Love me tender
Posted on March 5, 2010While waiting for an interlibrary loan to help my research into my next new piece, I thought I’d do a little house-keeping:
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First up, I have recovered, revised, re-formatted and added a few screenshots to:
In which Bela Lugosi, kindly village doctor by day, mad scientist by night, disposes of his enemies by (i) creating giant killer bats; (ii) teaching his bats to home in on a certain ingredient in an experimental shaving-lotion; and (iii)Â persuading his enemies to rub some of the lotion on the tender part of their neck. It’s foolproof!
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I have also given a similar makeover to the film’s sequel-in-name-only, DEVIL BAT’S DAUGHTER (1946).
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Plus, I’ve re-formatted REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936) and ROCKETSHIP X-M (1950), and fixed up the screenshots in THE WALKING DEAD (1936). (Sort of; they’re still a bit dark, I think.)
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Categories: New Reviews
Wow, Devil Bat’s Daughter … I miss the days when every cinematic monster and madman had to found a dynasty to keep the sequels going.
05.03.2010 10:15
I finally saw The Walking Dead recently.
I now encourage everyone who hasn’t to do so immediately.
After all was said and done, I found it surprising that this particular version of “vengeance from beyond the grave” really isn’t one that’s been repeated a lot (if at all). The lack of direct revenge, the spiritual undertones (sometimes overtones)…really unique, and really interesting.
And, of course, Karloff’s wonderful. My favorite moment comes just after the third “murder”; Ellman comes out of his trance and is by turns confused and frightened…and Karloff uses nothing more than his eyes to convey all of this in a span of maybe two seconds. What a treasure that man was.
This is definitely among his best works; I think I only like The Body Snatcher more, and that’s only because John Gray is a strong contender for best screen villain in history. (I mean, he makes simple greetings utterly sinister. Who’d have thought the phrase, “Hello, Toddy!” could make your spine tingle?) I have a feeling the glee Gray takes in being evil is only partly acting; Karloff looks to be having the time of his life, which only adds to the whole experience.
05.03.2010 11:04
You said a mouthful, Rev, and you’re quite right.
Just to put things in perspective, The Walking Dead has the same running-time as The Devil Bat. It is just the most amazingly efficient and energetic piece of film-making. It really is Warners at its best: everything is absolutely focussed and trimmed to the bone, lean and mean. This is why I get so impatient with these rambling three hour modern films that go on and on but don’t say anything more than could be said in ninety minutes.
And I have to declare, having finally seen it on DVD instead of fuzzy VHS, that The Walking Dead might just push Frankenstein for the greatest laboratory sequence in the history of science fiction. It’s astonishing.
I don’t know if you listened to the commentary track by Gregory Mank, Rev? He made the point of mentioning that all the actresses he interviewed about Boris always said the same thing: “Oh, he had the kindest eyes!”
The other thing that the commentary track makes clear is what an irredeemable piece of trash The Walking Dead would have been if Boris hadn’t forcibly intervened! đŸ™‚
The Body Snatcher is actually my favourite of the Lewtons. People always talk about the Boris/Bela angle, but it’s the scenes between Boris and Henry Daniell that make the film for me; they are absolutely chilling.
You’ll never get rid of me, Toddy…
05.03.2010 16:19
I bet I can tie these two films together even so, with an overly long and complex explanation that will be the ultimate in Ken’s-Rule-of-Plot-Holes goodness. Ready? Here we go:
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A Romanian gentleman, a scientist, was attempting to scientifically reproduce a curious condition alleged to have been present in the pet bats harbored by certain of his ancestors…namely, that they were overly large and had a taste for human blood. The existence of these bats and their prominent association to one particular family, coupled with the locals’ extreme beliefs in religion and folklore, was what had originally given rise to the Dracula myth. The scientist is conducting a series of experiments on bats in an attempt to prove the truth of the clan story — that the bats’ unusual size and tastes were the result of their being affected by a freak electrical storm, which used their cave (located on the ancestral lands) as a natural conductor. If he can just reproduce the phenomenon artificially, he feels, his family’s name can at last be cleared.
Unfortunately, the Romanians in his area are still beset by folklore and legends, and the unwanted attention and harassment of the authorities forces him to leave his home country for Scotland, taking only his modest fortune with him. There, he takes on the guise of Paul Carruthers, a kindly local doctor. (The locals, puzzled by his non-Scottish accent, assume that he has emigrated from southern England, or perhaps Wales.) He falls in love with a local woman, marries her, and has a daughter. But he continues his research. Several years into his marriage, he has a breakthrough…a partial success. Unfortunately, his experiments get loose, and attack and kill his wife. Heartbroken and guilt-ridden, and fearful of being discovered, the good doctor books passage on a ship to America, in hopes of covering his tracks. His young and impressionable daughter, associating her father with bats, comes to believe over time that they were strangely connected, and changes her last name to her mother’s maiden name as a way of dissociating herself from him.
Carruthers resumes his activities in the town of Heathville, Illinois, where the locals, pleased by their new kindly village doctor but puzzled as to his accent, eventually just decide that all Scots talk that way and forget about it. With his money running out, and in need of funds to continue his experiments, he agrees to work for a cosmetics company run by the scions of two local families. Not knowing much about cosmetics, and believing that his experiments in the area will prove failures, he opts to take a steady paycheck over a percentage of the profits. Then he watches, flabbergasted, as his inventions become wild successes, making the company millions. His decision looks poor now, and Heath and Morton refuse to renegotiate the deal. Carruthers, embittered, now has even more reason to finish his research. He finally succeeds, leading to the events of “The Devil Bat.”
Now, the move to New York…umm…err…okay. So, as it turns out, when Carruthers was attacked by his own creation, he wasn’t actually killed, but sent into a deep coma! (Yeah, that’s the ticket.) Waking up some years later from his convalescence, he escapes from the minimum-security facility holding him and travels to Westchester County, New York, where he uses his remaining money (cleverly secreted in the interim) to resume his experiments. Now knowing what to do, he is able to replicate his results in no time. Unfortunately, his weird behavior has aroused the suspicions of the locals, all of whom are VERY certain that no one from Illinois has an accent like his — and upon investigating, turn up his old background, leading the local rag to write about the whole sordid affair in a front page article.
Carruthers only finds out that his past has been uncovered upon reading the morning paper, too late to stop the mob from town which is intent on bringing him to justice. In the process of assaulting Carruthers, they release his bats, who kill the doctor, and several townspeople, before vanishing into the night, never to be seen again. The news of the kindly doctor’s exploits gradually spreads far and wide, eventually reaching the ears of his daughter in Scotland, who sets off searching for her father, heading for his last known location — Wardsley — thus bringing about the events of “Devil Bat’s Daughter.”
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I think a judicious application of Ockham’s Razor will reveal that it is much more likely the authors of both films were attempting to tell this coherent and believable fictional tale, well-grounded in contemporary science — and simply left some bits out — than that some Hollywood Poverty-Row house frantically turned out a retcon-rich sequel to a barely successful movie in the attempt to make a quick buck off a naive and unsuspecting filmhouse-going public. ‘Cause really…would THAT happen?
05.03.2010 16:30
Ms. Kingsley: I do tend to ramble…sorry about that. Especially ’cause I fear I’m about to do it again…
I didn’t have the DVD; I DVR’d a whole bunch of movies off of my new favorite channel, TCM, back around Hallowe’en and am slowly working my way through them. I got to see some Corman/Price Poe movies, a few silent horror films…but the highlight was a full day of Karloff. Sadly, I didn’t have room to record everything I wanted to see, but I got the ones the B-Masters (and others) have raved about, plus a couple that looked interesting (The Ghoul and The Man They Could Not Hang, for example).
I’m with you on the Karloff/Lugosi vs. Karloff/Daniell scenes. I’m also with his co-stars; some early scenes in TWD with Ellman on the street, and later in the courtroom, there are moments where I’d almost say he had puppy dog eyes. Which makes his subsequent eye-acting all the more wonderful…
06.03.2010 10:24
Dusty Doiel
I found a great…
25.04.2024 14:09