Category: 1940’s

Directed by Christy Cabanne [Other horror films: One Frightened Night (1935), Scared to Death (1946)]

I’ve never been the biggest fan of The Mummy, but that’s not to say that other films in the series can’t be enjoyable (and to be sure, it’s not like the 1932 movie isn’t okay either). In the case of The Mummy’s Hand, though, I can say that it suffers from a painful comic relief character, and though it’s not terrible, I can’t say I had a great time with it.

However, it might be possible to say that this at least has a better pace than the 1932 movie. I should also mention that despite the fact some may think this is a sequel, it’s not – the Universal Mummy series (the 1932 original, this one, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost, and The Mummy’s Curse) isn’t as disjointed as the Halloween franchise is, but from my understanding, the first movie is stand-alone, and the other four, starting with this one, comprise of the Kharis mummy tetralogy.

The actual plot isn’t shabby. If you’ve seen one mummy movie from the 1940’s, though, you’ve probably seen them all, so I don’t know if this really stands out, and if it does, it’s likely because of Wallace Ford’s comedic relief character. To be fair, he can sometimes have amusing quips, and I appreciate that he at least made the film feel as though it was moving at a faster pace than the snail’s crawl that is the 1932 movie, but even so, I never saw the point of his character here.

Dick Foran (Horror Island) made for a solid straight lead. Like many leading men, I don’t think he really stands out, but he was good at the time. Again, I couldn’t stand a lot of Wallace Ford’s (The Rogues Tavern, The Ape Man, Night of Terror) dialogue, but that’s not on him. Cecil Kellaway (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte) was a lot of fun as a magician, though.

George Zucco (The Mad Ghoul, Dead Men Walk, The Flying Serpent, Fog Island) was pretty sinister in his role, as he usually is. Though he had a limited time to make an impression, Charles Trowbridge (Valley of the Zombies) was solid. Playing the generic love interest was Peggy Moran (Horror Island), who had a little more of an action feel than I usually get from actresses at the time.

Oh, and the Mummy here was played by Tom Tyler, who did well, though he’s no Boris Karloff. And speaking of the Mummy, he didn’t even appear until 40 minutes into this 67 minute movie. Again, this isn’t as slow as the 1932 Mummy is, but things aren’t exactly moving at lightning speed either. That may not come as a surprise – in my experience, a fast-paced mummy movie is almost impossible to make – but worth noting nonetheless.

What else is there to really say about The Mummy’s Hand? It’s not a bad movie, and though it was better paced than the 1932 classic, I don’t think that makes it more enjoyable, especially as it doesn’t have any of that film’s charms. Worth a watch if you’re into the Mummy craze, but otherwise, not up to much, in the end.

6/10

Directed by Phil Rosen [Other horror films: Spooks Run Wild (1941), Mystery of Marie Roget (1942), Return of the Ape Man (1944), Black Magic (1944), The Jade Mask (1945)]

This is an interesting one. Man with Two Lives can be a pretty decent movie – if you’re into the classics – but I do think that if you’re a fan of classic horror specifically, and come into this one expecting something like The Walking Dead, you’ll be a bit disappointed.

The thing is that the means of the story are couched in what you’d expect from a horror film, but the final product generally feels more like a crime movie than anything else. I guess before I go on, I should get into the plot and explain what I mean.

Man with Two Lives follows recently-engaged Philip Bennett (Edward Norris) as he has a car accident, and dies. Luckily, a family friend, Doctor Clark (Edward Keane) has been doing experiments regarding bringing hearts back to life after death, and after Philip’s father and brother (Frederick Burton and Tom Seidel) plead with him, and against the warnings of another family friend, Professor Toller (Hugh Sothern), Clark does just that.

Troubles arise, though, when it turns out that this experiment – bringing Philip back to life – happens at the exact same time the violent gangster Panino is executed for his crimes. When Philip does regain consciousness, he has no memories of his life, and begins exhibiting violent, gangstery qualities unbecoming of a young man from means, including going to shady bars, taking over a gang, and killing police officers just because it brings him joy.

As you can potentially tell by my description, much of Man with Two Lives follows a man who’s leading a gang. The way this man came to be in control of the gang – a possible migration of the soul – may be rooted in what you’d expect from some horror, but the outcome feels like a crime film throughout large portions.

None of this is to say that the film isn’t good or without suspense. In fact, the finale is extraordinarily tense in a way that no previous portion of the film has been. Sure, we see a character get strangled earlier on, but we also get the sense that that specific character definitely wasn’t long for the world, so I wouldn’t call that sequence suspenseful. The finale, though, which is sort of a culmination of the family’s investigations into where Philip disappears to days on end, is fantastically done.

I will say that Edward Norris did great with his double-role, of sorts. As a gangster, he was pretty solid, and it was fun to watch. After Norris, I think the most important cast members become Edward Keane and Frederick Burton, both of whom spend time trying to figure out why Norris’ character is acting so differently after being brought back to life.

Some aspects of Hugh Sothern’s character were hard to like – his insistence, for instance, that there is in fact such a thing as a soul because all religions and philosophies agree on its existence – but that’s on his character, not the performance, which I thought was good. Others who don’t really impact things as much as you may think include Marlo Dwyer, Eleanor Lawson, Tom Seidel, and Addison Richards (The Mummy’s Curse, Strange Confession), though Richards does have a strong sequence near the end.

As you could expect, the film also goes into the whole “man should not get involved in what’s best left to the Creator” tripe that was all-too-common in movies from that time period, such as Frankenstein. It was a different time, and perhaps back then people didn’t understand that before you make the claim that man shouldn’t interfere with God’s will, they first need to prove the existence of a God, along with a way to determine what his ‘will’ is, neither of which has been done to this day.

Overall, though, Man with Two Lives is a solid film. For someone looking for a traditional horror film of the 30’s and 40’s, I don’t think this will hit the right spot, but if you’re into something a bit different, with a nice crime feel permeating throughout, Man with Two Lives may well be worth a watch.

7/10

Directed by Ford Beebe [Other horror films: The Phantom Creeps (1939), Night Monster (1942)]

I found myself feeling somewhat lukewarm toward The Invisible Man Returns, and I have similar feelings for this one. The Invisible Man’s Revenge isn’t without some decent ideas, but especially toward the end, I find myself losing interest.

Part of this is because I found myself on the Invisible Man’s side. Played by Jon Hall (and not becoming invisible until something like 20 minutes into the movie), he was cheated out of money by a wealthy couple (Lester Matthews and Gale Sondergaard), and despite a signed agreement, they refuse to pay him back. To be sure, Hall’s character wasn’t the most stable, but he did have rights to some of the money, and so we’re supposed to root against him?

It wasn’t so much Matthews’ character that bothered me as it was Sondergaard’s – she obviously had no intention of paying back any owed money to the man, and would have been happy to kill him herself if she had any plausible way to get away with it. When the so-called antagonist is in the right, it just sometimes makes movies harder to play ball with.

There were also a few moments of amusing mirth that I probably could have done without. Most of Leon Errol’s dialogue pegged him for comic relief, and he was good at it. He cracked me up a handful of times, and he was good fun. The scene in which he wins at darts, though – with the help of the Invisible Man, who’s running the darts from his hand to the bullseye – went on too long and felt wholly unnecessary. The first time was sort of funny, but he threw three more darts in increasingly improbable ways, and at that point, the fun was draining from the sequence.

I do think, though, that Leon Errol was one of my favorite characters, though. Jon Hall (The Beach Girls and the Monster) was a decent lead, but Errol was simply more fun. It was also fun seeing John Carradine (Voodoo Man, Revenge of the Zombies) here – his scientist character had charm, though I have to say that his house – which held a bunch of invisible animals – also felt a bit on the silly side.

I couldn’t stand Gale Sondergaard’s (The Spider Woman Strikes Back, Savage Intruder, The Cat Creature, The Climax) character – she was just awful, and deserved to get got. Lester Matthews (Werewolf of London, The Mysterious Doctor, The Son of Dr. Jekyll, The Raven) was more bearable, but I personally thought that both Alan Curtis and Evelyn Ankers (Jungle Woman, Captive Wild Woman, The Mad Ghoul, Son of Dracula, The Frozen Ghost) were shallow, and neither, in my eyes, added a lot to the film.

Certainly the special effects here were decent, and perhaps more advanced than they have been in previous films, but there’s also not really that much of interest, as far as the story goes, in the second half of this. I mean, the Invisible Man’s titular revenge lasts just 15 minutes or so, and then he becomes visible again, and it just wasn’t doing it for me.

I don’t think it’s a terrible movie, but it definitely lacks the charm of the 1933 classic. Also, given that Vincent Price doesn’t appear as he did in The Invisible Man Returns, we don’t have his charm to fall back on either. It’s fine, I guess, but I doubt it’ll be watching it again in the next 50 years, and it doesn’t seem to me that it’ll really stand out in my memory.

6.5/10

Directed by Lew Landers [Other horror films: The Raven (1935), The Return of the Vampire (1943), The Mask of Diijon (1946), Inner Sanctum (1948), Terrified (1962)]

Despite the encouraging title, this horror-comedy mix doesn’t really do a whole lot to stand out. Sure, it has some good performances, and some occasionally wacky moments, but I don’t think it’s enough to solidify this as any type of classic. It’s serviceable, but little more than that.

The plot follows a young woman (Jeff Donnell) as she buys an old house, with the intention to convert it into an inn, all while dealing with a doctor doing experiments in the basement, mysterious disappearances, a town official who gets a bit nosy, and plenty of traveling salesmen. Oh, and what seemed to be an Italian fascist toward the end, which was an interesting addition.

Actually, it’s on that note that I should say much of the film’s plot revolves around the then-ongoing World War II – the scientist’s experiments are designed to create a super-soldier, someone seems as though they could be a spy, and there’s even a munitions factory in town, causing a delay when the police are finally called to the hopeful inn.

The central cast – and by central, I mean two – are great, being Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Karloff (The Strange Door, The Mummy, Frankenstein 1970, The Man They Could Not Hang) does amusingly as a somewhat absent-minded scientist type of good intentions, and Lorre (You’ll Find Out, Mad Love, The Comedy of Terrors, The Beast with Five Fingers) was even better playing a sheriff/mayor/investor/loan shark. I think Lorre probably brought more to the film than Karloff did, but it was great to see the two of them.

Technically, Jeff Donnell (The Unknown) and Larry Parks might be more the central characters, or at least the primary protagonists, but I didn’t really care for either one’s character. Maxie Rosenbloom and Maude Eburne (The Vampire Bat, The Bat Whispers) provided some of the comedy here, but it mostly fell flat to me. Frank Puglia’s character felt like a random add-on, but I will admit that Don Beddoe’s character did interest me.

Certainly a couple of lines were amusing, my favorite being when Karloff was showing Lorre five bodies of failed experiments, and explaining that there were traveling salesmen, pointing one out as selling encyclopedias, to which Lorre replied “I’m sure he didn’t mind.” There were a few other laughs to be had, but like I said, I personally think a lot of the comedy fell somewhat flat.

It’s not a bad movie, though. Sure, The Boogie Man Will Get You isn’t likely to stand out aside from the fact it has both Karloff and Lorre in it, but it’s still serviceable as a horror-comedy mix. It’s digestible too, at only an hour and seven minutes.

If you enjoy the classics of the genre, and are looking for something you’ve perhaps not seen, this might be worth a look, but I don’t really think it’ll end up being that memorable, all things considered.

6/10

Directed by Arthur Lubin [Other horror films: Black Friday (1940), Hold That Ghost (1941), Phantom of the Opera (1943)]

Perhaps one of the earliest examples of what I’d label botanical horror, The Spider Woman Strikes Back is a decent film, short, digestible, and with a solid atmosphere and occasionally creepy vibe. Not that it’s stellar, but it’s a solid little film.

I speak a bit about my enjoyment of botanical horror in The Ruins – I think it largely has to do with growing up on the book and two-part episode of Goosebumps titled Stay Out of the Basement!, which was always one of my favorite Goosebumps stories. The idea of plants consuming blood, or flesh, or attacking, just has a creepy vibe to it, and while I can’t explain it any better than that, it’s always been something I loved.

To be clear, there’s no plant attacking anyone in The Spider Woman Strikes Back. This isn’t The Revenge of Doctor X. However, there are sequences of a plant being fed blood to keep it strong, and while it’s true Gale Sondergaard deals with spiders, she uses them to feed plants (when she’s not using blood), so really, this should be The Plant Woman Strikes Back.

Of course, this is sort of meant to mimic a sequel-in-name-only, or a spin-off, of the 1943 mystery/thriller film The Spider Woman, which also starred Gale Sondergaard. Aside from Sondergaard’s presence, there’s no relation, so that just adds to the fun. Really, though, this movie, despite the somewhat confusing title, does have a decent amount going for it, so it’s a shame some people might shy away because they think it’s a sequel to something else.

The story is pretty basic, but it’s also somewhat atmospheric. Now, I did watch a rather scratchy print of this one on YouTube, which is amusing, because there’s actually a 1080P HD version I didn’t notice until after I watched the version with ten pixels. Even so, I had a pretty good time with it, and while I wish the finale had been a bit better (especially regarding Rondo Hatton’s character), it was pretty good for a 40’s horror film.

Brenda Joyce (Strange Confession, Pillow of Death) made for a fair lead, but like many women of the time period, her character’s only given limited agency. Gale Sondergaard (The Climax, Echoes, Savage Intruder, The Cat Creature, 1939’s The Cat and the Canary) had a sinister aura to her, so no complaints there. Neither Kirby Grant nor Milburn Stone (Captive Wild Woman, The Frozen Ghost, Strange Confession) do that much, but Stone’s character had some potential.

It’s Rondo Hatton I have the biggest issue with. He’s a familiar face (having been in movies such as The Jungle Captive, House of Horrors, and The Brute Man), and his performance is perfectly solid, playing a mute servant of Sondergaard’s character. I saw inklings of his character fighting for his independence, but come the end, they don’t really do much with it. Hatton’s performance was good, but they could have done a bit more with the character.

When it comes down to it, I can’t say that The Spider Woman Strikes Back is an amazing movie, but I did find it a good, quick way to spend an hour. At 59 minutes, it’s digestible, it’s decently fun, and while it could have been a bit better, it’s not at all a bad watch. If you’re into classic horror, this may well be worth a watch.

7.5/10

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis [Other horror films: The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942)]

I have a mildly fun story relating to this movie: I’ve seen Invisible Ghost once before (it’s even possible I’ve seen it twice, but I think it was just once), and the only thing I remembered about it was the opening. I mean, I remembered the opening with 100% clarity, but literally anything past that, I didn’t have an inkling.

To this day, I’m not sure why that was the case. Perhaps I fell asleep during my first viewing – it’s happened before, especially in October, when I can consume quite a bit of horror. Whatever the case, Invisible Ghost isn’t near as forgettable as my anecdote might make it sound. It’s not one of the classics, by any means, but it is a nicely serviceable film.

I appreciate how the film takes a somewhat psychological approach to the murders that are plaguing a household. I do wish that they added a little depth and explanation in the ending, as we’re not really told why the murderer is committing these murders, but either way, it is nice to have a different solution than so many other horror films from the same time period.

Bela Lugosi, of course, was a pleasure to see in this. Lugosi (The Devil Bat, Dracula, Night of Terror, and many others) did quite well, especially toward the end, as a somewhat tragic figure. Clarence Muse (White Zombie and Black Moon) is a strong runner-up – despite playing a servant (as so many black men had to do back then), I enjoyed his characterization as one of the thoroughly competent characters here. Polly Ann Young and John McGuire (in a dual role) both did decent, and McGuire had some strong moments, but I don’t know if he’ll end up being memorable.

Really, Invisible Ghost as a whole may not end up being that memorable, but I do think the story is decently strong, and as the film is just around an hour and change, it’s pretty digestible. I do enjoy the more suspenseful sequences, not to mention the answers presented, but I just wish they added a little more in the finale.

For a short and cheap film, Invisible Ghost is okay. It’s far from a classic, but it’s watchable, and though it may not stand out all that well, if you want a Bela Lugosi performance you’ve perhaps not yet bore witness to, you could certainly do worse than this.

6/10