The Son of Dr. Jekyll.

Review #2602: The Son of Dr. Jekyll.

Cast: 

Louis Hayward (Edward Jekyll / Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde), Jody Lawrance (Lynn Utterson), Alexander Knox (Dr. Curtis Lanyon), Lester Matthews (Sir John Utterson), Gavin Muir (Richard Daniels), Paul Cavanagh (Inspector Stoddard), and Rhys Williams (Michaels) Directed by Seymour Friedman.

Review:  

I suppose it makes sense to have at least one movie start off as an outlandish joke. Jack Pollexfen and Mortimer Braus came up with the idea initially when talking about outlandish film titles that had them wondering if they could knock out a quick story involving, well, the son of Jekyll. They got Columbia Pictures to buy into it, although they would not be involved with the production. You might recognize Pollexfen for his work on such films as The Man from Planet X, which he co-wrote and co-produced; he had decided to become a writer in the 1940s after initially working as a reporter that eventually saw him transition to low-budget filmmaking. The third writer involved with the film was Edward Huebsch, who ended up at the tail end of his writing career because of his ties to the League of American Writers that had him included on the Hollywood blacklist (he attempted a comeback with co-writing the adaptation of Twilight's Last Gleaming in 1977). Incidentally, Pollexfen ended up doing a few other "continuation" scripts, as he also did Return to Treasure Island (1954) to go along with writing and producing Daughter of Dr. Jekyll [1957]. He continued to do films such as Indestructible Man [1956] until his last production in 1964. For a cheapie production, Columbia got Seymour Friedman, a journeyman director who made a handful of movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Well, when you make a movie that takes place in the "aftermath" of a story, you might as well go all-in in the absurdity: a title card talks about the "climax [of] his brutality" in Mr. Hyde killing his wife and running down the street from a mob only to be trapped up top in the mansion that sees him fall to his death. Of course, there is a poor new orphan in 1860 that needs to be kept secret in his origins with regards to a trusteeship until it comes to a pass in 1890 with a man who wants to set the record straight on his father and oh damn it, this is just cribbing a bit from Son of Frankenstein from ol' 1939, isn't it? A good chunk of it is Hayward trying to navigate the game of public perception of being the son of someone associated as a monster. The bounds of prejudice (which range from a rat reporter trying to grab a story or kids throwing rocks) naturally covers a select group of ground before the mystery eventually unravels that basically loops the story back to where we started in a town ready to get the torches ready back in the old mansion. All of this comes for a movie where you can only drag out a mystery for so long (78 minutes) before you go, "well, there's only so many people worth checking...", and it all builds up to a very mediocre movie. Hayward had a steady enough career (thrillers, adventures, dramas) to where I'm sure calling him a discount Basil Rathbone would not be the worst thing in the world for a movie that he just never lifts up beyond wannabee redemption stuff that goes in one ear and out the other; it isn't even worth seeing him paired with Lawrance as the would-be married couple, and to say nothing of Knox and whatever you call his "motivations". In a different movie, perhaps in a different time, it could've been one of those experiments worth trying out to see how horrific the world can be when wrapped up in prejudice and people willing to profit off of it...but it all feels flat, as if nobody could be bothered to make a compelling toady to want to them humbled or added to the body count. Bland jerks just aren't enough to deliver any kind of atmosphere for a movie, pure and simple. As a whole, this readily available movie isn't exactly on the high-end of the totem pole of Jekyll & Hyde movies, but its curious little moments ensure that things could always be better and most surely could be worse too.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

The Invisible Man's Revenge.

Review #2450: The Invisible Man's Revenge.

Cast: 

Jon Hall (Robert Griffin / The Invisible Man), Leon Errol (Herbert Higgins), John Carradine (Dr. Peter Drury), Alan Curtis (Mark Foster), Evelyn Ankers (Julie Herrick), Gale Sondergaard (Lady Irene Herrick), Lester Matthews (Sir Jasper Herrick), Halliwell Hobbes (Cleghorn), Leyland Hodgson (Sir Frederick Travers), and Doris Lloyd (Maud) Produced and Directed by Ford Beebe. 

Review:

You may or may not remember that The Invisible Man wasn't exactly the Universal favorite. It took seven years from the release of The Invisible Man (1933) to merit a follow-up and, well, they never appeared in one of the Universal crossover movies, so you got The Invisible Man Returns (1940). Instead, you got stuff like The Invisible Woman (1940), a comedy feature (starring Virginia Bruce) and Invisible Agent (1942), a spy movie that happened to have Jon Hall play the title character. With this movie, Hall became the only actor to play an Invisible Man in multiple movies. The movie was directed and produced by Ford Beebe, a grab-bag man of directing various genres for cheap, whether as the Western with Overland Bound (1929), the serial such as Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) or the adventure with Bomba, the Jungle Boy (1949-1955). The movie was written by Bertram Millhauser, who had written for several mysteries such as four Sherlock Holmes movies. Previously, Beebe had directed a horror movie for Universal with Night Monster (1942).  Universal did one other Invisible Man, albeit as a spoof, with Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951). There were movies abroad that cribbed from the H. G. Wells novel such as The Invisible Man Appears (1949) and The Invisible Avenger (1954), which each had effects work by Eiji Tsuburaya and there was also the Japanese feature The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly (1957). And then of course there was some overrated Universal movie in 2020.

Now we are in the realm of pushing mad scientists to the sidelines for tired plots about revenge. To put it out of the way, this is the weakest of the three Invisible Man movies. You would think a movie that relies on draining blood from people to maybe become visible again would have an effect on you, but nope, the whole thing is just played for mild-mannered scare. The story (77 minutes long) isn't even that involving either, since the lead character is presented as just a weird guy trying to get revenge, so even if his motives were interesting beyond "maybe" being screwed over in safari, he does his stuff in the most complicated of ways, because it isn't enough to target two people, no, he wants to get their daughter married to him as well. He gets rescued by someone and decides, yes, I'm going to give them a bit of a boost and try to help them win a game of darts too. The ending is sheer audacity in ridiculous: the loyal dog of the guy the Invisible Man kills ends up being responsible for his demise, because he just happened to wander all the way through. Hall in general is too bland to really make this path of "revenge" that interesting. Carradine at least looks enthused to not be in a Universal movie with makeup (he played Count Dracula a few times) but he isn't even allowed to really go off for curiosity. Sure, his plan to help a guy gain visibility (dog gets drained of blood) sounds mad but he is quickly disposed of anyway. To say nothing of the bland triangle between Hall, Curtis, and Hendrick is the easiest thing, because really, getting money sounds more compelling than having to get visible just so you can "get" a girl. Everything is stacked in just doing things in the corniest of ways that don't even make for a great showcase of invisible effects this time, save for a scene or two. As a whole, for a studio that pumped out stuff such as House of Frankenstein the same year as this, you get basically the same amount of rushed ham-handedness for a pretty tired movie. 

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

The Raven (1935).

Review #2293: The Raven.

Cast: 

Béla Lugosi (Dr. Richard Vollin), Boris Karloff (Edmond Bateman), Lester Matthews (Dr. Jerry Halden), Irene Ware (Jean Thatcher), Samuel S. Hinds (Judge Thatcher), Spencer Charters (Colonel Bertram Grant), Inez Courtney (Mary Burns), Ian Wolfe (Geoffrey "Pinky" Burns), and Maidel Turner (Harriet Grant) Directed by Lew Landers (#2260 - The Return of the Vampire)

Review: 

You might remember that Universal had done a few horror films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Black Cat (1934) had each featured Lugosi, and just like the latter, he co-stars with Karloff for a "adaptation" of The Raven. Apparently, several writers were brought in to try and bring treatments for writing, but only David Boehm would be given credit. The movie isn't really an adaptation of the 1845 poem of the same name by Poe because, well, if you read it, you would know all it involves is a man who sees and hears of a raven that goes "Nevermore" among other various rhymes (interestingly, there was a 1915 film that went by the same name as the poem that merely was a biographical film about Poe himself). It merely is a film where a man really seems to like the works of Poe instead, complete with seeing a solo dance set to a recitation of the story and a torture device straight from "The Pit and the Pendulum". This was the third appearance of Karloff and Lugosi together (eight by the end of the 1940s) after the aforementioned Cat film and Gift of Gab, a musical comedy that probably nobody interested would care about unless they like bit parts; the next film with the two was The Invisible Ray (1936). This was the kind of movie that probably unsurprisingly led to people being weird about horror movies, with one British paper wondering what was behind the movie that was "of "horror" for "horror's" sake", accusing it as nonsense for trying to hide under the Poe inspiration while saying it has no indication of "imaginative control" in story or treatment. This was among the first films directed by Landers, who actually was born Louis Friedlander before he elected to go by Landers for directing later on. Nearly thirty years later, Karloff appeared in the next "adaptation" of the Raven story as part of the Corman-Poe cycle for AIP.

It actually is a pretty neat movie when you get down to it, mostly because its obsessive glee is pretty infectious for such a carefully curated runtime of just 61 minutes. Lugosi gets to eye-ball his way through a movie that is more his show than Karloff's show in the best of ways imaginable for cut-rate spooks. Lugosi gets to have some fun moments involving a considerable ego (he says at one point that he is "a law unto myself") and getting to play a game of cat-and-mouse with Karloff, who gets packed in with some makeup because of the nature of the plan drawn up of obsessive love by way of extortion; the theory of ugly folks going around doing crimes because of said ugly is amusing here, suffice to say. It's funny to compare it with say, Supernatural when it comes to saying just how clearly better one is in doing a movie with enjoyment within a limited body-count potential (this one has one, technically) because it actually feels like there is commitment with one's lead stars to go with a story that runs bold-faced into devotion with no hacky limitations. I like how one can have such a delusion of being a god can go hand in hand with basically being a fan of literary works, particularly one that likes scary moving doors to use on people. Sure, the others besides our duo are merely "fine", but you get madcap enjoyment seeing Lugosi, even with an obvious ending involving beasts liking the sight of happy normal folks. As a whole, it isn't a great Universal horror film, but it does fine with those other Poe films they made and has a worthwhile duo to make a neat curiosity anyway.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.