The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), Robert Florey.

Pianist Francis Ingram is sleeping peacefully, although his hand seems restless.  

Wheelchair-bound, aging pianist Francis Ingram has retired to an Italian villa and become infatuated with his pretty young nurse; she chafes under his constant attention and plans to leave the country.  Ingram is surrounded by hangers-on including his shady lawyer, his personal astrologist (played by Peter Lorre) and the nurse's boyfriend, an American who dupes American rubes into buying worthless curios.  A mellifluous version of Bach's Chaconne in D minor (arranged by Brahms for the left hand) repeats throughout the film, suffusing the old villa with the spirit of the pianist, who exits from the film prematurely.  The Beast with Five Fingers has no slack spots; as soon as Ingram is dead, the knives come out and everyone wants a piece of the valuable estate.  I particularly liked Lorre's quest, which was to bury himself deep within a library of rare books in search of "the key to the future," an understanding of fate, an ancient knowledge lost when the library of Alexandra burned.  Well, okay, but try to get it on my desk by Monday.  Claps to the prop dude for creating such a horrifying mobile hand, complete with chopped bones & sinew visible from the stump end.   I don't know if I can say, as Edmund G Bansak does, that this is "the best crawling hand movie ever made;" oh wait, dim memories of The Hand are resurfacing... yes, Bansak, you may be correct.

Voodoo Man (1944), William Beaudine.

 

Monogram's Lugosi vehicles are a mish-mash of attributes stolen from superior films, and Voodoo Man is no exception.  Unwilling to stick to something unadorned by Dracula or even White Zombie, Monogram clutters scenes with hackneyed imagery.  Even the obsessive quest of the film's antihero Dr Marlowe (Lugosi) to revive his beloved wife is taken from countless others and makes this film very close (is it a remake?) of The Corpse Vanishes, made two years earlier.  It struck me as incongruous to see sassy wartime gals in square-shouldered dresses and wedge heels stuffed into the roles that were played first by the thin, ethereal creatures of the 1930s.  The Stella Saunders character seems just as likely to tell a man to go peel a grape as she does to be quickly hypnotized into following him down a dank cave entrance. 

The storyline of Voodoo Man is tighter than other Monograms, and I can absorb John Carradine's wild-eyed sideshow acting approach (and endless "hi, how are you" bongo beat) without too much discomfort.  In the film's last scene the young Banner Productions screenwriter and hero of the tale slaps his horror screenplay on his boss's desk and says, "you might want to consider Bela Lugosi for the part."  Well, at least Monogram was bold enough to realize they were never going to be much more than cheap camp.  Perhaps an appropriate ending for what would also be the end of Lugosi's connection with the studio.

For a brilliant rundown of this film check out Acidemic: http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/02/voodoo-man-patron-saint-of.html

Classic nosy-housekeeper-at-the-door shot.  Better still is the next shot: Lugosi snapping his fingers at her to quit listening.

Mr Moto's Last Warning (1939), Norman Foster.

 

This was okay, but I think it could have been better if an Asian guy played the part of the Port Commandant General!

Port Commandant General, whose dialogue ends in typically British mumbled grunts & nonsense.

The Scarlet Claw (1944), Roy William Neill.

Not particularly convincing French Canadians!

A friend of mine has a great business idea:  if you are planning a boring social event, hire a French Canadian!  They can work the room, tell jokes and have a great time!  This is why it's obvious Universal clearly hired a bunch of fakes for this movie.  Holmes and Watson travel to Canada (or, more precisely, the province of Quebec) and stumble upon the trail of dead bodies left by a homicidal maniac wielding a garden implement.  Features one character who does nothing but sell plaid fabric to the town's inhabitants  (now that, I can believe).  Note: Please, Canadian men:  for the love of God, stop wearing chequed shirts.  Topped off by this Churchill quotation on Canada:  "Relations of friendly intimacy with the United States on the one hand and their unswerving fidelity to the British commonwealth and the motherland on the other."  Cripes, now I feel dirty and have to go take a bath!

Shadow of Chinatown (1936), Robert F Hill.

 

Sonya Rokoff, a Caucasian retailer who is angry that Chinese merchants are selling more goods than she is for less money, yet who for some reason enjoys dressing in traditional Chinese clothes, cringes as Victor Poten gleefully offs another victim.  I know:  what!?

Entrepreneur Sonya Rokoff wants to scare the tourists out of Chinatown and put its merchants out of business, hoping her stores will rake in the sales.  She teams up with Victor Poten (Bela Lugosi), a half-Caucasian, half-Asian sadist / scientist who is happy to assist.  Lugosi employs a team of Caucasians dressed as Chinese who infiltrate Chinatown and stir up trouble, and his residence is equipped with all kinds of torture mechanisms!  Goofy adventure serial with about as much basis in reality as a Super Friends episode.  Like the Lugosi series The Return of Chandu, this serial was produced by Sam Katzman and also uses exoticism as a source of thrills and mystery, but Shadow of Chinatown is not nearly as enjoyable.  Its Caucasian hero (played by hunky athlete Herman Brix/ Bruce Bennett) is a dull author renowned for his knowledge of Chinese culture (which he admits he has learned from his houseboy Willy Fu) and the Caucasian heroine is a shrill female reporter.  The "girl reporter" is an odd trope in 30s - 40s pop culture.  She's got all the worst qualities traditionally assigned to women (talkative, pushy, overly inquisitive) and funnels them into a profession, which she happily abandons when the right guy comes around.  Jeesh!  

  

Lugosi spies on a secret meeting through a proto-TV of his own devising.

Cagney By Cagney (James Cagney), 1976.

 

Yiddish poster for 1932 Cagney film Taxi! (1932).  Cagney was proud of his ability to incorporate his knowledge of the language into his performances.

While reading Tender Comrades, A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (1999) I came across a remark that James Cagney's wife Frances was somewhat hostile to left-leaning actors.  In his autobiography, Cagney did not shy away from discussing politics, but treats the topic carefully and doesn't allow it to dominate his life story.  It is indeed an enjoyable and uplifting tale of a family man who liked to "dance the lard off" and spent his whole life waiting to retire to his beloved home in the country with his horses.  His New York childhood was peopled with characters he never forgot and whose mannerisms and experiences he would draw on as an actor (though he complains that people often confused the role with the man, and of being interrupted from a nice steak dinner because some jackass wanted to take a punch at him to see how tough he really was).  The grit of his childhood "it was only in 1912 or so when the neighborhood began to sour under the infiltration of scabrous drug pushers" was real enough that many of his acquaintances were unable to escape their upbringing.  One fried in the electric chair. 

Cagney does nothing to dispel any Irish stereotypes and goes on at length about his gorgeous red-haired, quick tempered mother, his dear old da who liked to drink and gamble on the ponies and of course the art of street fighting, or: scrapping, dogging it, licking, slugging away, punching, sundaying, etc (it goes on for pages, which is not just a little bit hilarious).  At which point my own mother, who was washing dishes at the sink, asked in all seriousness if I was making fun of her side of the family.

The Cocaine Fiends/The Pace that Kills (1936), William A O'Connor.

  

I'm a hophead!

Exploitation B's could sometimes make a few extra bucks as they did for Willis Kent when the money for B-Westerns dried up.  Kent wrote The Pace that Kills first in 1928 and remade it in 1936. It's the story of naive country hicks getting hooked on cocaine, thinking it's headache medicine.  Oh, you crazy kids!  They all party at a place charmingly called The Dead Rat and someone puts their head in an oven.  There are a few scenes that do show the grimy desperation of living on the streets.  Very similar arc as Edgar G Ulmer's Damaged Lives and countless other B pics that masqueraded as being anti-drug and sex but were actually pro-bums in seats. And yes, this is one of the worst prints of anything I've ever viewed (including flicks off youtube).

Poverty Row Horrors! : Monogram, PRC and Republic Horror Films of the Forties (1991), Tom Weaver.

 

By fans, for fans!  Great little paperback by Tom Weaver, who casts a perceptive eye over a number of studio B horrors.  Not a highly analytical work, but thorough:  there are synopses for over two dozen films followed by more historical information about the production -- how the film was promoted (or not) and even contemporary reviews, some of which are pretty scathing.  I for one think Hollywood could come up with some better ideas to promote movies nowadays.  In 1941, Monogram Studios suggested this promotional strategy for Invisible Ghost:  hire a tall man in dark clothing, armed with a rope or a prop revolver, and ask him to tap passersby on the shoulder.  "If you get a real ballyhooer, he could really do a job!"  (and maybe end up in the clink)?  The book also contains a filmography for poverty row actors and actresses, many of whom reappear over and over in Bs.   Weaver has some definite opinions on the films and his views seem to fall into either the "love it" or "hate it"category, which is a good place to start if you are a film dork who wants to argue with another film dork for hours on end.

Man Who Laughs (1928), Paul Leni.

Who are the comprachicos?

Comprachicos, de même que comprapequenos, est un mot espagnol composé qui signifie «les achète-petits».  
Les comprachicos faisaient le commerce des enfants.

Ils en achetaient et ils en vendaient.

Ils n'en dérobaient point. Le vol des enfants est une autre industrie.

Et que faisaient-ils de ces enfants?

Des monstres.

Pourquoi des monstres?

Pour rire.

The principle characters in The Man Who Laughs is a family not related by blood but connected by each being survivors of fate, living on the fringes of 17th century English society:  a philosopher, Ursus, a loyal wolf named Homo, the mutilated child Gwynplaine and a baby found at the snowy base of a hanging ground.  If so far this sounds a little “out there,” this may not be your kind of silent movie.  The grotesque characters in this highly stylized film are evocative of a Daumier caricature or disturbing, primitively carved statuettes (see below):  let’s get a group of dirt-caked uglies and shine harsh lights on them!  These goblins think only of themselves and live in an unjust country.  While it's the comprachicos who slit Gwynplaine's mouth into a clown's grin, our strange little family seem to be the only people with any humanity.  If it were not for Conrad Veidt's performance of the sweet natured Gwynplaine, I think this movie would be completely soulless.


I swear I saw Ronald MacDonald in one frame.  If you thought you hated clowns now then buckle up because this movie’s stuffed with them.