Cures for the Universal Monsters

 HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Watching "House of Dracula" can be fun but it is not wicked, macabre fun. There are far too many abrupt changes and inconsistencies from the other Universal Horror films that preceded it, leaving us with leftovers that don't quite jell. There is enough to enjoy on some level but the movie pulls itself away far too quickly before ending rather abruptly.

Count Dracula (John Carradine) is seeking help from Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens), who is known for curing people of ailments. Vampirism and lycanthropy are not part of his forte since the reasonable doctor doesn't believe in such things yet the good Count wants a cure. There is also poor Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr., sporting a mustache) who turns into a werewolf when the moon is too bright ("There is something tragic about him"). Both characters died at the end of the last horror entry, "House of Frankenstein," though there is no explanation as to how they were resurrected (in those days, the filmmakers did not care about such things). Anyway, Larry is seeking a cure as well and he is still horrified at the prospect of transformation. Unfortunately, a blood transfusion involving the Count turns Dr. Edelman into a raving madman with black eyes (why the Count does this is beyond my understanding). For whatever reason, Dr. Edelman becomes half-vampire and half-raving lunatic to the point that he kills his regular coach driver without provocation.

There are two distinct nurses that work and live with Dr. Edelman and they include Miliza Morelle (Martha O'Driscoll), the blonde who is briefly under Dracula's spell while she plays Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and a far more Satanic melody, and Nina (Jane Adams), the brunette with a hump! My question is: who cleans up this large castle-like manor with various rooms and entryways and a basement. I doubt it is the two nurses who spend time in a room-controlled lab working with spores that might help cure the Wolf Man. Meanwhile, after Larry Talbot's nearly-hilarious suicide attempt, the doctor rescues him and finds Frankenstein's Monster in a cave full of quicksand. If you recall the ending of "House of Frankenstein," sure, quicksand was an issue but it was in the middle of a swamp and how the heck did the Monster find itself in a cave near a tunnel coincidentally adjacent to Dr. Edelman's castle!

Convoluted and contrived, "House of Dracula" is a mess in terms of narrative consistency and logic. None of these characters are developed beyond two dimensions, though Onslow Stevens is positively creepy as the doctor. Martha O'Driscoll has a certain allure and I did feel genuinely bad for Nina and her unfortunate hump. It is that the doctor is facing far too many conflicts, between trying to cure Dracula, Wolf Man and facing his own vampiric tendencies, not to mention the contrived addition of Frankenstein's Monster who dies yet again in a blazing lab fire. Take out the Monster and the doctor's ridiculous need to bring it back to life, focus on Wolf Man and Dracula and enhance Morelle's attraction to Dracula and her sympathy to Larry Talbot and this might have been a winner. Not a bad time at the movies but there is too much story for such a short running time. 

I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby

 BRINGING UP BABY (1938)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

On my list of the Greatest Movies Ever Made

"Bringing Up Baby" is a rip-roaringly hilarious screwball comedy, one of the best ever made and by no less than the fast-paced talents of director Howard Hawks who already directed one of my favorite films, "His Girl Friday." Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and a couple of leopards, a negligee, an archaeological bone-loving dog (!) are a hefty combination that may make one scoff at such a description yet, don't worry, this movie is too funny to care whether it all makes sense or not.

It is hard to imagine Cary Grant as an impotent, meek paleontologist named David Huxley yet here we are. An important dinosaur bone, an intercostal clavicle, is needed to complete a Brontosaurus skeleton. It is being delivered to Huxley's museum after years of arduous work in finding it yet a one million dollar donation for the museum by way of the wealthy Elizabeth Random (May Robson) is also imminent. There is also Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker), Huxley's fiancee who implies how she is keeping him impotent on their wedding day because his work is far more important. Huxley's life is already in a whirlwind and it becomes a cyclone of chaos when he inadvertently meets the sassy, carefree Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) whose aunt happens to be, wait for it, Elizabeth! From the near destruction of his car to helping Susan with a tame Brazilian leopard to finding themselves at his aunt's home and a series of comical random events, it is clearly evident that Susan is in love with Mr. Huxley from their initial meeting. She is also accident-prone as she consistently trips over objects and gets her glamorous dress ripped. Huxley is also a little accident-prone as he hits his head, trips over tree branches and just about everything else, falls into a pond (as does Susan) and gets his tuxedo ripped! Well, gee, who would you rather choose to spend your life with in the midst of such uncontrollable bedlam, humorless Ms. Swallow or spirited anything-goes Ms. Vance? (Don't answer that). 

The movie is pure physical chaos and not a single steady shot ever has any character frozen long enough before they are engaged in activity. After the dog buries that intercoastal clavicle somewhere in Elizabeth's acreage, David can't sit still at dinner and follows the dog when it leaves his resting place. Again and again. It is all consistent motion and, as a formidable screwball comedy with first-rate pungent dialogue by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde (the latter who wrote the initial short story) and a formidable director like Howard Hawks, it works perfectly and is perfectly balanced in rhythm, tone and pacing. Most modern comedies of the last thirty years, even the great ones, move more leisurely depending on the plot. With "Bringing Up Baby," it is all a bunch of chaotic situations that fester and become frenzied in spirit with enough breathing spaces in between so we can catch up with our laughter. Even at a fast-pace, the humanity of its central characters is never lost. Grant and Hepburn are just that supernaturally good and hysterically funny - the best romantic couple you might see in a romantic comedy in the 1930's with the exception of Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in "It Happened One Night." Shame Hepburn never did screwball again and Grant (borrowing Harold Lloyd's horn-rimmed glasses) never played such a soft, square character like this one again. "Bringing Up Baby" is a national treasure.

You might not look at shadows the same way again

 VAMPYR (1932)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Ethereal and yet haunting in imagery and atmosphere, "Vampyr" is one of the great films of the horror genre though the film itself is not exclusively horror. It is more of a meditation on horror, a meditation on the spectral and the unexplained and what may or may not be visible to our eyes. There is a vampire in the film yet she does not bare any fangs nor is she monstrous in appearance. Everyone in "Vampyr" seem to be a ghostly apparition in their look and appearance - they are only waiting for the inevitable.

Muted expressions carry "Vampyr" from its first scenes of Allan Gray (Nicolas de Gunzburg), a quiet, somewhat inexpressive visitor to a mysterious inn that is as spooky as any Universal or Hammer horror film. He is the uniquely impertinent hero, meaning he has no claim to anything, has no real visible emotions and is curiously remote - he only expresses shock at some older man in his room (the father of two girls, Léone and Giselle) placing a package on a nightstand. The package turns out to be a book on vampires. 

The dialogue is often terse and the actions of many of the characters inconclusive - in fact, there is no payoff for most scenes as we traditionally expect in vampire films. We only learn later who this ambiguous older woman with a cane is - the vampire of the story known as Marguerite Chopin (Henriette Gérard) - yet we assume everyone knows who she is. Is everyone under her spell? Nobody seems to fear her and we never see this "vampyr" attack anyone or bite any intended victim, only after the fact. Her purpose is inexplicable yet she somehow keeps this inn and its surroundings closed-off and there is a sense of claustrophobia. There is also some castle and a mill and the settings somehow seem interchangeable. At times, I had no idea where I was despite the mobile subjectivity of Allan parading around the general interiors and the openness of the field, depicted with hard grainy black-and-white images.

I do not expect to make any sense out of "Vampyr" - it is a uniquely more poetic exercise than Murnau's horrifying vampire masterpiece "Nosferatu," released a decade earlier. Whereas "Nosferatu" is clear and precise in its intentions, "Vampyr" is decidedly unclear and imprecise. At one point, Allan is dead yet his presumed soul leaves the body only for Allan to find his dead body in a coffin with a glass partition! To make matters even more eerie, we watch as the coffin is lifted and carried out and we see everything from his point-of-view in the coffin (these images are the most startling). It is hard to tell from the conclusion if our impertinent hero is actually dead or if he has been resurrected or if all this is a dream.  

"Vampyr" is ostensibly a dream exercise, an excuse for director Carl Theodor Dreyer to mix the supernatural with the misty surroundings in some sort of internal logic of a dream. There are some hypnotic, impossibly filmed shots that have haunted me for years - the shadows of children along a river bank, the shadows of people dancing and playing merry music as the camera prowls along a series of walls, the terrifying scene of Sybille Schmitz's Léone as her face becomes demonic while staring at her sister Giselle, the flour mill that suffocates the doctor (the vampire's accomplice), and the limping soldier whose shadows acts independently. "Vampyr" may be purposely vague in meaning yet it is a tremendously moody assault on our senses, albeit in a quiet, leisurely way that sneaks up on you and curdles your blood. You might not look at shadows the same way again. 

Kubrick's first foray into cinema is a bit of a bore

 FEAR AND DESIRE (1953)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Stanley Kubrick was one of our greatest cinematic visionaries, a man who had a pessimistic outlook on the world and humanity and found stories that accentuated that. Naturally, this is a simplistic statement and Kubrick was much more complex in his attempts to understand man's inhumanity to man. War movies became one of his specialties in this area of concentration, from "Paths of Glory" to "Full Metal Jacket." "Fear and Desire" was Kubrick's first film and, of course, his first war film but you will have a difficult time staying awake for this one.

There is a war brewing in the horizon as four soldiers embark on finding a way out of whatever island they are on. They try to forge a raft of sorts yet there are complications. Bombs are heard in the background and a woman (Virginia Leith) enters the picture as she leaves a lake, appearing at first like some sort of nymph (she seems unreal, like a figment of someone's imagination). The men hide from her but she finds them and they bind her to a tree! This episode had me a bit perplexed since I know they can't let her go because she spotted them, but binding her to a tree? One of the soldiers who is slowly becoming shell-shocked (Paul Mazursky, overacting to the hilt) tries to comfort the girl and lets her go after trying to have his way with her only to then shoot her! Of all the scenes in "Fear and Desire," this singularly shocking moment shows the unfortunate decisions a soldier makes behind enemy lines. 

Then there is the general, from the enemy side, staying in some cabin and perhaps waiting for the inevitable. The general and the captain (unmistakably looking like Nazis and played by Kenneth Harp and Stephen Coit) are played by the same actors who play the supposed American heroes. Why? Perhaps Kubrick is stating that both sides have men making their battle strategy decisions and are no different from each other. Interesting angle, almost something Luis Bunuel would have done as a visual stunt.

I hate to knock this film that even Kubrick hated (reportedly, he wanted all copies of the film destroyed) but it doesn't quite work. The narration is superfluous and obvious, some of which are the thoughts of the soldiers (Terrence Malick did the same thing in "The Thin Red Line"), the action is often inert and the actors are just not up to the task of a supposed anti-war film. There are some stunning black-and-white images but that is the best thing I can say about it. Kubrick was still learning up until he made his first great film, "The Killing," in 1957. He was just experimenting here, figuring himself out. For Kubrick fans and film fans, it is a must-see whether you are bored or not.