TMP Oscar Winners Edition: Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects

Girl Week 2020: Stage Door, a guest post by Joel

31 Days of Horror: The Invisible Man (1933)

Girl Week 2019: Marked Woman, a guest post by Joel

2019 Blind Spot Series: The 39 Steps

2018 Blind Spot Series: The Lady Vanishes

2018 Blind Spot Series: Reefer Madness

2017 Blind Spot Series: City Lights

Girl Week 2016: Call Her Savage, a guest post by Joel

Bullets or Ballots

Directed by William Keighley.
1936. Not Rated, 82 minutes.
Cast:
Edward G. Robinson
Humphrey Bogart
Joan Blandell
Barton MacLane

Once Cpt. McLaren (Joe King) takes over the police department, he fires Johnny Blake (Robinson), one of the most successful and feared officers on the force. The local mob boss, Al Kruger (MacLane) seizes the opportunity and recruits Blake to join his gang. Based on the story of real-life cop Johnny Broderick. Most famous for his roles as a gangster, Robinson switches sides of the law in one of Hollywood's earliest tales of an undercover cop who may have gotten in too deep (movie buffs will see what I did there). As is usually the case with Robinson, it's a virtuoso performance. In this case, he exudes the arrogance necessary to move up the criminal ladder. To help matters out, the cast also includes a particularly angry Bogart for Robinson to go back and forth with. The story does a nice job of putting our hero in compromising positions for him to figure out. Best of all, the ending is a courageous one, particularly for the era. It leaves us a little unsure how we're supposed to feel. The entire film is a blueprint for the many movies of its kind to follow.

MY SCORE: 10/10

M

Directed by Fritz Lang.
1931. Not Rated, 117 minutes. German.
Cast:
Peter Lorre
Otto Wernicke
Frau Beckmann
Inge Landgut
Theodor Loos
Rudolf Blümner
Georg John
Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur

A child murderer has been terrorizing the town for quite some time. Everyone is on edge. The police are working day and night on seemingly never-ending shifts to find the killer. Still, children keep disappearing. Honest citizens become suspicious of one another. Dishonest citizens are upset that added attention from the law is hurting their businesses. Our killer taunts the authorities with letters to them and to the press. Yet, he remains undetected.

What follows are multiple and exhausting investigations that come to run simultaneously. We see the police using every available tool to apprehend the murderer and try explaining themselves to an impatient public when they don’t. Criminals have meetings to decide how they will deal with the situation. The task of catching the guilty party saturates every second of every day.

From time to time, we get to see this monster for ourselves. Though those around him know nothing, his identity is no mystery to us. We get to know what triggers his most heinous actions and how he operates. Before it’s all over, we hear his explanation. It’s a plea for sympathy. However, he is not only pleading with those in the movie. He’s also pleading with those watching.

That the killer is caught is not a spoiler. Indeed, it eventually becomes a mere matter of time before he is. The real question becomes who will catch him and what will they do with him. In most films, his capture would serve as our climax. Here, it is the axis that turns our tale. This is what makes M special. Even now, 80 years since its release, it refuses to be strait-jacketed into cliché. It still has the strength to go beyond the point where most pictures quit. Those movies are content to leave us with the tidy, happy ending. M is not. It has questions to ask you. It wants to know what you believe in.

Dracula (1931)

Bride of Frankenstein

Directed by James Whale.
1935. Not Rated, 75 minutes.
Cast:
Boris Karloff
Colin Clive
Valerie Hobson
Ernest Thesiger
Elsa Lanchester
Gavin Gordon
Una O’Connor
O. P. Heggie

As soon as Bride of Frankenstein starts, it brazenly lets us know it’s pulling a fast one on us. It shows us “Frankenstein” novel author Mary Shelley (Lanchester, who also plays the bride) and some of her inner-circle chit-chatting about, and essentially recapping the events of her legendary story. Just when they’re wrapping it up, she basically says to forget all about that wonderfully Shakespearean ending. They ain’t dead. Normally, this is an early warning sign that you’re about to watch a sequel that shouldn’t even exist and of a quality that suggests the same. Luckily, we get a sequel that actually outdoes the original.

Our new villain, the even more brilliant and crazier Dr. Pretorius (Thesiger) recruits Dr. Frankenstein (Clive), against his will, to help him in creating a companion for Frankenstein’s original monster. By the way, the monster (Karloff) roams the countryside terrorizing, and occasionally killing folks until he stumbles into a lonely blind man. This plays out much better than it sounds.

As mentioned, this film has a clear cut villain, Pretorius, and reluctant accomplice in Dr. Frankenstein. However, instead of an actual hero, we get a victim in Frankenstein’s monster. This works incredibly well as we’re properly set up for another doozy of an ending which finally includes the unveiling of the bride. Without having watched it, the knowledge that the title character doesn’t appear until very near the end of our tale seems like a terrible idea. When you do see it, you’ll realize it works perfectly.

Frankenstein (1931)

Directed by James Whale.
1931. Not Rated, 70 minutes.
Cast:
Colin Clive
Mae Clarke
Boris Karloff
John Boles
Edward Von Sloan
Frederick Kerr
Dwight Frye
Lionel Belmore
Marilyn Harris

Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Clive) is hellbent on creating life. He doesn’t want to do it the old fashioned way. He wants to animate a deceased and fully grown human being, sort of. His “human being” is actually sewn together from parts he’s gathered from graveyards, the gallows and God knows where else. Hmmm, God. That’s it, he wants to be God.

Fearing he’s gone mad, his fiancée, Elizabeth (Clarke), enlists the help of a couple of Henry’s colleagues to perform a kind of intervention. They do manage to get him to at least take a break long enough to marry his gal, but they’re still too late. His experiment has already succeeded.

What follows is an iconic monster movie warning us of the dangers of pretending to be the Almighty. Boris Karloff, as the monster, turns in his signature performance without saying a word. It’s not at all scary, by today’s standards, but it’s still an intriguing and eventually sad story.

The film’s biggest drawback is actually no fault of its own. It is simply too familiar to us. The story has been with us far too long. It’s been remade and parodied so often, it’s difficult to judge on its own merit without comparing it to whatever version you’ve already seen. Still, if you’re a horror buff and care even a little about its history, this is essential viewing.