The Phantom Of The Opera (1943)

I saw the silent version of The Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney on PBS when I was a kid.  I was waiting for that pivotal scene where Mary Philben removes the mash from the Phantom’s face revealing the disfigured face that I knew from my Aurora model kit.  I had never considered any of the other versions as anything more than pretenders to the throne, and had never watched any of them.  When Universal released the Universal Monsters DVD box set, they chose to include the 1943 version of the Phantom of the Opera with Claude Rains.  For some reason my daughter seemed particularly excited to watch this movie, so we popped it in and continued through the box set.

I was a little surprised once again at how little actual screen time the Phantom gets.  We see quite a bit of Erique Claudin (Claude Rains) before he gets disfigured and starts haunting the opera house.  This appears to have been the version that Phantom of the Paradise took its cue from as the original 1925 version features no disfiguring sequence.  Unfortunately, the makeup for the disfigured Phantom was quite a disappointment.  It may have been consistent with the look of a man who had acid thrown in his face, but it was not as interesting as Chaney’s original.  It also seems that the makeup ran further down the actor’s face when his mask was removed than it did when the mask was in place.

The Phantom of the Opera is a fine film, but I was hoping for more menace from the Phantom, and I was hoping also for a more menacing looking Phantom as well.  So I give this version of Phantom of the Opera 3 stars, taking away 1 star for the lack of Phantom menace.  Feel free to groan, but I had to make the pun.

Shadow Of The Vampire

I’m not sure when I first saw Nosferatu.  It may have been in one of my film classes at WV State or it may have been at one of the local libraries.  I do remember watching it, however.  When I first heard about Shadow of the Vampire on the Internet back in 1999, it sounded interesting.  It revived memories of the silent classic around which the film is based.  The plot of Shadow of the Vampire is that Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau (played by John Malkovich) hired an actual vampire to portray Count Orlok in his film.  The actor was Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe). 

There have been many urban legends about Schreck and Nosferatu and Shadow of the Vampire uses those myths to weave its tale.  I remember reading in Famous Monsters about some of these, including one that claims Max Schrek may have been a stage name as Schrek is German for “fear”.  I don’t know if this is correct, but the IMDB lists Schreck as the actor’s birth name and lists several other films that Schrek appeared in.

Shadow of the Vampire’s trailer makes it out to be almost a comedy, but I didn’t find much of it comedic.  It is not really much of a horror film either as there aren’t many scares to found in the film either.  It is a decent drama about making a movie.  The conceit of pretending that Max Schreck truly was a vampire is amusing and allows for a nice little “what if” spin.  Dafoe does a wonderful job as Schrek and Malkovich is equally wonderful as Murnau.

I was a little disappointed in the film, but mostly because it was sold as a form of comedy, and I as I stated, there really aren’t many humorous moments in the film.  In fact one of the bits that works as a bit of dark humor in the trailer with Murnau telling Schrek that he can’t kill his camera man plays completely natural in the film itself.  The acting is great.  The makeup and all the technical aspects are dazzling, but the script just left me a little unsatisfied.  I give Shadow of the Vampire 2 stars.

Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood

I remember seeing Won Ton Ton at the Cinema South when it first came out and thinking it was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen.  Much of this was due to one scene where Won Ton Ton the German Shepard cocks his leg and pees all over Art Carney’s leg.  It was the first time I had seen this done in a film and it seemed so funny.  34 years later the movie is no where near as funny as I recalled, but the cameos from the stars of the golden age of Hollywood are much more interesting to me.

The film is packed with cameos from George Jessel, Henny Youngman, Milton Berle, Johnny Weissmuller, Stepin Fetchit, Andy Devine, and many more.  The plot involves a wannabe director and a wannabe actress that get mixed up with a performing dog that becomes a Hollywood sensation.  Bruce Dern and Madeline Kahn are the two wannabes who find work in the silent movies produced by Art Carney because of the dog.  Won Ton Ton is a veiled take off of Rin Tin Tin, who was a very famous and prolific animal performer.

Dern’s character seems less likable watching the film now.  He is a manipulator and while his machinations seemed funny to a 12 year old, they now make him seem scummy.  Madeline Khan’s character also seems a little too willing to sell herself out.  She practically allows herself to be raped to be considered for a role in a movie and then later hits the street corner with fellow hard luck actress Teri Garr to try their hands at being prostitutes.  Some of the humor that just seemed wacky in 1976, seems cruel when looked at with an older eye and modern sensibilities.  In addition to jokes about rape there are jokes concerning animal cruelty and suicide.  Another subplot involves a movie star that is also a closet transvestite and homosexual.   In fact when I picked the DVD up at K-Mart, I was thinking it was a great family film to recommend to one of my friends that is extremely careful with the movies he lets his boys watch.  After I finished watching it, I wouldn’t even consider mentioning it to him.  There was a lot of stuff that snuck past me as a kid and some things I had just plain forgotten. 

Won Ton Ton isn’t a bad film if you want to sit back and count the cameos, but I can’t say that I enjoyed the actual movie.  There is a bit of business where Dern’s character keeps trying to sell Carney’s producer on scripts to modern blockbusters like Jaws, The Exorcist, or Earthquake.  This struck me as very funny the first time I saw it, but just produced a minor smirk this time around.  A well done comedy can hold up over time as What’s Up, Doc? proved the other day.  Sadly, Won Ton Ton is not well done.  I give the film 2 stars mostly for the cameos and the nostalgia factor.

Randy Rides Alone

It had been awhile since my last old black and white John Wayne western.  I had come across a copy of Randy Rides Alone released by Echo Bridge.  Echo Bridge seemed to be releasing quite a few movies and television shows lately.  They had been the studio that released the copy of Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus that I picked up and they had released sets for Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, 21 Jump Street, and several other tv series.  I wondered how they would handle the transfer of a much older film.  They did a decent job as it turns out.  The film looks to be from a decent print.  It’s not scratchy or choppy like some transfers on bargain priced discs.

The thing that struck me most about Randy Rides Alone, which was released in 1934, is how it almost seems to have been shot as a silent film, at least for the first third of the film.  Randy (John Wayne) rides into town to a local saloon on the outskirts of town.  The saloon looks like a balsa wood miniature in the overhead shots we see of it.  Randy enters the bar and finds a bunch of dead bodies and an open safe.  He starts to look around as a pair of eyes watch him from a painting behind the bar.  When the sheriff and his men show up, a man with them pulls out a note pad and writes a message that this is where he heard the shooting and they had best remain quiet.  The sheriff nods in agreement and motions to the other men to remain quiet.  They enter the bar, surprising Randy, and the sheriff finally speaks.  It seemed very odd for the entire first part of this film to be so silent, and there are several stretches later on where there is little if no sound as well.

The sheriff arrests Randy and charges him with the murders, but he is sure that he had some help.  The eyes behind the painting turn out to be Sally Rogers, the bar owner’s daughter.  She visits Randy in jail and he shows her a letter from her father hiring him to come down and investigate some trouble.  Sally helps Randy escape and he ends up eventually stumbling into the hideout of the bad guys that shot up the bar and he meets their leader, Marvin Black, who through disguise has been living in the town running the local store as Matt The Mute, a mute hunchback.  The fact that Marvin Black is played by a clean-shaven George “Gabby” Hayes seems odd to me as I only knew him as the scraggly bearded sidekick of the hero in a string of westerns.  Hayes does a very good job playing the dual role and being the heavy.  He does such a good job, it makes me wonder who ever got the idea to cast him as the comedic sidekick.

Randy Rides Alone is very similar in plotting to the Warner Bros. westerns Wayne had made the year before, and it is equally enjoyable.  Randy Rides Alone would have made a great Saturday matinée back in 1934, and it made a pleasant Sunday evening DVD viewing for me in 2010.  I give Randy Rides Alone 3 stars.

Shadows (1922)

Shadows was the fourth DVD I watched during my vacation catch up marathon.  It was a silent film starring Lon Chaney as a Chinaman called Yen Sin.  I had only seen one of Chaney’s films all the way through although I had watched bits of several of them.  I don’t recall which film it was that I saw, but I believe it was part of the old PBS series Matinee At The Bijou.  I used to watch a lot of PBS and Matinee started around the same time as Sneak Previews, the original Siskel & Ebert review show.  As a movie buff I loved both shows.

Shadows is the story of the people in a little fishing village.  Yen Sin is saved from a shipwreck off the coast and sets up residence in the town.  Another resident of the town, Sympathy Gibbs (Marguerite De La Motte), lost her cruel husband in the same shipwreck.  A local resident, Nate Snow (John St. Polis), fancies Sympathy, but she ends up falling in love with the town’s new minister, John Malden (Harrison Ford).  Malden and Sympathy are wed and Snow appears to accept the situation.  Malden meanwhile is constantly trying to convert Yen Sin to Christianity.

A conference is called out-of-town and Malden and Snow travel to it.  Yen Sin recommends another Chinaman in the town to take care of the minister and his laundry.  When the minister and Snow arrive at their hotel, Malden is given a telegram telling him that his wife has given birth to their daughter.  He also receives a mysterious note from Sympathy’s supposedly deceased husband, Daniel Gibbs.  Gibbs blackmails the minister, who confides the contents of the note to his travelling partner.  Snow agrees to spy on the person that comes to pick up the blackmail money and make certain it is Gibbs.  When he returns to Malden’s room he sadly informs him that it is Gibbs.

When the two return to their home town, Malden keeps the news a secret, but he also arranges to not stray in the same house as Sympathy.  Nate Snow continues to run blackmail money back and forth to Gibbs for Malden.  As Malden becomes more consumed by guilt, he has to ask Snow to handle Sunday services for him.  During the services, Yen Sin sends a local boy to fetch the minister for him as he is nearing death.  The boy stops at the church and delivers the news.  Nate Snow rushes to the Chinaman’s home to perform the conversion and the last rites.  The boy takes off to find Malden and eventually they are all brought together at Yen Sin’s home along with many of the villagers.  Yen Sin then refuses to confess his sins until Nate Snow confesses his first.  This leads to Malden confessing his sin and Yen Sin relaying some information from his friend as well.  Nate Snow had staged the whole thing.  Gibbs was not truly still alive.  Snow confesses and Malden forgives him which leads Yen Sin to announce that if Mister Minista can forgive Mister Nate Snow, then he believes.  He then asks to be left alone with Mister God.

Chaney does a fine job playing Yen Sin.  He shows a playful side with a neighborhood boy that he treats with Lychee nuts as well as a sad and slightly timid side at various times when the village doesn’t treat him very well.  The other actors do a fine job as well.  No one seems to be over the top, although the minister comes close a couple of times.  The case for the Alpha Video DVD lists the running time at 70 minutes, but it appears to be longer than that.  The DVD counter had it at 90 minutes and several sources list a 91 minute run time.

The film was not well received when it was first released, but gained appreciation and respect over the years.  This was one of the first films to feature an Asian character as anything beyond comic relief or evil villain.  The dialogue may be slightly racist viewed by today’s standards, but for the time the film was far ahead of its contemporaries.  I enjoyed Shadows, but I wasn’t blown away.  I’m not sure how much of that has to do with the film being a silent movie.  I give Shadows 2 1/2 stars.  It might have rated 3 stars if it hadn’t been the fourth DVD I watched that night and been a silent movie as well.

The Lost World (1925)

I became a fan of the television series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World while I was traveling and doing some teaching for the USPS.  The show was playing early in the morning on TNT along with The Pretender and Charmed.  I would get up and flip on Lost World while I got ready for the day, usually dashing out at the end of the episode to grab some breakfast and returning to catch the end of The Pretender.  I ordered the first season off Amazon and the seller turned out to have the Canadian boxset rather than the American version.  The content was the same but the packaging was different.  I still check eBay every so often in hopes of coming across a copy of the American version cheap. 

The Lost World started as a story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.  It has been the basis for numerous movies and television series since then.  The first adaptation for film was the silent version from 1925 directed by Harry Hoyt.  The film was later edited and consequently today there are numerous versions of the film floating around.  The complete version is listed as being 106 minutes with a restored version clocking in at 93 and the 1929 Kodascope version clocking in at 64 minutes.  The version I saw was listed as 52 minutes,

Since a lot of silent films have passed into the public domain, it’s not surprising that these films often show up in dollar stores or in collections of 20 movies on 4 discs for $10.  The copy I watched was packaged in a cardboard box and sold by Family Dollar.  The disc is just loose in the box with no protection, so I enclosed my copy of the disc into a slimline jewel case and returned it to the original box.  This disc also contained The Giant Gila Monster (another apparent public domain title that pops up in lots of science fiction and horror collections) and a Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, The Arctic Giant.

The Lost World is presented in almost a sepia tone look.  Several places the film is very dark, but overall it looks surprisingly good.  I was particularly surprised considering the way the film was packaged.  I feared a very patchy and scratchy print, but the quality was very nice.  There were a few rough spots, but even the Image restoration of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari contained some defects that were impossible to correct.  For a dollar, I can accept a few of these.

The plot, for anyone that is not familiar with it, concerns Professor Challenger leading a rescue party to a plateau where dinosaurs still roam.  Explorer Maple White, had gotten trapped there and Challenger has sworn to White’s daughter that he will rescue him.  Of course Challenger also has the motive of proving such a land actually exists as his colleagues think he is a crackpot.  Edward Malone, a young reporter, brokers a deal with Challenger where the newspaper will fund the expedition in exchange for exclusive rights to the story.  The team sets off with big game hunter, Sir John Roxton, doubting colleague, Professor Summerlee, and White’s daughter, Paula all in tow as well.  The team soon finds the plateau and their first dinosaur, a pterodactyl.  The team appears to get stranded on the plateau in much the same way White had, but part of their group devises a rescue for the trapped explorers.  Challenger captures a Brontosaurus and has it shipped to London where it breaks free and creates havoc in the streets.

Many of these elements were lifted for later works as well.  The monster on the loose scene is replayed in King Kong and Jurassic Park: The Lost World just to name two.  The amazing part of The Lost World is how sophisticated the special effects were for the time.  The stop motion dinosaurs, although somewhat jerky, are amazing when you consider they were done by hand with no computer assisting and only the rudimentary equipment available in 1925.

This is another film I am having a hard time assigning a rating to.  I enjoyed the film and was delighted with the effects they were able to pull off, but since I saw a truncated version of the film, would the longer version be more impressive, or start to drag?  I’m giving the version I saw 3 stars, but now I want to find one of the restored version. 

Fittingly, the Superman cartoon on this disc contains a story of Superman fighting a dinosaur that thaws out in a museum and comes back to life to trample Metropolis.  It’s a lot of fun and features that wonderful Fleischer animation.  Including it was a nice plus.

The Magic Cloak

Sunday was Oscar night.  I should have claimed a “buy” for that night, but I figured I could still squeeze in a DVD.  I continued looking over some of my Dollar Store DVDs and ran across a couple of DVDs containing the silent Wizard of Oz films that I had picked up at Family Dollar.  Each volume contained 2 black and white silent Oz movies. Volume 2 contained The Magic Cloak of Oz which clocked in at 45 minutes.  Figuring that unless there was another running time typo, I could easily swing this and get ready for a night of awards, I plopped the disc into the DVD player.

Despite the box listing this as The Magic Cloak of Oz, the title card for the film proclaims it as simply The Magic Cloak.  This film in the series was made in 1914 (although the IMDb lists this version without the “of Oz” wording in the title as the 1917 release), making it the oldest film I have watched this year, and possibly the oldest film I have ever watched.  The film has a background score playing, much as it would have in the theater, but it also features a narrator reciting most of the title cards which was added in 1996. 

The Magic Cloak tells the story of two young kids Fluff and Bud.  They journey with their mean aunt and their donkey friend, Nickodemus to the land of Noland.  Along the way Fluff is given a magic cloak woven by the fairies of Oz that grants the wearer one wish.  Fluff wishes to be happy and the cloak grants the wish by making Bud the new king of Noland and his sister, Fluff, a princess.  The cloak is stolen by Queen Zixi of Ix who appears young unless she looks in a mirror which reflects her true age of 800+.  While the cloak is missing, the town is attacked by the Rolly Rogues, a bunch of round looking creatures that crave soup.  The kids get the cloak back and with the help of Nickodemus and his animal friends, the rogues are returned to their place high up atop the mountains. 

This is one of the most simplistic stories I have ever seen, but considering that it was a children’s film from 96 years ago, I would say that is forgivable.  The animals in this film are all played by costumed men and the young boy Bud is played by a woman.  The special effects are quite elaborate for the time and the costuming is quite advanced as well.  I didn’t necessarily enjoy this much as a film, but I kept thinking that this was the type of thing Night Flight might have played as it was rather “trippy” looking.  As a film it is unfair to rate it against modern productions, but I would give it a solid 7 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.  Trying to adjust my ratings for age of the film and age of the intended audience, I would give it a 2 1/2 star for its time, but a modern rating of 1 1/2.

An additional problem was the quality of the disc.  The disc halted several times in the last 2 chapters requiring me to eject and reload it in order to get the player to read the disc.  Although I had not taken the shrinkwrap off until Sunday, the disc did show several scratches from production and packaging that may have been responsible and could perhaps be buffed out.

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

I have been aware of the existence of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari since I was a kid thumbing through Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.  I never got the opportunity to catch it while I was young.  Silent films weren’t widely screened on television then.  I got to see a few silent classics while I was taking some film classes at WV State College, but somehow Caligari continued to be elusive at best.  One day while browsing the DVDs at Will’s, I found the Special Collector’s Edition from Image, the same group that had done an amazing job with the silent Phantom of the Opera and (I believe) Nosferatu.  I picked it up and added it to the collection.

I truly do love films, but I have to admit that it takes a bit more effort to watch a silent or subtitled film because you really have to watch the film.  There’s no flipping through a magazine while watching a movie that you have to read.  Never the less, I needed a short film and Calagari fit the bill.  The restored print was color filtered in various scenes and the original artistic title cards were re-inserted.  The film would now look much as it had when it was first released in 1920.  This was certainly the best way to watch the movie.

We used to really decorate the house up at Halloween, and one of the items we decorated with were action figures from horror movies.  Mezco had released a series of Silent Screamers based on early silent horror films.  There was a figure of Caligari and one of Cesare.  The packages and props with these figures were extremely odd-looking.  I assumed this was an artistic flourish of the figure designer.  I was surprised to find out after watching the movie that the sets had been designed with this odd angular expressionistic look.  I was also surprised to find out that there was a very logical reason for this choice as well.

Caligari is widely regarded as the first true horror film ever made.  It is also one of the earliest examples I can think of in the twist ending category as well.  Caligari starts in a very natural setting as Francis, a young man, describes to an older man the events that have recently transpired and which he has been a part of.  He describes how an odd man named Dr. Caligari opens a booth at a carnival where he features a somnambulist.  The town soon begins being plagued with strange murders.  When Francis’ friend Alan is murdered after visiting Caligari, Francis begins to suspect that supposedly sleeping Cesare might be the mysterious murderer.  The investigation eventually leads to the insane asylum where Francis finds that the director is none other than Caligari himself.  The film then reveals how the director came to become Caligari.  The sharp angular world of the flashback with triangular-shaped doors and odd pathways gives back to the more natural world we saw at the beginning of the film.  Francis finishes telling his story only for the audience to find that it is Francis who is the patient in the mental hospital and that the Caligari story was an invention of his using other inmates as key players.

I enjoyed The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but once again it was very different from my original conceptions of what the plot would be.  I was amazed at how complex the story was for a film of that time period.  The DVD contains a commentary track with a Caligari historian that I want to go back and listen to in its entirety some day.  The DVD also contains scenes from one of the director’s other films,  Genuine, a vampire story.  Apparently the Kino version of the DVD contains 43 minutes of Genuine where my Image edition contains only 3 minutes.

I’m not really sure how to rate a silent film when compared to sound films.  The acting techniques, dialogue and scene changes are all staged differently.  Caligari is definitely a quality film and easily rates 4 stars, but at the same time I can’t say that I enjoyed this 4 star film at the same level I did even some of the 3 star talkies, and there have been some silents that I have enjoyed as much as talkies; Battleship Potemkin and An Andalusian Dug (Un Chien Andalou) to name two.  I’m going to split the difference and go with 3 1/2 stars.

Somewhere In Sonora

I was trying to decide between Zombie Lake which has zombies and skinny dippers or the last of the John Wayne 4 Star Westerns that I had.  John Wayne won, but I figure the Zombies versus skinny dippers joys of Zombie Lake will come soon enough. 

Of the six 4 Star Westerns that John Wayne did for Warner Bros. in the early 1930s, I own five of the six.  I need to find a copy of The Big Stampede which was the second of the six films.  Somewhere in Sonora, the fifth of the six films, was on a triple feature disc that I had purchased at Will’s.  It also contains The Telegraph Trail and The Man from Monterey which I also own on single disc editions and had viewed earlier.  Having watched the five films I do have, there are several elements that seem to carry over from film to film.  The horse Duke is in all of them.  John Wayne’s character is named John in each of the films.  Each film has a comedic character and all but one of them have a secondary character that also has a comedic tone.  Each film also has a female co-star that ends up with John Wayne at the end of the picture.  They are very much formula pictures, but I have to admit that I enjoyed every one of them.

If Telegraph Trail and Man From Monterey seemed to be slightly different versions of the same story, Somewhere in Sonora has echoes of Ride Him, Cowboy.  Wayne plays a ranch hand who is falsely accused of a crime and has to run out of town.  He is cleared, but heads out anyway in hopes of rescuing the rancher’s son that was also falsely accused and joined up with the Monte Black gang.  Bob Leadly, the rancher, is even played by Henry B. Walthall who played the rancher John Gaunt in  Ride Him, Cowboy.  Wayne and Duke find the lair of the Monte Black gang and with the help of the missing son, help to bring the gang to justice.

Like the other films, Somewhere in Sonora incorporates footage from silent westerns.  The stagecoach race and other acts from the rodeo appear to have been culled from this footage and the stagecoach race in particular is very impressive.  The scenes of Wayne’s character undergoing initiation into the gang are also fun to watch as he shows up the gang’s second in command in knife throwing and arm wrestling (while trying to grab a knife and draw first blood).

I am almost tempted to order a copy of The Big Stampede from eBay just to finish watching the series, but I still might run across it at Big Lots, so I will probably wait.  I give Somewhere in Sonora 3 stars, but I wish the six films had all been boxed together with a documentary discussing the making of all six films.  I would love to know more about the silent films the movies borrowed from as well as the other players featured in the films.  As I said, my copy of Somewhere in Sonora is packed on a single disc with two of the other films.  I think I’ll also keep my eyes open for a freestanding copy of Sonora as well.