Boris Karloff Archives

Tonight’s movie is the original Mummy from 1932. Not to be confused with the now, more famous 90’s remake. That was a very loose remake, though not as loose as Alex Kurtzman’s debacle from 2017. The original Mummy was created to follow on from the success of Dracula and Frankenstein. Like those films it became a franchise with multiple films to it, though none were direct sequels. The movie is directed by Karl Freund, mostly known as a cinematographer. His credits as a cinematographer includes Metropolis, Dracula. Key Largo and the I Love Lucy TV series. His cinematographer here is Charles Stumar, who would later work on “Werewolf of London“. Playing the titular Mummy is of course Boris Karloff, already big enough a name to be credited simply as “Karloff”.

In 1921, A “Sir Joseph Whemple” (Arthur Byron) led archaeological expedition uncovers the Mummy of Imhotep, an Egyptian high priest. Buried with him is a casket with a curse on it. When Whemlpe’s assistant opens the casket, he finds an ancient scroll within and begins to read it. As he does so the Mummy comes to life, takes the scroll and leaves, driving the assistant insane. Years later another expedition led by Whemple’s son (David Manners) is guided by a mysterious Egyptian “Ardath Bey” (Karloff) to uncover the tomb of princess Ankh-es-en-Amon. Bey, who is really Imhotep seeks to resurrect his ancient lover, but finds that she has actually been re-incarnated as a woman named “Helen Grosvenor” (Zita Johann). He now plans to abduct and sacrifice her to free her soul to be re-animated in her old body.

Reunited Across Time

On the surface this could be seen as a bit of a Dracula rip off, yet Imhotep’s obsession over Helen is not by coincidence. The idea that Helen is a re-incarnation of Imhotep’s long dead lover was at the time unique to The Mummy. Now of course, ever since 1992’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” this has become a recurring theme for Dracula too. I think it’s safe to say Coppola had seen The Mummy, so this was probably where he got the idea from. Yes that means Coppola turned Dracula into a knock off of a knock off of Dracula! Still, it worked well, so the idea was good. It works here as well in it’s original form.

The romantic element does add a nice bit of tragedy to the story. Indeed this is more of a Gothic horror than a monster movie. This gives both Johann and Karloff a chance to really shine. Indeed, you could argue this was Karloff’s best performance. The man was actually a very capable actor, it’s just when you are typecast as monsters you don’t get many chances to show it. The rest of the cast are solid too, though the plot doesn’t ask that much from them. This is a short film (73 mins), so the main story speeds through pretty quickly. A good part of the run time is taken up with the backstory, leaving less time for the main plot. Apparently the original version was longer, but that (Now lost) footage was mostly additional flashback material.

The Modern Lens

As tends to be the case with the classic Universal horror, the movie really makes the black and white sing. With a gifted cinematographer in the directors chair you’d expect no less. The use of hard contrast and clever lighting make every scene stand out. The flashback scenes look great too, even if we have to watch them through a weird TV screen. The sad thing here is the effect is actually really clever work from director Karl Freund and cinematographer Charles Stumar. TV’s were experimental in 1932, viewers at the time wouldn’t have thought “TV” whenever Imhotep uses his magic pool. The intention was to show a somewhat degraded image, to make it dream like. Unfortunately to me it just looks like Karloff is watching the Telly. If they had just skipped the black border, it would have aged better.

Some of the other effects show their age, but really most of it holds up. Not bad for a 93 year old movie. This movie looks better than some movies half that age. The recycled music and silence doesn’t grate too much here either (Compared to Frankenstein or Dracula), though using the exact same Swan Lake opening as they did with Dracula robs the movie of some originality. One year later and we’d start to see custom scores made for movies like this. Overall, while the movie still looks good, the plot feels a bit unbalanced. It is more concerned with the backstory, than the main story. Still, this is a strong 6/10. Worth a watch for any fan of horror or black and white movies in general.

For tonight’s horror I’m going back to the golden age of Universal’s dominance of the Horror genre and visiting the very first collaboration between the two biggest legends of that era – Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff. This is “The Black Cat” from 1934. Universal’s highest selling movie of that year, a movie that lay the foundation for the Psychological Horror sub-genre, a pre-code movie (meaning it could be edgier than those that would follow for the next few decades) and last but not least was one of the earliest movies to feature a continuous musical score (present for about 80% of the movie). Question is though does this 88 year old movie still stand up?

October Review Challenge – Day 22

Our story starts with Newlyweds Peter and Joan Allison (David Manners and Julie Bishop respectively) on their honeymoon in Hungary where they meet Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi), a Hungarian psychiatrist that is returning after being in a prison camp in Serbia for 15 years after WW1. After the bus they are on crashes, Peter and Dr. Werdegast take her to the home of Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) an Austrain architect. The home is built on the ruins of an old fort, which Poelzig used to be the commander of. Werdegast explains Poelzig is an old friend, though in truth they are bitter rivals with Werdegast believing Poelzig betrayed him and his men to the Russians during the war resulting in the death of thousands.

Once inside things start out friendly enough but soon become sinister. Werdegast believes Poelzig stole his wife from him, and later after he is shown her preserved body that he has killed her. This may be true as it seems Poelzig has a collection of dead women on display in glass cases. Also in the mansion, but unknown the guests is also Werdegast’s daughter. Poelzig has married her and told her that her father died in the war.

Eventually it becomes clear that Poelzig wants to sacrifice Joan in a Satanic ritual, but Werdegast is determined to stop him and take down his rival once and for good. Initially he plays Chess for the freedom of the newlyweds, but loses to Poelzig who then prevents the newlyweds from leaving, imprisons Peter and prepares Joan for her sacrifice. It is a conflict that would see few survivors of that fateful night. But you’ll have to watch this classic to learn any more.

Bitter Rivals

Karloff and Lugosi are better actors than they are usually given credit for and they both put in a good performance here. Interestingly playing bitter rivals on screen may have been the start of their real life rivalry. Despite working together eight times, Karloff usually got top billing and that never sat well with Lugosi. It’s possible their rivalry started during filming this movie, after all the top two horror stars of the day playing bitter rivals on screen, hard not to imagine them wanting to outperform each other and of course since they are playing bitter rivals that comes through on screen and makes for a definite highlight for the film.

The rest of the cast is just sort of there but when you’re on screen with two icons it’s hard not to get lost in the shuffle. None of them were bad though. Being a 30’s movie there is little in the way of effects and the horror is all implied, though those implications can at times be pretty grewsome, including someone being skinned alive (Just not on camera, though you see some shadows). As a psychological horror it doesn’t have to rely on monsters or direct conflict, a lot of it is about the build and it handles this pretty pretty well.

Sound and Fury

In regards to the musical score, this is something that while fairly ground breaking, hasn’t actually aged that well. The movie features a mixture of compositions by Liszt, Tchaikovsky and Chopin instead of original material and as a result lacks the same sort of impact as scores would later give to horror movies and also makes the soundtrack somewhat interchangeable with a lot of other films of the 1930’s. Of course as you’d expect from those three composers the music itself is of a very high standard but it tends to be a bit too overbearing and draws too much attention to itself.

That said it’s hard to judge how this was received at the time. Audiences used to silent movies were used to hearing continuous music, but earlier horrors of the 30’s such as Dracula and Frankenstein would have felt strangely silent, with an opening and closing theme but little else in between. Of course the same year as The Black Cat came out King Kong changed the game for film scores forever by featuring an entirely original score, so this was a product of a short transitional period for movie soundtracks.

The Black Cat

The title “The Black Cat” only really factors into the story a couple of times. It seems Werdegast has an extreme fear of black cats. So naturally his rival keeps a few of them around. The Black Cat is also pointed out to be symbolic of evil in the film and of course Poelzig is Satanist. But really the title of the film was just an excuse to link the story to Edgar Allan Poe’s story by the same name, to which it bares no resemblance at all.

One of the most interesting things I find with this film is that were it to be made in the 2020’s it would probably be 3 hours long, yet they told this story in one hour and five minutes. It’s not like the plot is overly simple either. True some characters could have been given more time, but the story is all there and the truth is the audience even in the day probably only cared about Karloff and Lugosi anyway. So if the daughter seems somewhat wasted and the husband and wife couple of little consequence, it’s not the biggest blow to the movie.

Conclusion

Anyway, all told there is a reason this is a classic. Rating it from the point of view of how it stands today however instead of how it must have felt when it came out I give this a strong 6.5/10 (Meaning I’ll likely make that 7/10 for my IMDB rating since I can’t do half points there). If I was reviewing this in 1934 though it would probably get an 8/10. So, it’s lost some points after 88 years but a 6.5/10 is still a strong score from me. Once again I am reminded why Universal’s Horror movies of this era are so well regarded.

Tag: Boris Karloff

The Mummy (1932)