Thrillers from the Vault – 8 Classic Films

Thrillers from the Vault – 8 Classic Films
Blu-ray
Mill Creek Entertainment
1935, 1939, 1940 / B&W / 1.33: 1 / Blu ray
Starring Boris Karloff, Ann Doran, Evelyn Keyes,
Written by Arthur Strawn, Karl Brown, Robert Andrews
Directed by Roy William Neill, Nick Grindé

In 1934 Boris Karloff was an unhappy actor, he was one of Universal’s most illustrious stars, yet good parts were scarce, and intelligent horror roles like hen’s teeth—the occasional work at other studios was both a boon and a welcome distraction.

In 1935 the studio loaned him to Columbia for The Black Room, a blood and thunder gothic in which Karloff would play two roles, an aristocrat and his evil twin—a dark fable played out in shadows, but a light at the end of the tunnel for the 47 year old actor who relished a challenge. Even brighter news for Karloff, Roy William Neill was signed to direct. Known for his exacting nature, Neill was a moviemaker with the instincts of an illustrator—at their most captivating, his films resembled picture books animated by elegant camerawork. Sound man (and future Stooges director) Ed Bernds said of the director, “… he was genuinely incapable of shooting anything really sloppy—and we’d often work far into the night.”

Neill may have been notorious for working past the witching hour but the dead of night was appropriate for movies like The Black Room: Alfred Hitchcock wrote the story for 1923’s The White Shadow in which wild child Betty Compson is possessed by the spirit of her straight-laced twin. Olivia de Havilland wrestled with her psychotic sibling in 1947’s The Dark Mirror, and Bette Davis exterminated her wealthy sister for a taste of the good life in 1964’s hugely entertaining Dead Ringer (which itself was a remake of 1946’s La Otra starring Dolores Del Rio).

Those deceitful doppelgängers have fueled many a soap opera but The Black Room refined the template: Karloff plays Gregor and Anton de Berghmann, two Barons haunted by a family curse—and like most grim fairy tales, the prophecy comes true. While ruling the countryside in Anton’s absence, Gregor has devolved into a degenerate dictator—once Gregor is reunited with his brother, he kills him out of convenience and assumes Anton’s kindly identity.

Arthur Strawn and Henry Meyers wrote the workmanlike but effective screenplay—we’ll ignore the risible finale—while Roy Davidson tended to the near-seamless visual effects that allowed Karloff to play both brothers in the same frame. Those special effects reveal something more than Davidson’s skill—they give us the unique opportunity to study a wonderful actor trading lines with himself. Karloff would never encounter a more formidable co-star.

By 1937 Karloff had come to terms with Universal; he celebrated by crashing every party in town, signing on to a flurry of projects at Warner Bros., RKO, Monogram, and back again at Columbia for a trio of films that bore the same simple plot; a disgraced medico seeks revenge on his tormentors. Each movie flaunted a hard-boiled title reflecting the pulp magazines that inspired so many B thrillers, and each was barely over an hour, ripe for the bottom half of a double bill. All three were directed by Wisconsin born Nick Grindé, a former vaudevillian and sometime screenwriter.

Grindé’s systematic approach to directing recalled the work of Fritz Lang, the German expatriate whose work redefined what a movie could look like, and more importantly, could move like. With his geometric staging Lang was a true child of the Machine Age, an era he both extolled and reviled in the colossal gears and cogs that dominated 1927’s Metropolis. But perhaps of greater interest to hungry Hollywood producers were Lang’s Mabuse films, the ne plus ultra of evil genius thrillers.

With Karloff topping the bill, Grindé found his own Mabuse in Dr. Henryk Savaard, the benevolent but obsessive scientist of 1939’s The Man They Could Not Hang. Savaard’s dream is to return the dead to the land of the living but the police have other ideas—the would-be saviour is executed for his troubles.

Like Mabuse, Savaard is not easily eliminated, and once revived he’s less interested in saving lives than he is in taking them. He holds a dinner for his former foes that’s more like a surprise party—and to entertain the guests he turns his home into a death trap; the living room redecorated as an electrified minefield and a refurbished dining hall that would literally kill your appetite.

Fast-paced and agile, The Man They Could Not Hang moves not like a bullet but a well choreographed tango—Grindé packs the frame with helter-skelter movement and dynamic compositions—shooting down from the ceiling, up from the floor, with editor William Lyon trimming the action at just the right second (Lyon would eventually add Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity and Peckinpah’s Major Dundee to a long list of accomplishments).

Confronted with his crimes, Savaard argues that his murder spree is retribution not revenge, a dubious claim to be sure, but it’s clear the filmmakers wanted it both ways too: they were able to attract ticket buyers with both the lovable Boris and the sinister Karloff. But by extolling the miracles of modern medicine while framing the physician as a villain, The Man They Could Not Hang also reveals a significant divide in its own audience; those who rooted for Dr. Frankenstein and those who rooted for the torchbearers.

The same ambivalence is at play in 1940’s The Man with Nine Lives and the cheerily-titled Before I Hang, each virtual remakes of the Savaard saga. Karloff repeats the character of a kindly scientist pushed into a life of crime—but as usual, his eager embrace of the dark side suggests he didn’t need much pushing.

In The Man with Nine Lives, Karloff plays Leon Kravaal, a scientist with a special interest in the “frozen therapy” used to treat terminally ill patients—but his efforts don’t impress the police, who tend to frown on doctors killing their patients. Though the film shares similarities with The Man They Could Not Hang, comparisons are irrelevant; The Man with Nine Lives is flat-footed and padded: it takes near 20 minutes for Karloff to make his entrance, a deal-breaker when Roger Pryor and Jo Ann Sayers—the leading man and lady—are such monotonous company.

In Before I Hang, Karloff plays John Garth, a physician condemned to death row for a mercy killing. A groundswell of public support exonerates the medic but not before he’s inoculated with the blood of a murderer. We don’t need Dr. Jekyll to explain what happens next; Garth is transformed into an unwitting killing machine.

Grindé’s work recaptures the authoritative style he brought to The Man They Could Not Hang and Robert Andrews’s script is a crisp, no-frills affair. Beautifully photographed by Benjamin H. Kline, the film was produced in less than four weeks in the summer of 1940—thanks to Kline’s powerhouse lighting and Andrews’s terse dialog, the movie packs a finely-tuned punch; Karloff plays his murderous alter-ego close to the vest even when threatening his own daughter (a wisely restrained performance from Evelyn Keyes). Though Before I Hang begins as a tale of redemption, the apocalyptic finale tells a different story, it has the fatalistic quality of a Warner Bros. gangster film.

These four movies are part of Mill Creek’s new Blu ray release, Thrillers from the Vault, 8 Classics Films. Packaged in a keep-case that is at best perfunctory, the movies are spread over four discs—the remaining four “thrillers” will be reviewed next week. All four films look superb—Allen G. Siegler’s photography for The Black Room and Kline’s for Before I Hang look particularly impressive. The Man with Nine Lives and Before I Hang feature moments of degraded quality, as if a dupe print was used to fill in missing material.

The Mill Creek set is in some ways the American cousin to Eureka’s Karloff at Columbia released in 2022 in the UK—and reviews of that set indicate Mill Creek may be using the same transfers. Mill Creek’s set contains all six of the films in the Eureka package and adds two more: Return of the Vampire, and for reasons hard to fathom, Arch Oboler’s science fiction soap opera, Five (sadly, an advertised commentary from Tom Weaver is not included). The Eureka set featured a host of British film historians for their commentaries while the Yanks take over for Mill Creek—they include Weaver (on The Devil Commands), C. Courtney Joyner, Steve Haberman, Heath Holland, and a group of would-be merry-makers called The Monster Party Podcast. Rounding out the package is an informative documentary hosted by Joyner focusing on Karloff’s Columbia period, Madness and Mayhem, Horror in the 30s and 40s.