunity to impose his personality, unlike the Hungarian Zohann, whose committed turn was rooted in her genuine belief in reincarnation.

By 1941, Karloff was striving to distance himself from the horror genre. However, Jack Pierce was still creating memorable make-up designs, although his work on George Waggner's The Wolf Man was supplemented by ideas from the picture's star, Lon Chaney, Jr., who had clearly inherited something of his father's genius for transformation. Pierce had originally designed a lycanthropic look for Henry Hull in Stuart Walker's Werewolf of London (1935). But this unnerving feature had failed to match the critical and commercial success of the other Universal monster movies and Chaney was able to make the role his own.

Chaney starts off, as he did in so many of his films, as a decent cove who suffers a misfortune that ruins his life. In this instance, he arrives in Wales to reconcile with estranged father Claude Rains and finds romance with antique shop owner Evelyn Ankers. However, when he defends Ankers's friend Fay Helm from an attacking wolf, Chaney is badly bitten and Gypsy fortune teller Maria Ouspenskaya breaks the bad news that he will now share the curse of her son, Bela Lugosi, of turning into a werewolf at each full moon.

Curt Siodmak's screenplay would be the basis of nigh on every lupine shocker for the next half century. But it's Chaney's shifts from genial palooka to ravenous beast that makes the picture as heartbreaking as it is horrifying, although mention should also be made of the sterling contributions of art director Robert Boyle and composers Frank Skinner, Hans J. Salter, and Charles Previn, whose score is ranked among the best by Universal aficionados.

Sadly, in spite of Edward Ward weaving in themes from Tchaikovsky and Chopin, the music was not one of the strong suits of Arthur Lubin's Technicolor take on Gaston Leroux's disconcerting tale of obsessive love, Phantom of the Opera (1943), even though it featured Nelson Eddy in his first assignment since his departure from MGM spelt the end of his fabled partnership with Jeanette MacDonald. Never the most natural of performers, Eddy had always been able to disguise his limitations by basking in the reflective glow of the effervescent MacDonald. But Susanna Foster was every bit as inert as Eddy and, consequently, there is next to no spark in their scenes together as he tries to steal Foster away from both police inspector Edgar Barrier and Claude Rains, as the former violinist besotted with the young soprano, whose efforts to publish a concerto in order to raise the money to pay for her music lessons result in him killing a man and being facially disfigured by acid.

Despite staging the action on replicas of the opera and catacomb sets used by Rupert Julian for the 1925 silent version starring Lon Chaney, Lubin struggles to convey any sense of romance, menace or suspense. Moreover, Rains (who had invited such pity when invisible) fails to elicit the same response behind a mask, while the restrictions imposed by the Production Code prevented Jack Pierce (who was coming towards the end of his illustrious career) from depicting the full hideousness of the scars hidden beneath. Yet this provides an intriguing insight into how Hollywood sought both to represent a city then under Nazi occupation and to treat horror at a time when countless soldiers were returning from combat suffering from horrific burn injuries.

Completing the Universal selection is a much later entry in the canon, Jack Arnold's The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), which is presented in both flat and 3-D formats in the special centenary DVD and Blu-ray editions. It owes its origins to a Mexican myth that producer William Alland heard while dining with Orson Welles and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. But the screenplay wrought by Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross from a story concocted by Maurice Zimm seems more intent on pushing the boundaries of the Production Code than exploring Amazonian legends.

The plot centres on a fossil-hunting expedition led by Antonio Moreno, who enlists the help of ichthyologist Richard Carlson, his researcher girlfriend Julia Adams and natural historians Richard Denning and Whit Bissell to help him find the evidence that will establish a link between the land and marine mammals of the Devonian period. However, on returning to South America, Moreno discovers that his camp has been wiped out by a savage critter that the locals insist is a jaguar. But it soon becomes clear that the perpetrator is an amphibious humanoid that is the last survivor of the species contained in Moreno's rock samples.

By all accounts, the original Gill Man was set to resemble the Academy Award statue until wiser counsel prevailed and make-up maestro Bud Westmore was allowed to design a monster that dripped malevolence (although he was always slow to give credit to his collaborator Millicent Patrick, who was an animator at Disney). With its torso sculpted by Jack Kevan and its head created by Chris Mueller, Jr., the latex suit was worn on land by stuntman Ben Chapman and in the water by champion swimmer Ricou Browning, whose cavortings beneath the white swimsuited Julia Adams as she swam innocently in the lagoon were more blatantly erotic than any previous approximations of the sexual act in Hollywood history.

Hammer entered the horror sphere three years after this picture was released. But once it had retold the Gothic classics that had launched the Universal cycle a quarter of a century earlier, the studio struggled to find topics that appealed to the younger and more liberated 1960s audience that had been reared on the exploitation antics of such showman directors as William Castle, Roger Corman and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Yet, the three titles released on disc this month exert a fascination that extends beyond the diverse subject matter and the polished production values that typified the Hammer product.

Don Sharp's Rasputin the Mad Monk (1965) benefits considerably from the production design of Bernard Robinson and the art direction of Don Mingaye, who ably capture the contrast between the country inn at which Christopher Lee's lascivious Orthodox mystic is first encountered and the court where he senses the opportunity to commit `sins worth forgiving'. Although he is less disturbing than Tom Baker would be in Franklin J. Schaffner's Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Lee still gives a towering performance as he mocks bishop Joss Ackland after curing innkeeper Derek Francis's ailing wife and uses his sheer force of personality to impress St Petersburg doctor Richard Pasco and lady-in-waiting Barbara Shelley, who can secure him access to Tsarina Renée Ascherson.

Loosely basing events on the memoirs of Prince Yusupov, Anthony Hinds's screenplay meanders in places and relies too heavily on scenes of Lee carousing, canoodling and bloodily dispatching his ever-growing number of enemies. Moreover, neither Dinsdale Landen nor Francis Matthews, as Shelley's vengeful brother and his loyal friend, seem sufficiently heroic to see off the raving Lee as he resists poisoned chocolates, beatings and bullets before finally drowning in the River Neva. But Lee makes the most of the hypnotic stare that had been one of Dracula's most lethal weapons, while his booming voice would be enough to bring down a dynasty on its own.

Hinds would do better with his script for John Gilling's The Mummy's Shroud (1966), which opens in Ancient Egypt as a boy pharaoh (Toolsie Persaud) is led into the desert by a loyal retainer (Dickie Owen) after his father is overthrown in a palace coup. However, they fail to survive the ordeal and, in 1920, archaeologist André Morell sets out to find their tomb with the help of businessman John Philips, his wife and son Elizabeth Sellars and David Buck, and linguist Maggie Kimberly. Ignoring the warnings of crypt guardian Roger Delgado, the party finds the remains of the slave and place them in a Cairo museum. However, the enraged Delgado breaks into the exhibition and re-animates the mummy and orders it to kill those who have dared to disturb the sleep of its master.

Having previous plundered the pyramids for Terence Fisher's The Mummy (1959) and Michael Carreras's The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), Hammer seems to have run out original ideas here. Moreover, John Gilling appears to have lost his momentum after producing the minor classics The Reptile and The Plague of the Zombies (both 1966). Thus, what turned out to be his final significant feature before he devoted his time to small-screen series like The Saint and The Champions is something of a disappointment - even more so as this was also the last picture shot at the Bray Studios that had been home throughout Hammer's heyday. Nevertheless, Michael Ripper delivers a typically splendid performance as Philips's put-upon assistant and the scene in which he is hurled out of a window by the mummy (who was played by Peter Cushing's regular stuntman, Eddie Powell) is by far film's highlight.

The pick of this triptych, therefore is Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out (1967), an adaptation by Richard Matheson of a Dennis Wheatley bestseller that ranks among the very best features Hammer ever produced. Moving the action forward four decades from the 1880s, Matheson also strikes a solid balance between complex exposition (as he establishes the beliefs of the demonic cabal) and rousing action, as the heroes attempt to rescue their brainwashed and abducted friends and then seek to protect them from the forces of evil summoned by the cult's fearsome leader.

Casting is key to the success of the picture, as Christopher Lee plays bullishly against type as the ennobled expert in diabolic practice facing off against Charles Gray's ruthlessly charming factotum, while Sarah Lawson and Paul Eddington are splendidly willing as Lee's niece and her twittish husband, whose home affords the setting and whose daughter (Rosalyn Landor) provides the purity that enables them to triumph in a climactic duel with the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.

The one weak link in the chain is Leon Greene (voiced by Patrick Allen) as the toff dolt determined to rescue Nike Arrighi from the satanic coven into which she has been lured by her friend Patrick Mower. But, with the redoubtable Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies adding menace as one of Gray's dark disciples, and Michael Stainer-Hutchins's special effects being as disturbing as Roy Mendes's design for the Goat of Mendes, this is a rattling yarn that catches Lee and Fisher in peak form.

Lee was reunited with long-term nemesis Peter Cushing in Peter Sasdy's Nothing But the Night (1973), which was the only feature made by Lee's Charlemagne production company. Adapted from the John Blackburn novel Children of the Night, it bears a marked similarity to both Bernard McEveety's Brotherhood of Satan (1971) and Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (1973). Yet, while the latter - on which Lee worked as both actor and co-producer - has gone on to become a firm cult favourite (as it were), this unnerving tale of abnegated responsibility has been undeservedly forgotten

The story starts shockingly when Gwyneth Strong alone survives a crash involving a bus carrying children and trustees from an orphanage on the Scottish island of Bala run by the Van Traylen Trust. However, while inspector Christopher Lee investigates the incident, psychiatrist Keith Barron becomes concerned about Strong's reaction to the tragedy and wishes to consult with her mother, Diana Dors. She is a convicted killer and journalist Georgia Brown decides to follow her in the hope of landing a scoop. But when Barron perishes, his boss Peter Cushing joins forces with Lee to determine if there is any truth in the rumour that devil worshippers have taken over the institution and are injecting its charges with their memories so that they can reside in healthy hosts until the promised coming of their master.

With such fine character actors as Kathleen Byron, Fulton McKay and Michael Gambon in the cast, this is certainly never dull. But Brian Hayles's screenplay is scrappy and matters become unnecessarily complicated in the run up to the denouement at Strong's birthday party. The production values are solid, with Kenneth Talbot's photography and Malcolm Williamson's `Ten Green Bottles' inflected score being the standouts. But Sasdy directs with less assurance than he demonstrated on Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Hands of the Ripper (1971) and Countess Dracula (1972).

Another Hammer alumnus was responsible for the screenplay for Richard Marquand's The Legacy (1978). However, this muddled hybrid of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and David Seltzer's The Omen is not one of Jimmy Sangster's better efforts. Clearly the intention was to produce an old dark house picture and spice it up with some gory deaths. But while such stalwarts as cinematographer Alan Hume and editor Anne Coates can be found among the credits, this lurches between plot points that become increasingly implausible before reaching a conclusion that is only notable for its refreshing cynicism.

Arriving in Britain to meet with client John Standing at his country estate, Californian architect Katherine Ross and motorcycling boyfriend Sam Elliott are all ready to head home when they are nearly run off the road by a Rolls-Royce. But, no matter which road they take, they find themselves back with Standing and his testy nurse Margaret Tyzack and there is seemingly no way out once they are joined by war veteran Charles Gray, music executive Roger Daltrey, hotelier Lee Montague, socialite Marianne Broome and modelling agent Hildegard Neil. However, the house guests start to die in grizzly ways after Standing announces that he intends leaving all his worldly goods to Ross, on the proviso that she agrees to signs up to his diabolical pact.

Whether drowning in pools, choking on chicken bones, being impaled on mirror shards or immolated by fire jets, the victims struggle valiantly to enliven this slick, but uninvolving saga. Overplaying as if in a conscious bid to atone for the slipshod scripting, the likes of Gray, Neil and Standing do their best, but Ross and Elliott (who married in 1984) seem utterly bewildered by the proceedings and one has to sympathise with their plight. A touch more bleak humour might have made this a cult hit, but it still retains a certain curio value.

Just as Hammer was heading towards television and a lengthy hiatus, the duo of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz founded Troma Entertainment to continue the tradition of low-budget exploitation fare that had done to much to establish the American indie sector that would eventually have a major impact on the Hollywood studio system. Three of these gleefully subversive B movies have now been released on disc and, while they may not be the company's finest, they give those new to the Tromasphere a pretty good idea of what Kaufman and Herz were all about.

The characteristic vein of mischievous humour was noticeably absent from Buddy Giovinazzo's Combat Shock (1984), which was released by Troma having been forged from old combat footage and new material shot in the rundown Port Richmond district of Staten Island. Relentlessly bleak, this is deeply disturbing study of post-battle stress that also exposes the grinding poverty and social alienation experienced by many in urban ghettos that have been overrun by drugs, violence and despair.

Ricky Giovinazzo is a veteran tormented by nightly flashbacks to a tour of duty in Vietnam that also affected the health of his first child with pregnant wife Veronica Stork. Unable to find work, Giovinazzo endures morale-sapping encounters with social worker Ray Pinero and detached father Leo Lunney before drawing on the sinister skills that served him so well in South-East Asia to intervene in old lady Mary Cristadoro's feud with thug Mitch Maglio and his gang. However, instead of being inspired to clean up the neighbourhood like an avenging vigilante, Giovinazzo returns home to put himself and his family out of their misery in a sequence of unflinching horror that few mainstream directors would even contemplate, let alone attempt.

Often described as a cross between Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977), this may not be the subtlest picture, with the puppet used to depict the deformed baby being particularly grotesque. But Giovinazzo presents a terrifying picture of life on the margins, with his sibling impressing as the increasingly unstable war hero and Michael Tierno and Arthur Saunders contributing disconcerting supports as a junkie and a pimp.

Much closer to the typical Troma product is Class of Nuke `Em High (1986), which was directed by Richard W. Haines and Lloyd Kaufman (using the pseudonym Samuel Weil). Parodying the school movies then being made by John Hughes and the Brat Pack, this veers between the mildly amusing and the wildly unfunny, as it chronicles the impact on some Tromaville teens of the leaves picked from a radioactive marijuana plant growing in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor. However, the hallucinations experienced by James Nugent Vernon and pals Gil Brenton and Janelle Brady are nothing compared to the fallout that follows Brady's discovery she is pregnant and the rapid mutation of the creature she deposits in a toilet bowl, which takes exception to the Cretin gang kidnapping its momma during a savage assault on the school.

The plot is much sillier in Peter George's Surf Nazis Must Die (1987), which takes place after an earthquake brings coastal California to the brink of chaos before a surfer named Adolf (Barry Brenner) proclaims himself the `Führer of the New Beach' and begins rumbling with rival gangs to take control of the locale. However, African-American jogger Robert Harden is killed by the dictator's cohorts and his feisty mother, Gail Neely, discharges herself from her nursing home, tools herself up and comes looking for revenge. With Dawn Wildsmith as Eva and Michael Sonye as Mengele providing droll support to the ranting Brenner, this might have been kitschily amusing. But Jon Ayre's screenplay lacks the courage of its convictions and the lapses in taste are no more egregious than the sight of surfers extending their arms in Nazi salutes as they ride along the waves.

The fifth and final collection in the BFI's Ghost Stories series contains two more recent BBC interpretations of works by the master of the genre, MR James. Adapted by Peter Harness and directed by Luke Watson, A View From a Hill (2005) sees antiquarian Mark Letheren lured into the spectral world of a monastery dissolved by Henry VIII after he is loaned a pair of binoculars made from the bones of those hanged on nearby Gallows Hill. While this makes eerie use of the countryside, writer Justin Hopper and director Pier Wilkie's adroitly disconcerting take on Number 13 confines the critical action to a hotel in a sleepy cathedral town (the film was actually shot in Winchester). Academic Greg Wise demands seclusion in order to study papers that seem to date back to the Reformation. But, even though he has been assured that there is no room between Numbers 12 and 14, he finds a door upon investigating noises in the night and soon comes to rue his decision to venture through it.