It's spooky season again. Join us for spine chillers from yesteryear this month.
RODNEY BOWCOCK: It’s Paris; it’s 1845, and that’s about all this film has in common with the Poe story from which it was named. In short order, we’re introduced to Pierre Dupin (Leon Ames) and his fiancée Camille (Sidney Fox) along with their (sort of) comedy relief friends Paul and Mignette (Bert Roach and Edna Marion). Pierre is a medical student and amateur detective, but that doesn’t mean anything to us yet, as the foursome is on a double date at a carnival. The group finds themselves in a sideshow hosted by Dr. Mirakle (Bela Lugosi) who is showing audiences his ape, Erik.
Mirakle primarily uses Erik to lecture the carnival attendees on the then controversial concept of evolution; a topic that riles and infuriates many of the members of the audience. Erik is taken with Camille’s beauty and her bonnet. Erik is also immediately jealous of Pierre and attempts to strangle him when he gets too close to his cage. Dr. Mirakle is also taken with Camille, but since he is portrayed by Bela, we know all to well that his enchantment is not, at least entirely, amorous.
Sure enough, and I know this is a surprise, but Mirakle has ulterior motives. Turns out, he’s already been experimenting on, ahem, professional women but keeps failing in his experiments to reverse evolution because their blood isn’t pure enough (!). He believes he’s found the perfect catalyst for his experiments in Camille and becomes hell-bent on kidnapping her.
SAMANTHA GLASSER: This is a pre-code film, and we come to expect lascivious things from that era. Was Mirakle's intention to mate Erik the ape with Camille? Why else would he need to mix ape blood with a human woman's?
I'm glad they retained the Victorian setting from Poe. It works nicely for suspense purposes. The strange attractions at the circus, the virginal ladies who scream at the sight of them, and the homespun buildings and carriage, prior to the onslaught of the machine age, bring an additional otherworldly quality to the setting. The uneven rooftops of Paris look like the rooftops in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The era also provides a lushness through sumptuous costumes that make this film much more than a quicky horror flick. The date in the park is a gorgeous glittering contrast to the sinister deeds done in the abandoned building's basement. We see couples having a picnic, swimming in the river, swinging under a tree branch, surrounded by flowers. Even the ropes of the swing are twined with flowers, and cinematographer Karl Freund attached the camera to the swing so we are frolicking with Sidney Fox. Freund was no stranger to German Expressionism or horror; he also shot Metropolis and Dracula. The historical accuracy is always in question-- nice women and men did not go swimming together and public pools had separate swim times for the sexes-- but the effort results in a visual feast. Compare this idyllic paradise with the seedy underworld of the doctor, hidden in the depths of a ramshackle building, cold, wet and decaying.
RB: I saw no particular signs of it, but production of the film was not exactly smooth. The film was initially suggested after the success of Dracula, and Frankenstein was in pre-production. We know now that Lugosi famously refused the role of Frankenstein’s monster, so it may be logical to assume that the Poe classic story was hurriedly adapted in order to get Universal’s new (and cheap) star into another vehicle. While the film was the idea of director Robert Florey, he was not initially assigned to the film. That distinction goes to George Melford, who had directed the Spanish-language Dracula, a film that is often revered today for its highly atmospheric and spooky tone. However, Florey was soon on the job and casting. He claimed that Bette Davis was in the running for Camille, but was not chosen due to a lack of sex appeal, and frankly, Bette in Bela is a pairing that I 100,000% want to see.
SG: Lugosi is deeply sinister, but also charismatic in his unibrow. In the scene where he picks up the prostitute, she senses his menacing intentions, and yet he manages to lure her to him. She is played by Arlene Francis, who went on to be a panelist on What's My Line? She preferred the theater to films, so only worked in Hollywood sporadically. She is notorious in my mind for her cookbook No Time For Cooking which flaunts mid-century atrocities like casseroles topped with hot dogs and meatloaf compiled from assorted processed deli meats. I never would have recognized her had I not noticed her name in the cast, but she screams skillfully throughout her scenes.
Leon Ames, who played the father in Meet Me in St. Louis, is billed as Leon Waycoff, and looks rather handsome in his longer curly hairstyle. Fox is lovely as Camille, and she unfortunately had a short life due to an overdose of sleeping pills.
We have talked about the use of apes in films in our Ape For April series, but it is worth reiterating that live gorillas were a new and misunderstood discovery in the mid-1800s. People saw their size and strength and assumed they were vicious man-eating creatures instead of the shy vegetarians that primatologists like Dian Fossey discovered them to be. Movies from the classic era are littered with vicious gorilla characters, usually men in furry suits ambling around causing havoc. Erik in this film is a man in a gorilla suit in longshot and a chimpanzee in close-up, the use of a real primate being an additional effort I appreciated which wasn't often used in later Lugosi horror films. The ending conjures images of King Kong which came a year later.
RB: The film was critically maligned upon its initial release. The New York Times felt that the film suffered from overacting and an “overzealous effort at terrorization”. The National Board of Review felt that “the story does not take advantage of the full amount of horror that one would expect from Poe’s work.” Well, that may be true. I can’t refute that the film has little to anything in common with Poe’s work. But the film has fared better comparatively, and a modern viewer can’t help but recognize the film as the first in a long run of films in which Lugosi portrays a mad scientist or deranged doctor. There must be a dozen or more of them, and we know now that this is likely the best of them.
For my part, I had never seen the film before the Picture Show blogging staff converged upon the Wexner Center For the Arts for a 35mm double feature of this film and Island of Lost Souls. I found the acting to be entrancing (although, yes, overacting…it was 1932 after all); the editing was fascinating (the particular sequence of Pierre pushing Camille on a swing as they discussed Dr. Mirakle was super cool and created a bizarre dreamlike tone), and of course, as always Bela provides a bizarre and addictive presence. The film jumps to life whenever he is around. In this sense, my attitude mirrors that of contemporary reviewers that find the film to be an underrated Universal horror film (although the well-respected Leonard Maltin seems especially stingy with his stars, only giving this one two and a half. Well, I’m no Leonard Maltin and I will never, ever claim to be, but to my eyes, this was a gripping movie that flew by. A four-star spooky October treat.
SG: Seeing the movie together in 35mm definitely added an additional layer of fun to our viewing. We got to discuss it a bit with Wexner curator Dave Filipi after the screening too. Four stars.
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