I’m logging my Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini
reviews at the end of every week in October. I write it. You read it. No one
needs to get hurt.
October 18
Phantom of the Opera (1943- dir. Arthur Lubin) **½
With the original era of Universal horror having its last
hurrah with 1941’s The Wolf Man, the
studio started dipping back into old properties in earnest throughout the
forties. This usually manifested in sequels uniting the Wolf Man, Dracula, and
the Frankenstein Monster in various configurations, but there were also a
couple of Full-on remakes in order. The first was Charles Laughton’s
reinterpretation of Chaney in 1939’s Hunchback
of Notre Dame. The second found another formidable actor attempting to fill
the Man of a Thousand Faces’ boots. No doubt Claude Rains is a superb actor and
one of Universal’s most unforgettable horror stars, but the version of Phantom of the Opera in which he starred
is utterly forgettable. Because of the U.S.’s recent entry into World War II,
the studio got cold feet and decided to tone down too many of the elements that
made the original so chilling, most notably doing a half-assed job on the
Phantom makeup for fear of reminding viewers of those who’d been disfigured in
the war. It gives the key unmasking sequence the impact of a soggy washcloth.
The rest of the movie is pretty lame too, with an abundance of corny musical
numbers that go on and on, soppy romance, and fatigued comic relief where the
horror should be. Rains is very sympathetic but not at all menacing as the
Phantom with none of the delicious mania he supplied in The Invisible Man. While the decision to shoot in color made
commercial sense—and the film certainly looks sumptuous— it also made this Phantom the odd-man out from Universal’s
greatest monster pictures. Tellingly, the other second-wave monster pictures
would return to black and white. This is less essential than even the monster
rallies, which are at least terrific fun.
Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979- dir. Harry Hurwitz) *½
Nearly every detail of this soft-core disco vampire comedy
seems consciously designed to make it rank as one of the worst movies ever
made. The awful script. The cheesy, gratuitous nudity. The absolutely horrid
acting. The rhythmically-challenged dancing. The sad appearances of John
Carradine as the count and Yvonne De Carlo as his old flame. Brother Theodore’s
hammy mugging as a werewolf/Renfield type character who longs for the title
vamp. She is really the one who brings the terrible Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula to unprecedented heights of
terribility. Crazy-eyed, perpetually grinning Nai Bonet must have taken a page
from the Bela Lugosi book of acting by learning her lines phonetically, because
there isn’t a trace of expression in anything she says. This would be prime
stuff for at-home Mystery Science Theatre sessions if it wasn’t so boring. That
half star is for some pretty good numbers by a disco group called Moment of
Truth.
October 21
Blackenstein (1973- dir. William A. Levey) **
