Hollywood Legends Of Horror Collection (Warner Bros.)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B Films:
Doctor X (1932) B-
The Mask Of Fu Manchu (1932) B
Mad Love (1935) B+
Mark Of The Vampire (1935, aka Vampires Of Prague) C+
The Devil-Doll (1936, aka The Witch Of Timbuctoo) C+
The Return Of Doctor X (1939) C+
In the
1930s, Universal Pictures may have been a smaller company, but they became the
king of Monster and Horror films. Starting
with Dracula in 1931, the run of
hits and classics is legendary, well-known and still influencing filmmaking to
this day. However, though the biggest
studios had other genres locked up (Musicals, Gangster Pictures, Costume
Dramas), they were not just going to sit back and let a smaller company
monopolize the market. Though they did
not have the classic monsters, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros. decided to
take on the genre in ways only they could and the new Hollywood Legends Of Horror Collection gives us six really
interesting and enduring films that have had their own influence.
Warner
Bros., controlling the Turner Entertainment catalog, has the films of both
studios and this set offers three DVD double features. Four of the films are MGM, the other two
Warner Bros. and are films that used to be shown on TV often in syndication up
to the early 1980s. Like so many such
films, they have not been seen as much via the advent of cable, home video and
just getting lost to slick new product that most often cannot remember watching
now.
Charles
Brabin (as well as an uncredited Charles Vidor) directed The Mask Of Fu Manchu and that is paired with Tod Browning’s Mark Of The Vampire. Long before Christopher Lee immortalized the
role and political correctness pushed Sax Rohmer’s legendary madman
underground, Boris Karloff played the sadistic title character, out to rule the
world and stop “the white man” at any cost.
The film is a hoot in its strange sense of racism, with a pre-stardom
Myrna Loy as his exotic assistant and Jean Hersholt in a solid supporting
role. Karloff is amazing as the villain
and the torture sequences are ahead of their time considering how graphic the
genre has become, particularly of late.
The chase is on for a valued item that will make Fu Manchu even more
powerful unless he is stopped.
Well, MGM
got Cedric Gibbons to do the Art Direction and when you add the clothes, you
get something that shows its age a bit, yet really has the money up on
screen. The film was a hit, but pre-WWII
pressure from China convinced MGM not to do any sequels, though the character
would rise again in a 1940 serial from Republic Pictures (reviewed elsewhere on
this site) and had already surfaced in early sound films with future Charlie
Chan Warner Oland. This is a strong,
underrated film that all true Horror fans will enjoy.
Browning
had directed the original Dracula
with Bela Lugosi, so MGM was happy to have him for Freaks the following year, but it bombed. For Mark
Of The Vampire, they decided to go for the comedy more than Horror and it
is a good, if not great film as Lugosi, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allen, Jean
Hersholt and Lionel Atwill join Browning for a remake of his 1927 silent classic
London After Midnight. It is an interesting film that works more
than not and is worth a look.
Doctor X and The Return Of Doctor X were made seven years apart, with the first
film directed by Michael Curtiz in one of his more interesting films. Lionel Atwill is “the full-moon strangler”
and Fay Wray (just before King Kong)
may just be his next victim. It has aged
in odd ways, but Warner intended it as a showcase for two-strip Technicolor and
it works on that level when the film does not.
There is a black and white version, but the superior color version is
the only one here.
Vincent
Sherman’s Return Of Doctor X was
always black and white and features the bizarre Humphrey Bogart performance as
the next X. He looks like False Face
from the 1960s Batman series and the
film is often considered a bomb with Bogart badly miscast. However, this indirect sequel has its moments
and makes for interesting viewing as this X is also up to no good. Will his respectability as a doctor save him,
or his face give him away? Rosemary
Lane, Dennis Morgan and Huntz Hall also star.
These are the Warner Bros. entries in this set.
The final
set is Mad Love and The Devil-Doll, with Tod Browning back
directing another genre film playing it sort of safe. The topic this time is miniaturization, with
the crazy/interesting plot about the “new science” being used on animals so the
world’s pet food supply goes further! Of
course, it is not long before humans are being zapped down to size. Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O’Sullivan and
Frank Lawton lead the cast of the very interesting subgenre entry involving
shrinking people and the world.
Finally,
there is cinematographer-turned-director Karl Freund’s Mad Love, a remake of 1924 silent classic Hands Of Orlac. Like Alfred
Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and
because the original had already given away the big plot twist, MGM’s writers
reveal that Peter Lorre’s Doctor Gogol is the villain, then derives all kinds
of suspense from it and makes Gogol more likable that the typical boo-hiss
villain would be. The doctor is an
innovative surgeon with certain obsessions and they involve an intertwining of
pleasure and death as seen in stage productions. He lives in a creepy house with its own
hospital and staff, most of who (including Keye Luke as his operating
assistant) know he is a little off his respectable rocker.
Gogol has
a particular interest in Yvonne (Frances Drake), an actress in the S&M
stage play from the past. As he hears
she is leaving town, he is even more upset that she has secretly married the
Steven (Colin Clive), the play’s very talented composer/pianist. However, things take a strange turn when a
train wreck crushes Steven’s hands.
Yvonne makes a near-Faustian deal with Gogol to save his hands instead
of having them amputated. This occurs
around the time Gogol is seeing the latest beheading/execution of a criminal,
this time a deadly knife-throwing expert named Rollo (Edward Brophy) being
executed overseas as the U.S. has rescinded criminal deportation.
Gogol
lies and acts as if he has saved the crushed hands, when he really replaced
Orlac’s with Rollo’s, which suddenly gives Stephen the desire to throw knives
and maybe even kill!
It is a
masterful piece of storytelling and remarkably was too disturbing for U.S.
audiences (and apparently too smart for film critics of the time) and sadly
bombed, but since has become an all-time classic with an amazing performance by
Lorre, the last directorial work of Freund and a resulting film with a huge
influence that has reached all the way to Hitchcock and even Stanley Kubrick
(namely, Dr. Strangelove). Still ahead of it time in some ways, it is
the strongest of the six films here that show how two giant major studios in
the Classical Hollywood period did to respond to the Horror classics factory
that was Universal. This is a great set
that belongs on the same shelf as those Universal Monster sets and Warner’s
recent Val Lewton collection from their RKO holdings, making it one of the best
classic films DVD sets to own yet.
The 1.33
X 1 image on each film is not bad for its age, all in black and white except
for the first Doctor X, one of only
two-dozen two-strip Technicolor sound films ever produced. Warner used two-strip the following year for
the Mystery Of The Wax Museum (1933,
on Warner’s DVD for the 3-D 1953 House
Of Wax remake), which turned out to be the last feature film ever to
utilize the system as the legendary three-strip version took permanent
hold. Martin Scorsese even recently
recreated the two-strip look of the first half of his underrated The Aviator.
The
cinematographers for each film are Chester Lyons and the legendary Gregg Toland
on Mad Love, Leonard Smith on The Devil-Doll, the legendary James
Wong Howe on Mark Of The Vampire, Tony
Gaudio (later of The Adventures Of Robin
Hood on HD-DVD elsewhere on this site) on The Mask Of Fu Manchu, Ray Rennahan (of that 1933 Mystery Of The Wax Museum) on Doctor X and Sid Hickox (later of Them! & a few Howard Hawks
classics) on The Return Of Doctor X. Yes, there is grain and these are limited by
the DVD format in detail, but the look of these films are often amazing and
even when visual effects in some have dated, they are charming in their
ambition.
The Dolby
Digital is 1.0 Mono on the films, yet 2.0 on the commentary tracks, some of the
shorts and even trailers. There is
backgrounds hiss on the older programming one way or the other, but it is still
in better shape than it might be otherwise if Turner Entertainment had not
treated the catalog as well as they had.
Music composers for each film include Dimitri Tiomkin on Mad Love, Franz Waxman (plus an
unlisted Edward Ward) on The Devil-Doll,
an unlisted Edward Ward on Mark Of The
Vampire, an unlisted William Axt on The
Mask Of Fu Manchu, and an unlisted Bernhard Kaun on both Doctor X and The Return Of Doctor X.
Extras
vary from each film to film pairing.
Every film has a trailer except Fu
Manchu, which does offer a great audio commentary by writer Greg Mank,
while Mark Of The Vampire has a
commentary by Kim Newman & Steve Jones that is also very informative and
interesting. Writer Steve Haberman has a
great audio commentary on Mad Love,
while the two Doctor X films sport
commentaries by Horror scholar Scott MacQueen (first film) and director Vincent
Sherman joined by Steve Haberman on the sequel.
No featurettes or stills sections for art and promo materials, but the
commentaries are strong and back a very strong key set of Horror classics
everyone should see.
- Nicholas Sheffo
