MURDER IN THE BLUE ROOM

 

MURDER IN THE BLUE ROOM (1944) is a remake of Universal's THE SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM, which was actually a remake of a German film. Universal had already remade SECRET as THE MISSING GUEST in 1938. Confused? The real confusion is why such a standard mystery tale got reused so many times. 

What makes MURDER IN THE BLUE ROOM different is that it is a mystery-musical comedy, although not a very effective one. 1940s Universal regular Anne Gwynne's family owns a rambling old house which contains "The Blue Room", the location where her father died under mysterious circumstances. A beau of Gwynne's decides to spend the night in the room, and come morning, the young man cannot be found. 

What follows are plenty of the expected old dark house-murder mystery elements, but this time they're enlivened by "The Jazzy Belles"--a singing & dancing group of starlets played by Grace McDonald, June Preisser, and Betty Kean. (Apparently the Andrews Sisters weren't available.) The ladies are actually the real stars of the picture (sadly Anne Gwynne doesn't get much to do). The Jazzy Belles have talent, but they come off as a minor league (and much less violent) version of the Three Stooges. 

Among the supporting cast are past-his-prime leading man Donald Cook, Regis Toomey as a no-nonsense police detective, and Ian Wolfe as (what else?) a butler. What's sorely missing in MURDER IN THE BLUE ROOM is anyone on the Lugosi-Atwill-Zucco level. Most of the characters are very dull, and one of the usual Universal boogeymen would have livened things up considerably. The film was very generically directed by Leslie Goodwins. 

The musical numbers in this film are decent enough, but none of them really stick out. The always appealing Anne Gwynne gets a chance to perform a song....but she's dubbed. The solution to the mystery is so perfunctorily handled that one wonders why Universal even bothered to remake this story in the first place, and you'll also wonder why the Jazzy Belles got more screen time than Anne Gwynne did. MURDER IN THE BLUE ROOM is one of the most obscure chillers of Universal's Golden Age, and after seeing it, you'll understand its status. 

CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER

 

Produced and directed by low-budget exploitation maven Albert Zugsmith, this 1961 potboiler contains one of Vincent Price's most unusual roles (and that's saying a lot). Set in late 19th Century San Francisco, CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER has Price as Gilbert de Quincey, a soldier of fortune who infiltrates the powerful Tong criminal empire to put an end to a smuggling ring that provides various young Asian women to be sold as slaves. 

The movie is in black & white, and at times it feels like an episode of THE WILD WILD WEST (though not as fun or entertaining). San Francisco's Chinatown is represented by a generic-looking backlot, while the action scenes are very underwhelming. It doesn't help that Vincent Price is totally miscast as a rugged adventurer--one would expect Price to be leading a group of human traffickers instead of fighting them. 

It appears that Albert Zugsmith assumed putting Price, who was already associated with the weird and the macabre, in a feature with such a notorious title would attract some attention. It also appears that Zugsmith put the film together as if it was an opium-fueled vision. The plot is confusing, the visuals are overly strange, and Price gets plenty of chances to intone some doom-laden Edgar Allan Poe-style voice-overs. The florid dialogue is filled with plenty of Charlie Chan-like aphorisms. Despite all the lurid intentions, CONFESSIONS winds up being nothing more than a big tease. If this film had been made about a decade later, with someone like Jess Franco at the helm, it probably wouldn't have been any better....but at least it would have been more interesting. 

Albert Glasser provides a wild music score that goes off in about a dozen different directions, and Angelo Rossitto has a cameo as a newspaper vendor (which is what he was when he wasn't acting), but there isn't much else that makes CONFESSIONS notable. The Tong organization that Price's character is battling is another one of those supposedly powerful criminal groups that gets overcome rather easily. Vincent Price fans might want to see this, just to see how he fares in such an atypical role, but it's quite noticeable that the actor is uncomfortable in it. CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER is available on the Tubi streaming channel, but it is listed under the title SOULS FOR SALE. 

My Favorite Films Of The First Quarter Century

 

The fact that we are now a quarter way through the 21st Century already is rather disconcerting, but it gives me an excuse to make up another list. 

These are my favorite films from 2001 to the present. I base my choices on my own personal preferences--they have nothing to do with popularity, awards, box office, politics, trendiness, etc. I'm sure I've overlooked a few titles. It's not like I spent hours and hours doing research on this....it's merely meant to be entertaining. 

And yes, every so often I actually do watch movies made in the 21st Century.....and I usually wind up being more disappointed than inspired. The list is in no particular order. 

THE LORD OF THE RINGS Trilogy 

KILL BILL (Volumes One and Two)

BATMAN BEGINS

ROGUE ONE

SHIN GODZILLA

GODZILLA MINUS ONE

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

CASINO ROYALE

WATCHMEN

PACIFIC RIM

BLADE RUNNER 2049

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

ENNIO

DUNKIRK

DUNE (Parts One and Two)

GANGS OF NEW YORK 

HELL'S ANGELS On Blu-ray From Criterion

 

The 1930 WWI aviation spectacular HELL'S ANGELS, produced and directed by the legendary Howard Hughes, gets the special-edition Criterion treatment. 

Most people today know about HELL'S ANGELS from watching Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic THE AVIATOR. But Scorsese's film only scratched the surface when it came to documenting the mammoth production history of Hughes' dream project. HELL'S ANGELS started out as a silent feature, but during the long shooting schedule Hughes reworked the story into a talkie, recast the leading female role, and even added in a color sequence. All the while, Hughes spent plenty of time (and money) on numerous flying stunts and sequences that had never been attempted before, and probably never will again. 

The result is a curious mix of incredible aerial feats and clunky dialogue scenes (with some excellent practical effects thrown in). The movie truly does soar when it takes to the air--but on the ground it betrays its early talkie origins. 

The two underwhelming leading men of HELL'S ANGELS are Ben Lyon and James Hall as brothers Monte and Roy, who join the British air force at the outbreak of the Great War. Monte (Lyon) is weak and irresponsible, while Roy (Hall) is a stuffed-shirt type. Lyon and Hall are not the most dynamic actors, and their characters are not very engaging. Both men get overshadowed by the very young Jean Harlow in her breakthrough role. Harlow is supposed to be playing an upper-class Englishwoman of the late teens, but she's really nothing more than sexy Roaring Twenties eye candy. Harlow has plenty of screen presence, but she's even more awkward in the dialogue sequences than Lyon and Hall are, and she doesn't actually have a lot of screen time. (Harlow was only 18 when she essayed this role, and Marian Marsh, who has a cameo as a girl trying to entice men to sign up for the war, was even younger than that.) 

Some may watch HELL'S ANGELS for Harlow, but it's the flying sequences that make this film memorable, with a nighttime attack on a zeppelin and a behind-the-lines bombing of a German ammunition dump. Howard Hughes was a technological innovator, and he was determined to use sound to make his film as cutting-edge as possible, but I think he would have been better off to have kept the audio of the planes & battles while going the silent route with the dialogue scenes. (James Whale, at the very beginning of his Hollywood career, worked on those dialogue scenes, but one gets the sense he wasn't able to do what he wanted with them, and he didn't like Jean Harlow at all.) 

Criterion presents HELL'S ANGELS in a "Magnascope" version, with most of the film in a standard 1.37:1 aspect ratio, while the action sequences are in 1.54:1. The movie is uncut, with certain scenes tinted and a special color sequence where one realizes Jean Harlow truly was a platinum blonde. 

The extras include a short program with Robert Legato, the FX supervisor on THE AVIATOR, who discusses the visuals of HELL'S ANGELS. Farran Smith Nehme narrates a concise and excellent half-hour mini-bio of Jean Harlow, while about five minutes of outtakes from the film are shown with commentary by Harlow biographer David Stenn (Howard Hughes himself appears in this footage). As usual with Criterion releases, this disc comes with a booklet essay. Written by Fred Kaplan, the author states that HELL'S ANGELS was much more cynical than the other WWI epics made up to that time. 

What is sorely missing on this HELL'S ANGELS Blu-ray is an audio commentary. The making of this film is at times more fascinating than what is actually in it. One can only wonder what the silent version of this film could have been, with Greta Nissen playing Harlow's part and Thelma Todd even making an appearance. Plenty of urban legends have sprung up over HELL'S ANGELS, but even with its mediocre talkie sequences the aerial scenes alone make it an amazing achievement from Howard Hughes, one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th Century. 

THE HOT HEIRESS

 

The main reason I watched this very strange and silly Pre-Code comedy is that Thelma Todd appears in it. Unfortunately Todd doesn't get much to do, as she plays the best friend of the leading lady. 

THE HOT HEIRESS refers to Juliette (Ona Munson), a young socialite who enjoys sleeping during the day in her swanky apartment. While she is doing this, a riveter working across the street named "Hap" Harrigan (Ben Lyon) ogles her through a window, and likes what he sees. A red-hot rivet happens to go through that window, and Hap comes to Juliette's rescue (a unique way of "meeting cute"). Juliette (inexplicably) falls for Hap, and as the two grow closer, they plan to be married. Their different social stations, and Juliette's family, are major barriers, but all comes out right in the end. 

THE HOT HEIRESS is proof that not all Pre-Codes are provocative and intriguing. It's a dopey story, blandly directed by one Clarence G. Badger (who I know nothing about). Ona Munson, the future Belle Watling of GONE WITH THE WIND, is cute enough, but her character isn't particularly interesting, and neither is Ben Lyon. One gets the feeling that rich Juliette is attracted to regular guy Hap mainly because she isn't supposed to. 

The rich girl--poor guy element of the plot is very predictable. The only thing that stands out about it this time is that Juliette at the end goes to great lengths to win Hap (usually it's the male that does that in a classic Hollywood movie instead of the female). There are a couple songs forced into the story that were written by Rodgers & Hart, but they don't make much of an impression. 

Ona Munson and Thelma Todd in THE HOT HEIRESS

Tom Dugan plays a fellow riveter, and Inez Courtney (who was a friend of Thelma Todd in real life) is her girl. The two of them are Hap's pals, and they make plenty of trouble for him as he tries to woo Juliette. Hap and his friends get invited to a ritzy party at Juliette's family manor, and, as expected, they act as lower class as possible. A very young Walter Pidgeon plays Juliette's snobby former beau, and the ubiquitous Holmes Herbert is Juliette's father. 

Other than seeing Juliette in her lingerie, and in a bathtub, there really aren't any Pre-Code type moments that stick out in THE HOT HEIRESS. Thelma Todd fans will be distinctly disappointed--she barely has any screen time, even though she still shows more charisma than most of the cast. 

ALRAUNE (1928) On Blu-ray From Deaf Crocodile

 

The 1928 German silent ALRAUNE is the beneficiary of a fine restoration and a proper Region A Blu-ray release due to the folks at Deaf Crocodile, as part of their Henrik Galeen set. 

Henrik Galeen was a writer, director, and actor during the Golden Age of German Expressionist cinema in the 1920s, and ALRAUNE is one of his more notable works. Galeen directed the movie and adapted the screenplay from a novel by Hanns Heinz Ewers. 

The story of ALRAUNE deals with Professor ten Brinken (Paul Wegener), who, through artificial insemination between a prostitute and a convicted murderer, creates a female he names "Alraune"--the German word for mandrake. The Professor adopts the girl, and sends her off to be raised in a convent. Alraune (Brigitte Helm) grows into a rebellious troublemaker, and she runs away from the convent to literally join a circus. She also inflames the passions of many men along the way. The Professor tracks her down, and takes her away to Italy, where the two of them live in luxury and comfort. It appears that Alraune will become an upper-class lady, but the jealous Professor refuses to let her marry a handsome nobleman. Alraune finds out about her bizarre background, and she proceeds to seduce the Professor and bring misfortune upon him. 

The novel on which ALRAUNE was based (and which I have not read) was considered one of the most scandalous ever written at the time, and while experts say the film doesn't live up to it, the adaptation is lurid enough as it is. The very idea of the Professor creating his own "being" through the use of such notorious means is rather cringe-inducing. It appears that the Professor is trying to discover if a person's makeup is influenced by heredity or environment, but there's also a strong hint that the middle-aged ten Brinken (who is played by an actor who has the demeanor of a mad scientist) wants Alraune all to himself. 

Brigitte Helm and Paul Wegener in the 1928 version of ALRAUNE

One can easily see why the men in this movie would be enraptured by Alraune--Brigitte Helm gives another of her eerily sexy vamp performances. Helm goes from mischievous girl to deadly seductress in a flash, and one never quite knows what her Alraune is going to do next. Helm once again shows off her captivating screen presence--the actress herself wasn't too keen on playing femme fatale roles, but she was brilliant when she did them. 

Due to my fascination with Brigitte Helm, I had watched the 1928 version of ALRAUNE on YouTube a couple times, but the versions available for viewing were in bad condition, and they had a number of scenes missing. Deaf Crocodile's restored version on this Blu-ray is a very sharp looking transfer with proper tinting and intertitles. Even though there is still a sequence missing (which is represented by a still photo and a text description) the Deaf Crocodile version runs about 130 minutes....and yes, there are times when the story drags a bit. When it came to directing, Henrik Galeen was no Fritz Lang. Galeen was more interested in mood and ambiance than in pace or rhythm, and ALRAUNE is at its most striking when Brigitte Helm is in full vamp mode. 

ALRAUNE receives its own disc in Deaf Crocodile's Henrik Galeen set, and the extras on it include a snippet of a German film called DANGEROUS PATHS, which has footage of Henrik Galeen as an actor (from this footage Galeen appears to have been a burly Edward Arnold-type). There is also an interview with Stefan Drossler of the Filmmuseum Munchen, who was instrumental in the restoration of ALRAUNE. The interview is with Deaf Crocodile's Dennis Bartok, and it is in two parts, with an overall running time of over 90 minutes. The first part Drossler spends most of the time talking about his film archival work, and it isn't until the second part that he discusses ALRAUNE and THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE, but not as much as one would think. Drossler does make a rather interesting statement that sometimes silent film restorations are overly good-looking. 

A new audio commentary is included, by silent film expert Jan-Christopher Horak. He gives out plenty of info about the film and the people involved in it, but Horak has a very dry delivery and at times it sounds as if he is reciting from a book report. 

This is a great release from Deaf Crocodile, mainly due to the fact that it gives Brigitte Helm a major showcase of her talents for English-speaking audiences. ALRAUNE will probably be a bit too weird for most, even for silent movie buffs, but Helm is definitely worth watching, and you get the bonus of the Golem himself, Paul Wegener. I'll be writing a blog post on the Deaf Crocodile version of the 1926 THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE in the future. 

GERMAN SILENT RARITIES FROM DIRECTOR HENRIK GALEEN On Blu-ray From Deaf Crocodile

 

A company known as Deaf Crocodile has released a two-disc Blu-ray set containing a pair of rare (and restored) cult German silent films directed by Henrik Galeen, the man who wrote the script for the original NOSFERATU. The two films are THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE (1926) and ALRAUNE (1928). 

Both films have been restored by the Filmmuseum Munchen in Germany, and they both feature brand new music scores. The films also have proper intertitles inserted, along with tinting and English subtitles. There are plenty of substandard versions of THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE and ALRAUNE online, but the presentations on this Blu-ray set run about 130 minutes each, and they are far better-looking. 

ALRAUNE is based on a notorious novel by Hanns Heinz Ewers. A haughty scientist (played by the Golem himself, Paul Wegener) uses artificial insemination between a prostitute and a executed murderer to create a dangerously seductive woman (Brigitte Helm). Needless to say, this woman, called Alraune, causes plenty of problems. THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE is actually a remake of a 1913 film which was also written by Hanns Heinz Ewers, and also starred Paul Wegener. The 1926 version stars Conrad Veidt as Balduin, a student who despairs over not being wealthy. A mysterious moneylender named Scapinelli (Werner Krauss) provides Balduin with a fortune--but in return, the student must give up his reflection. Balduin starts to live the good life, but his lost reflection comes back to haunt him. 

This limited-edition special version of the release comes in a slipcase that has original artwork for both films on each side (see pictures above). The disc case has a two-sided sleeve which features vintage artwork for each movie, and each title gets its own disc. 

Included in the limited edition is an 80-page illustrated booklet, which contains reprints of articles written in the 1920s by Henrik Galeen, Hanns Heinz Ewers, and various critics. It also has sketches on the very unusual personal lives of Galeen and Ewers, and discussions on both of the films in the set. 

The two discs are Region A, and they each have audio commentaries by Jan-Christopher Horak. Each disc also has a two-part interview with film archivist Stefan Drossler of the Filmmuseum Munchen, the man behind the restorations of ALRAUNE and THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE, and an excerpt from a 1924 German film called DANGEROUS PATHS, in which Henrik Galeen appeared as an actor. In the future I will be writing blog posts on each movie in this set, and I will go into greater detail about the extras. (A regular edition of this set is available from Deaf Crocodile.) 

This is the first time I've purchased anything from Deaf Crocodile, and I was suitably impressed with this set. I've been fascinated by German silent cinema since I first saw METROPOLIS decades ago, and this set is made for folks like me. It contains a lineup of German Expressionist All-Stars, and it features two films that desperately needed to be restored and given a major release on North American home video. I hope Deaf Crocodile has more German silent movie releases planned in the future--particularly anything that stars Brigitte Helm. This release gets my highest recommendation for silent movie buffs.