Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) – R. W. Neill

Although this is the fourth sequel to Universal’s Frankenstein (1931), it is really just the first sequel to The Wolf Man (1941).  So, it makes sense that Lon Chaney, Jr., has returned as Larry Talbot, except of course that he was killed at the end of the first film by a crack on the head with a silver cane wielded by his father Claude Rains.  No worries, as the writer (Curt Siodmak) has invented some additional werewolf lore that reveals that Talbot can’t actually die (despite spending years asleep in his coffin, until awakened by graverobbers).  Now that Talbot is alive again, and killing people every full moon, he wants nothing more than to really die.  As such, with the assistance of Maleva, the gypsy woman from the first film (again played by Maria Ouspenskaya), they seek out Dr. Frankenstein (who they believe knows the secrets of life and death) in his castle in Vasaria.  Alas, the scientist is already dead but Talbot stumbles upon the Monster (now played by Bela Lugosi) frozen in ice.  When freed, he accompanies Talbot to the castle where, with the help of Talbot’s doctor (Patric Knowles) and Frankenstein’s daughter (Ilona Massey) – stay with me -- they find Frankenstein’s secret diaries.  Following instructions within, they aim to drain the life energies from Talbot and the Monster (by reversing the polarity when attached to those wires, of course).  But things turn pear shaped and soon and as expected the Monster and the Wolf Man are fighting hand-to-hand until the angry villagers blow up the dam and the mighty river washes the castle away with the monsters within – until they are resurrected in House of Frankenstein (1944) where things get even more campy.  The current film plays out with a mostly straight face, highlighted by the spooky mise-en-scene, cinematography, and music of the classic monsters series we loved so well.  

The October Man (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The October Man (1947) – R. W. Baker

In this dark British noir, John Mills (not far from his excellent turn as Pip in David Lean’s Great Expectations) plays Jim Ackland, an industrial chemist recovering from a terrible road accident in which a young girl he was babysitting was killed.  A year later, released from the sanatorium, he is wracked with grief (and often suicidal) but trying hard to make a go of it in a new job while living at a boarding house/hotel in suburban London. He keeps his distance from the other tenants but is friendly with his next door neighbour Kay Walsh who turns up murdered.  Suspicion lands on Mills after other tenants (falsely) claim he spent many nights in Walsh’s apartment – his head injury and time in the sanatorium are held against him by the police (stigma of mental illness).  With his new girlfriend Joan Greenwood, he struggles to clear his name while also experience doubt and depression.  A good deal of time is spent on character development (a good thing, if sombre) before we are whisked into a more traditional suspense-thriller plot once the real facts of the case are revealed. 

 

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) – F. E. Feist

Solid noir that sees San Francisco Police Detective Lee J. Cobb making a fatal error when he catches his rich girlfriend (Jane Wyatt) shoot her (second) husband (who was sneaking into their house pretending to be a burglar but with the intention to kill her) – instead of taking her in, he covers up the crime.  Enter John Dall, playing Cobb’s younger brother, who has just been promoted to detective himself and is eager to solve the crime to which he has been assigned. So, he intrepidly uncovers all the clues that Cobb accidentally left behind when disposing of the body (at the airport) and therefore gradually closes in on his brother who tries his best to throw him off the trail, even if he doesn’t want to hurt Dall’s career.  It’s complicated but pretty standard fare.  But it does end in a nicely shot final stand-off at Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

Cry Terror! (1958)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Cry Terror! (1958) – A. L. Stone

As the movie begins, we learn that a bomb has been planted on a plane with the plotters demanding a fortune to stop it from detonating. Evidence quickly points to TV repairman James Mason. However, it turns out that he was tricked into making the bomb that Rod Steiger, Angie Dickinson, and Jack Klugman have subsequently smuggled onto the plane. In order to keep Mason from talking, the trio of bad guys kidnap him, his wife (Inger Stevens) and young daughter.  Neville Brand plays a particularly loathsome heavy who stands guard over them. Stevens is sent to collect the pay-off from the airline company with Steiger threatening to kill her daughter if she tips off the police.  Of course, the police are hard at work trying to solve the case at the same time.  Filmed on location in New York (including a climactic scene in the subway tunnels), this is a fast moving, often raw and adult, thriller with good performances throughout.  Perhaps it is all much ado about nothing but the film, as directed by Andrew L. Stone, excels at ratcheting up the tension.  

 

Shinkansen Daibakuha (1975)

Shinkansen Daibakuha (1975) – J. Satô

All of the disaster movie clichés are on full display in this 150-minute “bomb on a train” Seventies drama from Japan.  The plot was famously adapted for Speed (1994) starring Keanu Reeves, but here the train can’t slow down below 80 km/hr or the dynamite will explode.  It has been planted by Ken Takakura, a small factory owner who has been driven to bankruptcy and divorce by a larger corporation. He’s joined by a group of others who are disadvantaged by Japan’s economic and social changes (a kid who can’t find work, a former terrorist/activist) – there are a number of flashbacks that explain how the group came together. Takakura is from the hard cool school where acting involves not doing much, just looking tough, often while smoking a cigarette, reflecting. Apparently, all or most of this backstory was cut-out for an international version of the film that just focused on the train action which cuts between the engineer/driver (Sonny Chiba), frantic passengers (including a lady about to give birth and lots of people late for appointments), the shinkansen control centre (all 70s tech with flashing lights and ancient monitors), and the police headquarters (where the leadership team investigates leads to try to identify the bombers).  Takakura wants a cool US $5 million in a silver suitcase but there are several failed attempts to get it to him and then even when the money is paid off, there is additional trouble getting the bomb’s whereabouts and the instructions for how to dismantle it from Takakura to the people on the train.  Whatever can go wrong, does go wrong.  Yet with all the frantic plotting to keep the suspense going, this still feels like an epic TV episode (with an awesome jazz funk soundtrack) and that’s not unlike comfort food, albeit from Japan.

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2022)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2022) – M. Cousins

Film critic Mark Cousins (creator of The Story of Film TV series, 2011) typically narrates the documentaries (that he writes and directs) in his lilting Belfast accent, relaying his unique insights and film analysis over clips from the relevant films.  But here, tackling the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Cousins instead has professional mimic Alistair McGowan narrate the film as if the voiceover were delivered by the Master of Suspense himself.  This is peculiar, even off-putting (when Hitch talks about mobile phones and screentime), but works as a conceit that allows Cousins to suggest certain motivations on the part of Hitch, motivations that allow Cousins to impose some thematic unity across diverse films.  The themes (organised into chapters) include Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height.  These sorts of analyses (of the kind you often find on youtube) are fun – and its great to see all of the parallels across Hitchcock’s films – but as a whole the themes don’t add up to anything deeper, even if they are imagined to come from the horse’s mouth (not always believably). Hitchcock’s films do lend themselves to analysis, a seemingly endless wellspring, so it’s great to see Cousins manage to provide a novel take on this well-trodden ground.

 

The House of the Seven Gables (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The House of the Seven Gables (1940) – J. May

Shades of the gothic horrors that Vincent Price would do with Roger Corman decades later.  It is always great to see Price (and also George Sanders) but this should have been pushed a bit harder over the top into the kind of horror Universal was already known for.  Although I read the novel so long ago, wikipedia tells me that Nathaniel Hawthorne's plot is much corrupted here.