MAJOR SPOILERS:
Just spent the last few days going through the boxset and enjoyed this release very much! I much preferred the two Karloff films though, but even the two sci-fi films had some merits.
The Atomic Submarine was for me by far the worst film, but there were a lot of things in it that make it worth a watch: the brilliantly quotable dialogue, the eyeball monster and seeing Tom Conway in a small role, albeit completely wasted (by which I mean underused, not drunk!). Even Joi Lansing's one scene was nice (was she under contract to be allowed to play almost the whole of it lying down on a couch?), and compared to the painful-to-watch Queen of Outer Space, The Atomic Submarine is a mini-masterpiece!
The big problems with the film I felt were the ridiculous model shots of the submarine (not so bad when it is interacting with the spaceship, I'm thinking more of the shots of it early in the film. I guess once the submarine is impaled in an alien craft, suspending disbelief is either done, or the film has been turned off!). The nearest comparison I can make is with the model ship in the Spanish Blind Dead film The Ghost Galleon. It was incredibly cheesy, but also fun.
The next problem that I had with the film is not really the too large sets, but the way the film is overloaded with actors. I found it a little difficult to make out who was who, what connection they had with each other, and why I should care when they were killed! I was glad I had the booklet with the character and actor names in to try and figure it out, but even then I was trying to make out if I was watching 'Reef' or 'Griff' or the Commander or the Captain, or the Lieutenant!
Then of course there are the two guys with diving experience introduced only for the reason of being horribly killed later on!
It didn't help that I wrongly focused on the Tom Conway group of characters, who did nothing other than look at monitors during the film!
So I found it all a bit confusing, but a lot of the dialogue from the film is great. I was going to save them for the Criterion Quote Game, but it would be too easy to work out where such lines as these came from!:
(someone knocks at door while the couple are kissing) "What's that pounding?" (He places her hand on his heart) "Need I say more?"
"Have you tried to get his side [of the story]?" "His side? He's all front with no back. How can he have a side!"
and one of the best closing lines: "You know, I think I lost my little black book on that lousy thing" (shakes fist)
and lots of over-the-top dialogue - your Earth-expression would be "talking" - from the alien when we get to it!
So, not a great film by any means, but there was enough there to have fun with!
First Man Into Space has always been a bit troublesome for me. Just watching the trailer - "Can a motion picture foresee the future?" Um....no.
But it is well made (the stock footage is combined with the film in a much less clunky way than it was in Atomic Submarine - the scene where they match up someone holding their ears with Marshall Thompson doing the same is a very good example mentioned in the featurette!)
I don't have any major problems with the film that I had with Atomic Submarine. The characters are pared down to just the essentials for the story (I did like the German doctor character, maybe hinting at the imported scientists the US was using). The only problems I had with the film were the rude attitudes to the Mexicans from all the American characters! Although it did give Roger Delgado the chance to do a Mexican charicature character - of course all Mexicans are farmers or, if not doing that, are out at bull fights!
The other interesting thing was how quickly Marla Landi jumped into Marshall Thompson's arms after her previous boyfriend was feared lost and then became a monster! She has a brilliant final scene where she hangs around the horrible mass that used to be her previous boyfriend just long enough to find out he is dead and then runs off after her new beau!
Very fickle of her!
It was very interesting to find out from the commentary that Dale Winton's mother, of all people, played the blood bank nurse killed by the monster. She is only in two shots, but looks very pretty. There is the typical victim in horror films mentality on display however, where a nurse on seeing a door hanging off its hinges in splinters decides to walk
into the room and certain death!
Viewers can also play a drinking game. You must drain one glass completely whenever anyone says the title of the film!
The radio spots were terrible, but very funny!: "I'm the first man in spaaaaaaaaace!"
I did like the scene where Marla Landi and Marshall Thompson are talking as the camera moves to face her, and then she breaks off mid sentence and screams straight into the camera. Then it cuts to the monster smashing through the doors - a very good shock moment!
A nice tragic monster story though, but watching the two sci-fi films I kept being reminded of just how good a film Fiend Without A Face was.
I got the impression watching Hammer's film version of The Quatermass Experiment recently that a lot of First Man Into Space was an attempt to do a version of that earlier film. For example the astronaut being exposed to some sort of solar radiation in the first test flight outside of Earth's atmosphere and then turning into a monster is common to both films, although in First Man Into Space the astronaut becomes a monster immediately and doesn't gradually transform as in The Quatermass Experiment. That is one area that I think is lacking from the commentary - that in addition to describing Richard Gordon's early career (which was extremely interesting) and talking about real world space related events going on at the time, Tom Weaver should have quizzed Gordon on these films coming out from other companies at the same time, especially the early Hammer sci-fi films such as the first two Quatermass films, X The Unknown, Spaceways etc and what influence they had on the choice of projects such as Fiend Without A Face and First Man Into Space (not to mention whether the move into costume drama horror was similarly influenced by Hammer's move in that direction).
The two Boris Karloff films were excellent though. The one major problem with Haunted Strangler is the one brought up by Tom Weaver in the commentary: why does nobody say on seeing the normal Karloff "Hey, I used to know you years ago", or, "Wait a second, you're the Haymarket Strangler!"
But if you can get round that it is a very moving film. It seems like the major theme is of awareness, of Karloff's Dr Rankin not realising he used to be Dr Tenant and therefore the strangler is also played out in a wider way in the film.
It seems that early on in the film, while Rankin is blissfully ignorant of the consequences his crusade for justice is going to cost him, he is able to treat people in an offhand manner. It is not in a cruel way (Rankin remains sympathetic, to make his change that much worse), but he is able to confront people like Cora and the turnkey for his 'higher cause'. The sense I get from the Haunted Strangler is that, perhaps even beyond the murders themselves, it is his single mindedness that turns people against him (an interesting development for a film about someone with multiple personalities!). They seem to resent his meddling in the established order, and as soon as he seems to be in trouble there is always someone there ready to push him just that little further over the edge (this is even more in evidence in Corridors of Blood). There does seem to be a certain pleasure that some of the minor characters have in seeing someone so respected fall so far from grace - again another big theme in Corridors of Blood.
For example, most of Rankin's humiliations come when people just think he is mad, but not the Haymarket Strangler (he is also killed when he is himself, and not the Strangler). A very good film to watch and compare with Haunted Strangler would be Candyman, since that is another film that spends most of its first half with a person investigating historical crimes, but then has the investigator after having apparently solved and finished with the mystery get dragged into a chain of murders, with themselves as the prime suspect. In Candyman the events occur through a supernatural being, but the film plays around with the 'is she telling the truth or is she mad' angle and the focus is mainly on the reactions of those around the main character, most abandoning her to her fate as a mass murderer and social pariah.
It was fun to see the more risque elements in the can-can scenes, particularly the crotch-level shots of the chorus line! Or the bottle of wine being poured in close-up over Vera Day's bodiced bosom!
Some of the violence is quite surprising. The major surprise is the pretty nasty, but brief, scene with the guard coming into the cell to put out the fire, getting grabbed around the face and having the shard of glass being slit across his mouth. It seems a very early example of the mouth violence shown to one of the Crazy 88s from Uma Thurman's sword in Kill Bill Volume 1, or of Kakihara's extended mouth in Ichi The Killer, or the victim from The Black Dahlia!
The other scene isn't so explicit, but the murder of Rankin's wife, with the thumps and rips of clothing as she is slashed up is also very effective.
I also liked the way the filmmakers used the locations in pairs: two visits to the prison; two to the Judas Hole; one scene in the conservatory at the beginning of the film, the other just before the final scene. It shows a level of technique that seemed missing from Atomic Submarine particularly.
Also, compared to First Man Into Spaaaaaace's cringeworthy radio spots, the Haunted Strangler radio spots, with Karloff promoting the Strangler/Fiend double bill were very well done!
Corridors of Blood is I think my favourite film in the set. Karloff never makes that final turn into 'evil', but is always a sympathetic character even as he succumbs to addiction. Again it seems that it is the characters around Karloff who are the truly bad, from the doctors in the hospital who are completely opposed to anaesthetic either because they are set in their ways or have their own vested interests in maintaining the status quo; to the shady lower class characters who use Bolton's kindly nature to use and abuse him.
In a way it shows how difficult it is to be a decent person, with the 'respectable' medical community jealous of success and therefore ready to call for suspension and punishment of Bolton at the slightest opportunity. Another film might only choose to vilify one or other of these groups - so we would have the well meaning doctors vs the disgusting peasantry, or the 'gor blimey guv'nor' chirpy chappies vs the pompous quacks. This film shows the hypocrisies of both groups through someone caught in the middle!
Dr Bolton is being attacked from both sides by those jealous of his position and wanting his status for themselves, and those willing to take advantage of his attempts to provide care for the poor by stealing money from him. Only his strength of character is enough to keep him together, but the final piece that contributes to his destruction is his experiments, hated by everyone but him (and his daughter), which cloud his mind to such an extent that they give all those who wish to hurt him the opportunity to put the boot in, only speeding up his descent into addiction through his desperate need to prove his theories.
There is also the idea that although Dr Bolton can be seen as an early 'junkie', getting high on his own medicine, that the strains of the society would have broken a lesser man a long time before. The dichotomy between the slums and the hospital (with only Dr Bolton willing to travel beyond the safety of the hospital's walls to treat the sick) and between causing pain in order to help people could easily drive people to the brink of madness, and of course this is what some of the other doctors are aware of and all too quick to throw at Dr Bolton when his first experiment with anaesthesia fails.
(About the first experiment, where the patient awakes with a scream and runs all over the tiered auditorium, punching out doctors and throwing them around, did anyone get flashes of that Simpsons episode where Lisa isolates the 'nerd pheromone' that causes bullies to punch them. She presents it to a room full of scientists but unfortunately the bully escapes, runs amok and starts punching out the scientists! "Don't worry, she'll punch herself out!" "Someone's going to sleep well tonight!")
So while one of the themes of Haunted Strangler is awareness, and how being aware of your actions and effects upon others can destroy you, Corridors of Blood seems to be about vested interests, and how even the most uncontroversial of subjects such as 'separating pain and the knife' can be co-opted by others to achieve their own ends, even if that is at the expense of the noble aims people went into the project to achieve.
It was also interesting to see that Norman Warren (director of the Richard Gordon produced 'classic', Alien rip-off Inseminoid! It is a rip-off in the best possible sense though, a crazy film that has to be seen to be believed!) did the photography for the interviews. The less said about the picture quality of the interviews in England however, the better!
On the whole the audio commentaries were excellent. More and more, I'm finding Tom Weaver to be an excellent unselfish interviewer, more than prepared to let those he is talking to take the stage. The commentaries more than help make this set a great tribute to Boris Karloff and to Richard, and especially Alex, Gordon.
Reviews of the films are up at the
Not Coming site.
Perhaps since they are owned by Universal, as mentioned in the commentary, we could maybe get a Criterion DVD of Island of Terror and The Projected Man. I'd welcome that just to get Peter Cushing into the Collection! I'd never realised that Island of Terror had come from a producer who made Fiend Without A Face, but when I thought about it more it seemed obvious - this time people are having their bones, rather than their brains, sucked out!