Category: Golden Age
-
Dead of Night (1945)
October 15, 1945 There weren’t many horror films produced in Great Britain during World War II; however, Ealing Studios went horror-adjacent with one of the earliest anthology films, Dead of Night (1945.) It’s the type of anthology that uses a “wraparound” or “framing sequence” to contain its stories. Here, Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) arrives at…
-
Phantom Killer (1942)
October 2, 1942 As a lifelong DC Comics fan, it was a thrill to hear reference to Superman in a film from 1942. Only “four years-old” at the time, it indicates to me the immediate popularity of the character. In Phantom Killer (1942), when assistant district attorney Edward Clark (Dick Purcell) is certain about the…
-
The Mad Monster (1942)
In the book, “Hollywood’s Pre-Code Horrors 1931-1934,” Raymond Valinoti Jr. reports that during the production of Island of Lost Souls (1932), Production Code representative Jason Joy told Paramount: I assume that some thought has been given to the possibility of injecting the idea of crossing animals with humans. If this is the case it is…
-
The Mad Ghoul (1943)
Maybe it’s because I just watched a ratty old print of The Mad Monster (1942) on YouTube and a crisp new transfer of The Mad Ghoul (1943) on Blu-ray, but I enjoyed the latter… a lot. One of the “lesser” films among the Universal Horror Collections, I liked it better than some of the sequels…
-
Flesh & Fantasy (1943)
When a man (Robert Benchley, I Married a Witch) has a “rough night” combination of a chat with a fortune teller and then a bad dream, his friend at the club (David Hoffman, The Beast with Five Fingers) attempts to snap him out of his jitters with three stories of the supernatural. Synopses of Flesh…
-
The Walking Dead (1936)
For a film that runs barely over an hour but spends almost half that time setting up the story, The Walking Dead (1936) is a tight little thriller. Director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce) expertly weaves seemingly disparate plots together to tell an elaborate, yet simple, story. What does a…
-
Death Takes a Holiday (1934)
The origin of Death Takes a Holiday as a stage play are apparent in the 1934 film version. It’s talky, but the words don’t just consume time that could be used for action. They’re contemplative and meaningful. I probably didn’t catch the significance of them all, but at only 79 minutes, I’d gladly watch the…
-
The House of Seven Gables (1940)
Not only was this a first-time watch for me, but I was also previously unfamiliar with the story of The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. While the movie mentions curses, witchcraft, and hidden stairways, it plays more like a straight drama. Even the “thrills” of this thriller are tied more to family…
-
The Invisible Ray (1936)
I’ve been stuck in the 70s for a while now, so It’s been a while since I’ve watched a classic from the golden age of horror. Therefore, it was a pleasure to watch The Invisible Ray (1936), for the first time, by the way. The problem is, except for the time it was released, its…
-
The Devil & Daniel Webster (1941)
aka All That Money Can Buy The Devil & Daniel Webster (1941) evokes It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) for me. Both are about men who make unfortunate decisions but discover the error of their ways and are given an opportunity to return to their original lives. Also, both save the climactic resolutions for a few…
Classic Horrors Club 