13 Nights of Shocktober: Doctor X

by A.J.

Night 11: Classic Horror Night

Out Thrills Them All!

Doctor X

In the early 1930's, to compete with, and cash in on, the success Universal Studios had with Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Warner Bros. released Doctor X in 1932. It is a very peculiar horror film. Unlike Universal’s monster movies which were based on famous 19th century novels and involved castles and period settings, Doctor X was based on a play and has a contemporary, urban setting. It also has more of a mystery plot than a horror plot. The director is Michael Curtiz, who would become famous for directing classics like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Casablanca (1942). It's interesting to see his name on a horror movie the and skill he brings to a genre picture. The most peculiar element is its look. It is not a black and white film but it is not exactly a color movie either. It was shot on two strip technicolor film which used shades of only two colors: orange and green. The result looks like an eerie colorization of a black and white film or a faded color picture. This look works in the film’s favor giving it an eerie, mysterious atmosphere in every shot.

Doctor Xavier (Lionel Atwell), a renowned pathologist and researcher is assisting police in the investigation of the mysterious cannibalistic “moon killer” murders. Clues point to the killer being someone at Doctor Xavier’s research lab, where everyone is some degree of creepy or suspicious. 

All kinds of different research is done at Doctor Xavier’s lab. There are experiments that involve large machines and also psychological experiments. Doctor X is able to convince the police to let him conduct his own investigation to find the killer. For the sake of the plot, the police commissioner agrees. Complicating things as much as helping the investigation is a reporter played by Lee Tracy. He is basically comic relief but also one of the main characters. Fay Wray plays Doctor X’s daughter, and it’s only appropriate that her first line is a startled scream–she is the original scream queen after all.

The contemporary urban setting is unusual for a horror movie of this era and would be until the late 1960’s with the release of Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary’s Baby. Warner Bros. was known for its urban gangster movies so it makes sense that their horror movie would have the same setting and aesthetic. The city setting and mystery story give this film an almost Noir-ish feel with green tinged backgrounds and skies substituting for stylistic shadows. There is also more of an edge than you might expect. Since this was a Pre-Code movie it was able to get away with some more gruesome visuals and disturbing subject matter for the time. By far the most memorable and shocking visual is the killer applying a mask of “synthetic flesh” giving them a truly monstrous and scary looking face. 

Doctor X’s experiment to determine the killer’s identity is very reminiscent of a famous scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing. The doctor restrains all of the suspects in a row while they watch a reenactment of the murder so he can gauge their reactions. When the real killer pops up, everyone else is trapped and struggles to get free. 

Fay Wray’s character could be more developed. She ends up being the screaming damsel in distress, but her screen presence makes up for lack of character depth. The reporter character is funny, but not very charming so his romance with Wray feels forced and obligatory. This movie isn’t scary but it is creepy and eerie and entertaining. Like many classic era horror movies it is also pretty short (76 minutes) and it's impressive how much it gets done in that time. If you’ve seen all of the more famous horror classics, I highly recommend Doctor X for an eerie Shocktober night. 

Doctor X airs on TCM on Thursday, October 31st at 5AM CT.

13 Nights of Shocktober: House on Haunted Hill (1959)

by A.J.

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween

“I’ve rented the house on Haunted Hill tonight so my wife can give a party. A haunted house party… You’re all invited.”

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Fright Favorites written by David J. Skal and published by TCM describes House on Haunted Hill (1959) as “one of the most preposterous movies ever made—and one of the most enjoyable.” “Preposterous” and “enjoyable” are the key words to House on Haunted Hill, one of the classic “so bad it’s good” movies. It is also genuinely entertaining and even has a good scare or two. It was produced and directed by William Castle, who was as much a showman as a filmmaker. He would incorporate carnivalesque gimmicks into the theatrical experience and since his movies were typically low budget and cheesy, this only made them more fun. His most famous gimmick was rigging certain theater seats with a buzzer and hiring actors to jump in their seats during a scene when the monster escapes in The Tingler. For House on Haunted Hill the gimmick was presenting the film in “Emergo'' which meant that for a certain scene a model skeleton, seeming to emerge from the screen, would fly over the audience. The effect didn’t always work. Castle was well aware of his audience, mostly younger people and children, and knew how to give them a good time. House on Haunted Hill is still a good time 

The plot is a take on the ‘old dark house’ story, a type of whodunnit where people gathered in a creepy house had to solve a mystery or murder. The possibility of the supernatural loomed but the solution was rational. Horror legend Vincent Price stars as Fredrick Loren, the host of the party; he also feels like a master of ceremonies. He has invited 5 strangers to a supposedly haunted house he rented to have a party for his wife and is offering $10,000 to the guests if they make it through the night, or he’ll give it to their nearest relative if they don’t survive. So, the bottom line is he’s giving away money no matter what. He may also be using the party as an elaborate way to kill his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart). They cannot stand each other and she only speaks to him with contempt. In one scene he looms over her, pulls her by her hair, asks, “Would you adore me as much if I were poor?” and gives a sinister chuckle. The haunted house party was her idea but he is the host and their continued bickering over whose party it is makes for an unusual, likely unintentional, running gag. 

The protagonists should be Nora, a secretary, and Lance, a test pilot, but she does little more than wander into one spooky situation after the other and scream at everything and Lance proves to be an uncharismatic dolt. Elisha Cook Jr plays the Elisha Cook Jr role, meaning he is the weak pushed around nerd and/or geek. He is the owner of the house and also the most afraid of it. He plays his character well but has little more to do than show up and rattle on about ghosts. Price and his charisma really hold the movie together. You know he is up to no good but want to see where he is going. 

Just how ridiculous is this movie? It opens with a montage of screams over a black screen followed by not one, but two floating heads that appear and explain the premise of the movie. The house has a pre-existing pool of acid in the basement, you might call it Chekhov’s pool of acid. One jump scare that legitimately works, even after repeat viewings, has Nora being surprised by the creepy witch-like face of one of the caretakers. This is immediately followed by one of the most hilarious moments on film as the caretaker-witch simply glides away as though she is a mannequin being pulled on a skateboard. The most preposterous moment of the movie has all of the characters agreeing to a good idea: they will stay in their rooms for the rest of the night. Then they all leave their rooms and start wandering again and no one ever brings up that they were supposed to stay in their rooms. In a great reveal, Price emerges from the shadows wearing an elaborate marionette pulley system and he sells it completely. 

This movie is not scary but it is so much spooky good fun. I think William Castle would be satisfied to hear that his House on Haunted Hill is still entertaining people in the 21st century, even without an inflatable skeleton flying over them. He also wouldn’t be surprised. House on Haunted Hill is in the public domain so you can easily find it streaming and on DVD in both colorized and original black and white (naturally I recommend the black and white). For some extra fun, you can watch the RiffTrax Live version, currently streaming on Tubi, featuring the former stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, providing a hilarious commentary to the movie as well as some shorts.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Black Cat (1934)

by A.J.

Night 11: Universal Horror Night

“Superstitious, perhaps. Bologna, perhaps not.”

 The Black Cat (1934)

Released in 1934, The Black Cat is unusual for a Universal Studios horror picture because it features none of their signature monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, or any monsters, at least no supernatural ones. However, The Black Cat does feature the biggest horror stars of the era, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff giving some of the best performances of their careers. The title card says the movie is “suggested by the immortal Edgar Allan Poe classic” but that claim is more than a stretch as the only thing the plot has in common with the Poe short story is the inclusion of a black cat in one scene. Fortunately, the story invented by screenwriter Peter Ruric and co-writer and director Edgar G. Ulmer makes for a superbly dark and creepy old-school horror picture.

While traveling on the Orient Express through Hungary on their honeymoon, newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan (Julie Bishop) end up sharing a train compartment with Dr. Vitas Werdegast (Bela Lugosi), who is very polite but mysterious. They also share a carriage but after an accident Dr. Vitas takes them to the closest shelter, which happens to be his destination: the home of an “old friend,” Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). We learn that Vitas and Poelzig are actually deadly enemies. During the Great War Poelzig betrayed their army, leading to a massacre and Vitas being sent to a prison camp where he says, “the soul is killed slowly.” Poelzig built an elaborate estate on the site of the massacre, kidnapped Vitas’s wife, whose body he keeps preserved in a glass case, and is now married to Vitas’s daughter. Poelzig is also a Satan worshiper and wants to use Joan in a ritual. In short, he is a very bad guy. It is no wonder why Vitas is so set on revenge. Vitas has also been driven mad from his time in the prison camp and is so set on getting vengeance that even learning that his daughter is still alive doesn’t alter his revenge mission.

The highlight of The Black Cat is watching Lugosi and Karloff duel, first with their words and later with their fists. Vitas and Poelzig have a strange respect for each other even though their hatred for each other permeates every scene. Karloff is excellent as the sinister and evil Poelzig. We first see him in silhouette and his tall, gaunt, and slender figure is used to great effect. Karloff’s lilting voice also adds an extra creepy layer to his dialogue. Lugosi gets to be the hero, sort of—anti-hero might be a better description. He has been so overwhelmingly wronged by Poelzig that he has your sympathies even though his plan is to horribly torture Poelzig. His main redeeming quality is that he wants no harm to come to Peter or Joan and goes out of his way to protect Joan (Peter proves to be superfluous, even misunderstanding Vitas’s rescuing Joan). As Vitas, Lugosi brilliantly delivers many wonderful and eerie speeches that do as much to create a chilling atmosphere as the setting and score.

Poelzig’s home is not a creepy gothic castle but a surprisingly modern looking estate. Peter describes it as a “nice, cozy, unpretentious insane asylum.” The lair where Vitas’s wife’s preserved body is kept and the satanic ritual is performed is a mix of dungeon and mad scientist’s lab. Vitas’s torture of Poelzig happens offscreen but still makes you squirm. The Black Cat was made before the puritanical Production Code heavily restricted the content and subject matter of all movies. With its plot dealing with violent revenge, torture, satanism, implied rape, and necrophilia, there’s little chance it could have been made after the code became strictly enforced. Because of this, The Black Cat still retains some surprising shock value even after nearly 90 years. This movie is not nearly as well known or widely seen Dracula (1931) or Frankenstein (1931), but it is as deserving of classic status, and in many ways it is the scarier classic horror movie.

The Black Cat airs on TCM on Halloween at 1:30 PM CT and is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Bad Seed (1956)

 by A.J.

Night 3: Psycho Killer Night

“It’s just that they are bad seeds. Plain bad from the beginning”

The Bad Seed

The “creepy kid” or “killer kid” movie is an entire subgenre of horror with entries like Village of the Damned, The Innocents, Bloody Birthday, The Good Son, and Orphan to name a few. The Bad Seed (1956) has a firm place as a classic, if not the classic, creepy kid/killer kid movie. Based on a novel by William March and its stage adaptation, the killer kid here is 8-year-old Rhoda who is outwardly sweet, privately snobby, and also quite evil and murderous. Though The Bad Seed is not at all violent, it feels delightfully subversive and transgressive, like a movie that got away with something, especially for being made during the 1950’s.

The trouble begins when Rhoda loses a class award to another student. Then on a field trip that boy drowns in a lake after hitting his head. The medal goes missing but later Rhoda’s mother, Christine (Nancy Kelly), finds it hidden in Rhoda’s room and begins to suspect that her daughter caused the boy’s death. She also starts to wonder if Rhoda may be responsible for the death of their last landlady, a nice old lady who promised to leave Rhoda an heirloom when she died…and then suddenly died. Christine is also dealing with the knowledge that she was adopted and her biological mother was a notorious serial killer. There are some debates about nature vs nurture, likely one of the first times the topic was addressed in a major film. 

Young Patty McCormack does an excellent job playing Rhoda. She seems completely capable of causing the deaths that happen off screen, which are plausible as accidents or murders–they are not grand or elaborate “kills.” She is also convincing as a little kid. Rhoda is smart and clever, but is not an evil genius. When the creepy groundskeeper, Leroy (Henry Jones), who sees right through her façade, taunts her about having evidence against her, she believes him the way a child believes an adult, even one they don’t like. This exchange makes Leroy Rhoda’s next target

You might hear that The Bad Seed is a campy movie, and after seeing it you might even agree, but this does not diminish the dark, disturbing nature of the movie. Many of the performances seem just a bit over the top, but a better description is that they are heightened stage performances that were not turned down for the movie version. This makes sense since most of the cast from the stage production reprise their roles for the movie. They are still great performances, however, and it is no surprise that Nancy Kelly received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and Patty McCormack received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Eileen Heckart, who plays the mother of the dead boy, really makes the most of only two scenes and also received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.

The real camp value in The Bad Seed comes from how totally oblivious the adults, except for Leroy, are to Rhoda’s malevolent side. When Nancy asks Rhoda about the death of their previous landlady the entire scenario is so obviously murder that Rhoda’s continued good girl act becomes humorous. I think director Mervyn LeRoy knew what he was doing in allowing these exaggerated, or camp, moments into the movie. The stylized performances and dark humor take the edge off an otherwise disturbing premise. 

Of course the novel and play end differently than the movie, which had to tack on a new ending to satisfy the requirements of the puritanical Production Code office. This is the most outlandish and campy scene of all, yet even this scene is so over the top that it feels subversive too. It is as though the filmmakers decided that if they had to add an ending where Rhoda gets her comeuppance, they would tack on the most ridiculous “moral” ending imaginable. Also, a Warner Bros. executive insisted on including a “cast curtain call,” not common in this era when movies had no closing credits, with the cast happy and smiling, including Patty McCormick and Nancy Kelly, just so audiences could rest easy with the extra assurance that they had not been watching a documentary. Though it may not be exactly scary, The Bad Seed is a dark and creepy and entertaining film.

The Bad Seed airs on TCM on Sunday, October 22nd at 1PM CT and is also available to stream on Hoopla.

13 Nights of Shocktober: White Zombie (1932)

 by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, for the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 1: Classic Horror Night

“Zombies, the living dead.”

White Zombie (1932)

White Zombie has the distinction of being the first Hollywood zombie movie. However, the zombies depicted are not undead flesh eaters, which would not come into existence as we know them until George Romero's landmark film Night of the Living Dead in 1968. These are the original Haitian zombies, which are people who have been drugged, buried, dug up, and hypnotized into mindlessly serving the will of a master. In this movie the zombie master is Bela Lugosi as Murder Legendre. Yes, his character name is actually “Murder.” White Zombie usually gets overlooked as a classic horror movie because it is surprisingly not a Universal horror movie but an independent production. So it doesn't get included with the likes of Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932). Nevertheless, this is an eerie, early horror movie worthy of classic status. It has managed to have a lasting influence, inspiring the name of Rob Zombie’s band and being included in later movies like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween (2007). 

The protagonists are Neil Parker (John Harron) and his fiancé Madeleine Short (Madge Bellamy) who travel to the West Indies to visit their wealthy friend Charles Beaumont (Robert W. Frazer). Neither knows that Beaumont is so in love with Madeline that he has recruited the sinister Murder Legendre to make her into a zombie that will belong to him. Just after Neil and Madeleine’s wedding, she falls mysteriously ill and dies and is quickly buried. When Neil visits her tomb, he finds it empty. With the help of a local missionary, Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn), who delivers a lot of exposition about Voodoo and zombies, they figure out the evil plan of Charles and Murder Legendre and the pair set out to rescue Madeleine. 

Of course, the approach to the racial and historical background of Haitian zombies is dated and at times condescending. Dr. Bruner refers to Haiti as a place “full of nonsense and superstition…sometimes I don’t know what to think.” However, it is not entirely ignored either. A black carriage driver (Clarence Muse, in an uncredited performance) is the first to recognize the zombies and drives Neil and Madeline to safety. He provides the movie's first description of zombies: “Corpses taken from their graves, who are made to work at the sugar mill fields at night.” Turning Madeline into the titular white zombie to be a beautiful, silent, mindless bride is a deviation of the usual purpose of creating a zombie. The fear of zombies and of becoming a zombie is rooted in slavery and the fear that even after death a slave would still not be free and still be forced to serve a master. Legendre proudly shows off his zombie slaves, each was a rival or someone who wronged him. Now, they are under his hypnotic spell and do his bidding. “They are not worried about long hours,” Legendre says and offers to provide Beaumont with zombie workers. “You could make good use of men like mine on your plantation?” The fate of the native zombies is of no concern to the main characters. 

Like many early sound era horror films, White Zombie is heavy on atmosphere. The most memorable and chilling image has to be Lugosi’s sinister, hypnotic eyes superimposed over shots of Madeline, looming over his unsuspecting victim. The island setting and references to Voodoo serve the same purpose as castles and legends in the Universal monster movies, building an eerie atmosphere and making it clear that the main characters are in an unfamiliar land. Lugosi is excellent as the zombie master. After the success of Dracula, Universal offered him the role of the creature in Frankenstein but he turned it down because the character just grunted and never spoke. This is typically viewed as a miscalculation on Lugosi’s part and, allegedly, he took the role in White Zombie to not miss out on another success. However, Lugosi likely made the right choice. His talent for delivering dialogue in a way that is both alluring and menacing is his forte and it is what makes Dracula and White Zombie so creepy and so memorable. 

White Zombie is in the public domain so you can easily find it on nearly any streaming service. It is available in both colorized and original black and white versions, but the black and white version streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime Video has the best picture quality. It will also air on TCM on Monday, October 30th at 9AM CT in quality black and white.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, for the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 8: Classic Horror Night

“Things one can't do, are the ones I want to.”

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Made only a few years into the sound era, the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, remains an entertaining and effective horror film. This adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella stars the great Fredric March as the good natured Dr. Jekyll and also the monstrous Mr. Hyde. Even at this time, despite their success and even their artistic merits, horror movies were produced as and thought of as B-pictures. However, March’s performance is so undeniably good that he won Best Actor at the 5th  Academy Awards (tying with Wallace Beery for The Champ). Like Dracula and Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has so permeated the culture that whether you’ve seen any film version or not, or read the novel or not, you are already familiar with the basic story. 

Dr. Henry Jekyll is a good natured doctor in London in the late 1800’s. He is not a saint but is pretty close to it. Still, he struggles with dark and unsavory impulses. He believes that every person has a light and dark side and that through his scientific experiments he can separate the two halves allowing the good half to live unburdened by the dark half. He also believes that the dark half, once its urges are satisfied, will simply fade away. While his fiancé is out of town with her father, Jekyll conducts his dangerous experiment with results that are equally successful and horrific. 

The scenes of Jekyll transforming into Hyde are still impressive and pack good shock value even after 90 years. In this version, Hyde is manifested as an atavistic monster. His hair turns into thick wiry fur that covers his body and his teeth become sharp fangs. This suggests that Hyde, the dark side, embodies the animalistic origins of human nature. Jekyll makes his transformation into Hyde by drinking a bubbling potion (a cliched image, but satisfying to watch in a black and white 1930’s film). When he begins to transform the camera holds a tight close up on March as he chokes, makes pained expressions, and heavy shadows and dark spots appear on his face. The camera pans down to his transforming hands or swirls around the room and then reveals the hideous face of Hyde. One of the best things that helps ground this horror movie is that though Hyde has money and dresses like a gentleman, everyone is repulsed and frightened by his monstrous inhuman appearance.

The unfortunate object of Hyde’s obsession is a poor, lower class girl named Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) who Jekyll treated after she was assaulted. She tries to seduce Jekyll and he puts up little defense to the shock of his friend. The image of her leg swinging over her bed is superimposed over the following scene of Jekyll making excuses for his natural impulses. Her swinging leg fades slowly but never really leaves Jekyll’s mind.

Ivy is cruelly tortured by Hyde both physically and psychologically. He whips her back (offscreen) and torments her by reminding her that he can find her at any time, no matter where she goes or what she does. Hopkins, with her incredible performance as Ivy, is able to match March as both Jekyll and Hyde. She plays Ivy not just as the damsel in a horror movie, but as a victim of abuse. Despite the urging of her landlady, Ivy refuses to leave town or go to the police. Hopkins portrays Ivy’s plight so well that we understand her refusal to seek help. As the movie goes on, we find that Jekyll is perhaps not such a good natured person after all since he takes the potion voluntarily each night allowing himself to transform into Hyde and torture Ivy. When his fiancé returns, he stops taking the potion only to find that now Hyde can emerge whenever he wants. 

The scenes of Hyde being chased by police have him leaping over stairs or swinging on chandeliers; everyone’s capes flap wildly. The ending is abrupt, which is typical of classic era films, especially horror movies. This is a great film to watch on any Shocktober night with casual or hardcore horror fans or classic film fans. This version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was made by Paramount Pictures to compete with the success of Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein, also made in 1931. Without a doubt it deserves to stand alongside these other horror classics.  

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde airs on TCM on Saturday, October 29th at 11AM CT.