TCM Underground is great, but they seem to recycle the same movies again and again. This is TCM, for God’s sake, not some video rental store. Shouldn’t we see a vast collection of underground movies from Hollywood and around the globe, with hosts introducing them to us with perspective and panache?
Well, I’ve already posted something about the host (the postest with the mostest hostests), so here are some movie suggestions:
It’s TCM, so why not start with classic 1930s movies that are little-known, but bring the crazy? Here are a few possibilities:
Thirteen Women, 1932: This movie features murder and mayhem galore, but this is the movie that made Irene Dunne a star. No, not this movie itself, but the studio saw her in the rushes, loved her, expanded her part, and she became a breakout star. If you look at IMDB, it says Back Street was before Thirteen Women, but if you look at the release dates, you’ll see they’ve got the films out of order. After this, Irene Dunne made a huge run of the “weepies”, and then into screwball comedy, and the rest is history. Also here is Myrna Loy, playing another of her femme fatale characters from her early days; she was still two years away from stardom in The Thin Man, 1934. And as a side note, this is the only movie ever to feature the “Hollywood Sign Girl”, Peg Entwistle, who jumped to her death from the ‘H’ of the Hollywoodland sign the same year (1932) at age 24; she inspired Bette Davis to become an actress: according to reports, after seeing Ms. Entwistle in a play, a young Bette told her mother: “I want to be exactly like Peg Entwistle.” (With so much great trivia, it would make a great early addition to a new series with a new film historian host.)
Before Dawn, 1933: Irving Pichel (acted in Dracula’s Daughter, 1936; starred in lots of pre-code mayhem, directed Destination Moon, 1950) directed this old dark house story of a hidden million dollars and some spiritualism and phony ghosts, written by Garrett Fort (Dracula, 1931), from a story by Edgar Wallace (tons of mystery stories made into movies). Lots of movies like this were made at the time, but this one beats them all, and is lots of fun. Starring Warner Oland (Charlie Chan series), Jane Darwell (The Grapes of Wrath), Dudley Digges (The Maltese Falcon {the first one, 1931}, The Invisible Man, 1933, Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935), and Frank Reicher (the captain of the ship in King Kong, 1933).
Terror Aboard, 1933: This ripping, wicked movie sees a rich man (John Halliday, The Philadelphia Story, 1940), on the open ocean with numerous guests aboard his enormous yacht, find out on the radio he’s wanted for fraud, so he kills everyone on board to try to escape the charge. It’s pre-code craziness, and a film most people have not seen, but thankfully I have, and everyone should. A commenter in IMDB said it was supposedly like the Friday the 13th of its day (a stalking and killing a bunch of people movie). (BTW: We all know whodunit from the beginning, so I am not giving anything away. Still mounds of fun anyway.)
The Witching Hour, 1934: I’ve never seen this movie, and I’ll bet most others haven’t either. It’s another movie starring John Halliday (Terror Aboard, 1933), this time with hints of supernatural hocus-pocus. Sounds like fun: I’d love to see it! TCM is probably our only hope to see it. (Years ago, I saw a bootleg copy on eBay, but it was too expensive, and then they cracked down on the bootlegs, so I missed my chance.)
Trick for Trick, 1933: Another movie I haven’t seen. Someone on IMDB said it was great when they saw it at a film festival about 30 years ago, and I want to see it badly! Ralph Morgan (Frank Morgan’s brother, who looks a lot like him) stars as a good magician against an evil magician in a battle of wits and magic! Also stars Edward Van Sloan (Dracula, 1931; Frankenstein, 1931). (Generally in 1930s mystery movies, if the killer wasn’t Porter Hall (the mean Macy’s store psychologist in Miracle on 34th Street), then it was Ralph Morgan.) (BTW: the director of this movie, Hamilton MacFadden, also directed the best of the early sound mysteries, The Black Camel, 1931, a Charlie Chan mystery, starring Warner Oland as Charlie Chan, Bela Lugosi in a rare heroic role, Dwight Frye (also from Dracula, 1931) as a violent scoundrel, and many other faces you’ll recognize from the pre-code movies we see on TCM. I understand the Museum of Modern Art owns a print, from my research, but apparently I’m not allowed to see it, or it’s too inconvenient for them to bring it out just for me. (BTW: Movie books generally credit The Kennel Murder Case, 1933, as being the earliest example of the sound mystery that’s really great. But actually, The Black Camel is just as good, it’s two years earlier, and it’s filmed on location in Honolulu, Hawaii. (Hamilton MacFadden apparently got phased out because the Hollywood studios wanted to lessen costs as the Great Depression’s effects rolled into, or caused things to fail to roll into, their pocketbooks by shooting everything on soundstages and the back lot, and he was known for his uncompromising production work.)))
Murder by the Clock, 1931: Wow, what can you say? A crazy maniac, played by Before Dawn director Irving Pichel (similar to how he played his role in The Story of Temple Drake, but way crazier), an old woman who fears being buried alive so much, she installs a bullhorn to set off if she ever wakes up in her tomb, and Lilyan Tashman, one of the all-time great movie femme fatales, weaving her web of seduction and greed. What more do you want? It doesn’t get crazier than this earlier than this, and most people have never seen it. Calling TCM: Show this movie, please. (I know, as a Paramount movie from 1931, Universal owns it, and they like to bury their Paramount vault. Lame excuse, though: we should all be allowed to see them!) Read about Tilyan Tashman on Wikipedia, if you dare! (She’s probably lucky she died when she did, otherwise she certainly would have been Joseph Breen’s #1 target for career/life ruination.)
The Ninth Guest, 1934: Directed by Roy William Neill, the guy who directed most of the old Sherlock Holmes series with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, and who also directed the great Boris Karloff movie: The Black Room, 1935. Apparently this movie (with a great cast, including Donald Cook, Genevieve Tobin, Edwin Maxwell and Samuel S. Hinds) is based on a story very similar to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, but written before it. The movie was remade in 1939 with Boris Karloff, again at Columbia, as The Man They Could Not Hang. It sure would be nice to see the original, made by a superior director, unseen for many years, wouldn’t it?
Murders in the Zoo, 1933: Wow, a crazy Lionel Atwill killing people in his zoo? Count me in! Man, this is a zany horror movie, with looney zoo man Atwill catching his wife cheating, and, well, um, you’ll see. Also starring Randolph Scott in an early starring role, as well as Kathleen “Lota the Panther Woman” Burke from Island of Lost Souls, 1932. Actually, it’s funny, because the woman who came in second in the “Lota the Panther Woman” contest (Paramount had one, as a publicity stunt, and a talent scout, to find the star of their new picture: Island of Lost Souls, 1932), was Gail Patrick (My Man Godfrey, 1936), one of the greatest high-class actresses of all time. She said coming in second was the best thing that ever happened to her. (She produced the 1950s TV series Perry Mason after she finished with acting.)
Island of Lost Souls, 1932: This is surely one of the great horror movies of all time. Super fun, silly, crazy: it’s got it all! I believe Michael Weldon, of The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (super fun book! Buy a copy used on Amazon: you’ll thank me later!), called it: “…probably the best horror film ever made.” So it’s not just me saying it. This is the first movie version of The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells, with lots of hairy man-beasts all over the place, and one very human “panther woman” our fine doctor is trying to mate with a shipwrecked (sort of, anyway), um, “visitor”. Laughs and shocks aplenty! Along with the ones we all know (your Dracula, your Frankenstein, your Mummy), it’s right at the top. (Have your bullwhip handy, or things could get hairy!) “What is the law?” (<To watch this movie: that is the law!)
The Most Dangerous Game, 1932: This movie, directed by genre stalwart Irving Pichel (Before Dawn, 1933; Destination Moon, 1950) called by the Aurum Encyclopedia of Horror Movies: “…one of the most authentically sadean films ever made.” (I guess they’d know, making people review every movie ever made in a bunch of genres while held captive in a library basement for years, seeing nothing but movies in the same genre for years at a time their whole lives, or so I heard.), this movie was actually a trial run for the live action parts of the upcoming King Kong, 1933. Reportedly, Joel McCrea was so sick of running around in the jungle, he declined to star in King Kong, and recommended his Brown Derby doorman friend for the part: Bruce Cabot; both had long, successful careers. (Joel McCrea was famous for saying, of Veronica Lake, a notoriously difficult actress to work with (I would love to know the specifics of this claim!), after being asked to star in another movie after Sullivan’s Travels, 1941: “Life is too short for two films with Veronica Lake,” re: I Married a Witch. BTW: I think Veronica Lake is one of the most beautiful women ever in movies, and also a great actress, so I’d love to hear more of how, in what way, she was so difficult to work with, just as a fan. I know she found Hollywood superficial and self-important, but I’d love to know specifically what she did, and how she acted, to make actors detest working with her. Apparently Fredric March hated working with her on I Married a Witch so much, he called it: “I Married a Bitch.”))
The Old Dark House, 1932: Obviously for this genre you just can’t beat The Old Dark House, 1932, directed by Frankenstein, 1931, director James Whale, and starring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas (Ninotchka, 1939; The Changeling, 1980; Ghost Story, 1981), Charles Laughton (in his first American movie!), Ernest Thesiger (three years before playing Dr. Pretorius in The Bide of Frankenstein, 1935; and one year away from playing with Karloff in The Ghoul, 1933), Raymond Massey (Things to Come, 1936), Lilian Bond (The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945), Gloria Stuart (The Kiss Before the Mirror, 1933; Secret of the Blue Room, 1933; The Invisible Man, 1933; Titanic, 1997), in I believe her first featured role, and two standout performances by a couple of senior ladies: Eva Moore, as the Bible thumping, fire & brimstone matron of the house, and Elspeth Dudgeon (the woman smoking the upside-down pipe at the Gypsy camp site where the monster burns his hand on a roasting skewered bird in The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935, and who is the villainous Octopus in Sh! The Octopus, 1937), who plays a 100-year-old man upstairs (“When you get to be may age, at any time, you might just…die.”). F*ck, yeah! This movie rocks: mayhem from start to finish! If you don’t know it, see it! (One of my all-time favorites.)
Night of Terror, 1933: This Columbia released silly horror film stars Bela Lugosi, and isn’t the best, but is really fun of the old dark house vein. It would make a nice triple feature with Before Dawn and The Old Dark House: then you’d have one with Boris Karloff, one with Bela Lugosi, and one with Warner Oland (Werewolf of London, 1935).
Supernatural, 1933: Carole Lombard’s only horror movie! She hated making it so much, she asked the studio: “Who do I have to screw to get off this picture?” and said of the director (White Zombie’s Victor Halperin): “He ought to be running a deli!” But I think it’s a cool little early ‘30s horror movie. You might, too! (A few years ago, TCM had Carole Lomard as the Star of the Month, in October, and didn’t show Supernatural during their Halloween programming: Seriously, guys?) Starring Randolph Scott (Murders in the Zoo, 1933) and H. B. Warner (Hollywood Boulevard, 1950).
The Florentine Dagger, 1935: Directed by Robert Florey (the guy who adapted Frankenstein for the screen, but was uncredited on the movie after studio brass replaced him with James Whale), this is a crazy hodge-podge of a movie: horror, drama, romance, mystery: what more could anyone ask? It’s seriously silly and also dark and heady, with plot elements prefiguring The Face Behind the Mask, 1941, and with an ending I believe inspired the ending to the classic movie Casablanca, with the heroes escaping on a final night’s airplane flight, due to the concessions of a corrupt police official who delights in the romantic (They were both Warner Bros. Movies.). What more could you want? With C. Aubrey Smith (every cool movie ever. Um, I mean, crusty upper class Brit actor seen in the likes of: Tarzan the Ape Man, 1932; The Scarlet Empress, 1934; Romeo and Juliet, 1936; The Prisoner of Zenda, 1937), Margaret Lindsay (so much great stuff, including Lady Killer, 1933; the Ellery Queen series from the 1940s), Robert Barrat (the victim in The Kennel Murder Case, 1933), Rafaela Ottiano (Grand Hotel, 1932; She Done Him Wrong, 1933; The Devil Doll, 1936).
The Raven, 1935: I hesitate to list this movie, as most Karloff/Lugosi and horror fans in general have likely seen it; but it is the film that got horror films banned from 1936 to 1939, with its silly, tame scenes of torture. Oh, if they only knew what was to come!
The Thirteenth Chair, 1929: This is the original version of which the Dame May Whitty version is the remake. I’ve never seen it, but would love to; with Leila Hyams (Freaks, 1932; Island of Lost Souls, 1932), Holmes Herbert (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1931; The Invisible Man, 1933). (Great cast!)
Some of these movies have been shown on TCM before, but rarely, and mostly in the 4-6 a.m. timeslot, where nobody’s going to see them anyway. Show them when people will like them: during TCM Underground! These could be the Saturday night fare during the pre-code festival.
(BTW: I am omitting known lost films such as The Cat Creeps, 1930, the first sound remake of The Cat and the Canary, 1927. And I’m assuming everyone has seen Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, and the other Halloween staples.)
I will add lists from other decades later, but as TCM is Turner Classic Movies, I thought I’d start at the beginning of sound horror films: 1930s (and late 1920s).
(Sorry, sometimes the Blogger interface likes to screw up the carriage returns of paragraphs containing italicized type, but it is totally unpredictable. I wish they would fix that bug.)
(Sorry, sometimes the Blogger interface likes to screw up the carriage returns of paragraphs containing italicized type, but it is totally unpredictable. I wish they would fix that bug.)
