Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Received wisdom dictates that Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale’s own follow-up to his epochal Frankenstein, is one of the few sequels that actually outclasses the original. Bettering a film as magnificent as Boris Karloff’s first outing as the nameless monster is quite a tall order, and although I accept I’m in a minority opinion, I really don’t think the sequel comes anywhere close; instead of the all-conquering masterpiece I was expecting, it’s actually a bit of a curate’s egg. Read more
Bride of the Monster (1955)
The second – and most successful – of Ed Wood’s Bela Lugosi films, Bride of the Monster is the closest the infamous director came to making a ‘conventional’ B-movie and, despite the flaws you come to expect in his works, is well worth having a look at. Read more
Cloverfield (2008)
The theme of the ‘common man’ is a recurrent one in poetry, the idea being that an untrained mind (as opposed to, oh, the massive genius of the poet let’s say) has a purer, more honest, richer and therefore more interesting experience than a mind bogged down by intellectual matters. Unhappily, that patronising assertion is alive and well in the entertainment industry, as manifested in the current obsession with “user generated content”. Read more
Contamination (1980)
Considering how closely intertwined science fiction and horror are, it’s surprising how few films successfully keep one foot in each genre. Most people would agree that Ridley Scott got the hybrid formula down to a tee with Alien; at the very least, director Luigi Cozzi thought so, which goes some way towards explaining why Contamination turned out the way it did. Read more
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
One of the later entries into Universal’s series of horror / monster movies, Creature from the Black Lagoon is largely just another variation of the well-worn ‘beauty and the beast’ premise mined by many other films, most notably King Kong (nasty scary monster falls in love with pretty girl; monster kidnaps girl; men hunt down monster). But whilst it doesn’t have anything vastly original to say - and lacks a knock-out performance from a Karloff or a Lugosi - it’s still a fabulously visual piece of work, with spades of atmosphere and some great design. Read more
Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
This is a really difficult film to review, mainly because several weeks after watching it I still have absolutely no idea what to make of it all. Another of Roger Corman’s spare-change affairs, made this time in one week, it’s a knockabout comedy of errors which also has a few occasional pretensions at being a serious horror film. The plot goes something like this: crook Sparks Moran sees an opportunity to make a fortune when revolution breaks out on a Caribbean island by helping loyalists escape on his boat, killing them and then blaming their deaths on a legendary sea monster supposed to inhabit the area. Unfortunately for Moran, the monster exists, and sets about attacking his boat. Read more
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
![Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde [1932]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0001EYSWQ.02._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde slipped easily into the cultural consciousness, to the extent that even people who are unfamiliar with the book will have a sketchy idea of its central theme. Much of this can probably be laid at the door of lazy newsreaders, who are adept at finding a neighbour of the latest serial killer who is willing to say that really they were actually quite nice to chat to over the garden fence and that they can’t believe they tortured cats as a child. Of course, this is precisely the kind of phenomenon that prompted Stevenson to write the book in the first place, and it’s perhaps not surprising that with such a meaty philosophical question to ponder we still haven’t found the answers some 120 years later. It also helps explain why the book lends itself so well to screen adaptations (if you can overlook the cameo in Van Helsing) as Stevenson raises the key question but can never really answer it; just what would happen if you could release your ‘bad’ self?
Rouben Mamoulin has a damned good stab at exploring the theme in this, the first sound version of the book. Like the vast majority of adaptations, the perspective of the work is shifted entirely from the narration of Utterson (who is entirely excluded here) to following Jekyll himself. Though this removes the mystery elements of the original story (where Jekyll and Hyde were presented as separate figures initially) I think it’s to the advantage of the film. Almost nobody now would sit down and watch a Jekyll and Hyde film without knowing that they were the same person, though my apologies if you would have and I’ve ruined it for you. You only have to endure Keanu Reeve’s grinding and distracting narration in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to know that an overly literal devotion to the original text is not always advisable for a film treatment. By focusing the story entirely on Jekyll’s downfall we’re not only forced to confront the horror of what is happening to this eminently likable man but must also try and decide who exactly is to blame for it.
I say this because from the start Jekyll himself is a complex character. The initial sugar-lumps of him lovingly tending to his patients in the charity hospital, charming his delectable fiancé, and mesmerising his audience with his scientific knowledge point to a man confident in himself and happy with the world around him. Mamoulin’s great success though is recognising that beneath this veneer things are not all that they seem. The first time we see Jekyll with Muriel Carew for example, we’d be forgiven for thinking that he is utterly devoted to her and wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with her (I lost count of the number of ‘I love you darling’s that were bandied around). What Mamoulin does excellently is show that this dependence is not necessarily a good thing and raises the possibility that Jekyll is almost too in love to the extent that it is a force of harm in his life rather than good. The subtlety in Stevenson’s story-brought out beautifully in this film-is that Jekyll experimented with the twin sides of his personality not because he was a virtuous and curious man of science but because he was a flawed man.
All too often adaptations paint the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde as an elemental struggle between the good and evil, with the latter, when released from its shackles, finally overpowering the former. What makes this film work so well is that it recognises that things are a lot more blurred than this. It’s a little underplayed in relation to Hyde, with his malevolence quickly anchored on sexual depravity rather than primeval brutality. He is quickly-too quickly perhaps-confined to scowling at people until towards the end of the film when things really get going. It’s difficult to resent Hyde because, unlike Jekyll, he is at least honest in his actions. It’s fascinating to see the duel between the ‘two’ intensify to the point where Hyde finally reveals the secret and curses the man he ‘hates most in the world’. It’s also instructive to note that this contrasts with Jekyll, who only seeks to stop Hyde once the killing starts and who even then never brings himself to express hatred for him. Once again the question of who is the more moral is not an easy one to answer. You can never quite tell whether Jekyll resents Hyde’s presence or whether he secretly longs to be overpowered by him and revels in seeing his long-supressed desires fulfilled. I suspect that it is the latter. Hyde is not a ‘bad’ Jekyll so much as Jekyll is a cowardly Hyde.
This is to say nothing of the superb job Mamoulin did in presenting the film. Frederic March is irreplaceable as Jekyll/Hyde, and gives a performance which has few rivals from the 1930s. The make-up on Hyde will be familiar to any viewer of Red Dwarf but March is flawless in using it to full effect. The first transformation is utterly mesmerizing and gives the Invisible Man a run for its money in the special effects department. I can’t praise this effort highly enough. Everything about it works, from the effective dissection of a moral minefield through to the way that it’s beautifully packaged. Though Hyde’s repugnance does eventually lead to the viewer losing their initial sympathy with him I am still unsure whether Dr. Jekyll was ever likeable at all. I think that this was the point all along and I’ll wager that I’d still be unsure after another 120 years.
Freaks (1932)
In the decades since its initial release, Freaks has lost none of its power to shock. Regardless of whether or not the film is any good it is a unique experience to behold. Tod Browning spared no effort in tracking down real circus and carnival performers to appear in his movie, with predictably genuine results. The problem is that he seems to have spent rather less time in deciding what he would do when he actually found his misfits. Read more
Godzilla (aka Gojira) (1954)
It’s a testament to how much of a bad rap the film Godzilla has received over the years that any discussion of the movie always has to start with a clarification of which film you’re talking about. No, it’s not the 1998 abomination with Matthew Broderick; no, it’s not the re-edit with Raymond Burr and a bunch of dubbed Japanese actors; and it’s not even any of the sequels you maybe dimly remember being showed on TV during the holidays. It’s the very first Godzilla film, made in 1954, released in Japan under the title of Gojira, and it’s a masterpiece. Read more
Pumpkinhead (1988)
I’m in a real bind trying to review Pumpkinhead, primarily because it had the potential to be so much better it turned out to be. Stan Winston is one of the finest special effects guys going (think The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands) and Pumpkinhead marked his directorial debut, a point obvious from many of its strengths. Read more
Silent Hill (2006)
Computer games have something of a chequered history when it comes to big screen adaptations. Actually I suppose that’s not quite true as their heritage is quite consistent; basically, they’re usually very bad indeed. I’d still like to know who decided that Bob Hoskins would make a good Super Mario, or that Kylie Minogue’s heart-warming portrayal of quintessential Australian suburb-dweller could only be followed by a part in Street Fighter. More recently we’ve had the slightly more accomplished Resident Evil series which wasn’t as bad (no really) as a lot of people feared.
The Invisible Man (1933)
Somewhere along the line, director James Whale decided to start incorporating comedy into his horror movies. Many people consider 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein to be the high-point of his genre-mixing, but as far as I’m concerned it’s his earlier film The Invisible Man, based on HG Wells’ novel, that’s the most successful. Whilst Bride is obviously a great film, the camp comedy doesn’t sit too well with the tragic elements of Mary Shelley’s story and Karloff’s doleful performance. The fact that the Invisible Man’s central protagonist is, erm, an invisible man, gives a greater opportunity for the comedy to arise organically out of scenario, especially with the script’s bumbling policemen, hysterical barmaids and angry mobs. Read more
The Mummy (1932)
The Mummy is almost like an early greatest hits film for the fledgling Universal monster series, pairing director Karl W Freund (responsible for the lovely cinematography on Dracula) with Boris Karloff, then riding high on the success of Frankenstein. The combination is, predictably, absolutely electric; but whilst the film is undeniably a masterpiece, it’s also an unexpectedly quiet, almost dreamy affair. Wisely, Freund doesn’t try to get Karloff to repeat his Frankenstein performance as Im-Ho-Tep; all we see of the mummified version of his character is his face and hand, leaving the rest to the imagination. Read more
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