UNIVERSAL TERROR [1937, 1944, 1952]

Night Key, The Black Castle, The Cllimax (1937, 1944)
Directed by: George Waggner, Lloyd Corrigan, Nathan Juran
Written by: Curt Siodmak, Edward Locke, George Waggner, Jack Moffat, Jerry Sackheim, Lynn Starling, William A. Pierce
Starring: Boris Karloff, J. Warren Hull, Jean Rogers, Richard Greene, Rita Corday, Turhan Bey

UNIVERSAL TERROR [1937, 1944, 1952]

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY: 18TH JULY, from EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT

Following on from their Karloff At Columbia set, our friends at Eureka Entertainment have unleashed more Boris Karloff, this time from Universal. Lets see if they make the grade.

DISC ONE

NIGHT KEY [1937]

RUNNING TIME: 67 mins

Twenty years ago inventor David Mallory made an advanced burglar alarm system, only for his partner Steven Ranger to swindle him out of all the credit and money that should have gone to Mallory, and all because the girl he loved married Mallory. Now, he’s created an even more advanced system, and hopes that he’ll be able to get the eye surgery he desperately needs as well as give his daughter Joan everything she wants. But, despite the aid of a lawyer who’s actually working for Ranger, Mallory is cheated again. So, with the aid of petty criminal Petty Louie, he sets out to embarrass Ranger by breaking into businesses that have his monitoring service, using another device of his which can override it. But then gangster Alan Baxter gets wind of what’s going on and feels that Mallory can assist him….

Probably the first thing that I ought to say about Night Key is that it’s not a horror film at all. One may therefore wonder why Eureka have chosen to include it in a set entitled Universal Terror, though in fact the company is only doing something that’s been done many times before, the film being erroneously packaged and marketed all the way back to 1954 when it was re-released in cinemas along with advertising that not just used images of Boris Karloff from The Climax [also included in this set], thereby making out that Karloff was playing a sinister character, but claimed that it featured “Death in the Wax Museum!” even though no wax museum appears. I wonder how many people attending these 1954 showings left auditoriums feeling disappointed and cheated, perhaps even before the film had finished? But let’s leave all that now and try to take the movie on its own terms, for what it is instead of for what it seems to promise to be. Like a couple of the Columbia Karloff Mad Doctor entries it can definitely be classed as science fiction, though none of what is invented in it seems impressive at all these days, reality having caught up with fantasy a fair amount of time ago. Night Key is a nifty little ‘B’ thriller, even if first-time filmmaker Lloyd Corrigan doesn’t quite give the exciting and eventful plot the push it needs, while the man himself, as always, makes it worth watching. In fact I’d say that this was one of his best performances of the second half of the ’30s, Karloff perfectly pulling off a role which doesn’t require him to be nasty or creepy at all, showing the range that he had which wasn’t allowed to be displayed as much as it could have been because he was associated with horror and villainy.

So New York is full of places which have had this system fitted, one which, when somebody goes inside, sends a signal back to the switchboard so that a light comes on and the operator can then call the police, meaning that a great many criminals have been caught who may not otherwise have been. It’s easy to laugh today, but way back in 1937 such an idea was fantastical. We open with a salesman installing a system to a stereotypically loud and arguing Italian couple; the husband is concerned that he will see dead bodies because intruders will be electrocuted. It’s the day of the twentieth anniversary since the Ranger Protection Service came into being, and Ranger the boss wants the rights to a new light-beam wireless security system from Mallory, who’s invented this new contraption that if you walk between two points, it breaks a beam of light and signals the alarm, though he almost didn’t finish it because he’s going blind. Mallory thinks that Ranger will be buying the device to use it, replacing his old system. However, Ranger and Mallory’s lawyer Mike Callahan are conspiring to rip the old man off. They sign the papers, but then, to staged outrage from Callahan, Ranger explains that the agreement made no specification as to when he will use the system, and he doesn’t intend to use it at all, instead having bought the device to bury it, not replace his old system. We feel for Mallory, introduced in a scene with his daughter Joan which is full of warmth and immediately makes us feel much sympathy for them. But hang on! Ranger stole the patent rights of the current system from Mallory twenty years ago, so why on earth would Mallory get involved another deal with him concerning his new system? Alright, he’s got this lawyer now, but it’s still very hard to believe. In fact, why on earth is he still partners with this guy?

“You WILL put in my system,” Mallory says, “because what I created, I can destroy,” as he holds up the short circuiting “key” that Ranger doesn’t know about. Mallory fiddles with it, and all the doors in the basement unlock, releasing Petty Louie, an incompetent crook caught breaking into the place, from confinement there. On the wall of the cell is scrawled “What I create, I can destroy” signed “Night Key.” Mallory’s already had enough of Louie, and no wonder, because he’s rather annoying the way he rabbits on in a supposedly funny but actually rather unfunny fashion; this kind of wisecracking needs actual jokes, though others make some okay ones at his expense. But Mallory almost gets ran over and his glasses certainly get ran over, so Louie helps him home and the two become a team, breaking and entering into places using Mallory’s “key”, then leaving messages. Louie wants to actually rob, but Mallory won’t hear of it; his goal is humiliating Ranger. The press makes a big deal out of the Night Key, and real gangsters take note. “A guy with a talent like that should be working for me,” says The Kid, but will Mallory play ball? Of course there’s also romance involving Joan and Jim Travers, one of Ranger’s security guards. Looking for her father, he sits outside her apartment for ages, then follows her all over the place for two whole days. Such stalking just makes her bend, as it often does in vintage movies, even though Warren Hull wears more eye makeup than Jean Rogers, who I’d only just watched a few days ago in the first of the Flash Gordon serials. The suspense revolves around Mallory; not just when will he escape or find a way to fight back, but also when will be go mad or turn nasty, because this is Karloff. But he never does go mad or turn funny, even though we’d probably be on his side if he did.

The screenplay by Tristram Tupper and Jack Moffit, from a story by William A. Pierce, seems to run out of ideas, but it does have two notable conceits. At one point, Louie scrawls a note on a table, “Send police to ABC Delivery Company,” without being seen, hoping that Travers, who should be along soon, will see it, but when he comes in the waitress has erased everything but “ABC DE,” which he has to work out for himself. And a major confrontation between two characters doesn’t happen, with instead a frankly ludicrous change of heart. Yet the cramming in of various elements certainly makes for a sometimes unpredictable  piece, and it all moves at a fast pace, positively rushing through a few portions, even if the tension could be higher. The gangsters include a formidable Ward Bond who gives the impression that he’s going to do something nasty though never does. They seem ridiculously easily defeated, running away at the sight of the cops, while Alan Baxter as The Kid speaks in a dull monotone – yet does have a screen presence, and generally the acting in this film is pretty good. Even though Louie is a nuisance, we do care about whether he’ll either find real goodness or never escape his old ways. An escape sequence with animated electricity being employed to quite convincing effect is probably the best bit of the film, and it’s also a scene where you may almost want to cheer. As for the Night Key itself, we never really see it used for its intended purpose, though it does somehow disable a car.

There’s one shot where we adopt the blurry point of view of Mallory’s eyes as he’s just put his glasses on and his daughter comes into focus, and there’s some neat cutting when people finish other people’s lines, though for the most part look and style is quite run of the mill. Look out for a tiny bit of Frankenstein equipment. Now then, is there any doubt now that Karloff was easily the best actor out of the early wave of horror stars? Karloff sells his extremely naive character, and his version of an old man shuffling around in a frequent state of bewilderment is right on – just check out his body language and all. His voice and manner of speaking, usually made to sound so sinister, here exude sweetness and innocence. The bad guys only knock Mallory about once or twice, but we hate to see him being treated in this way and wonder if just one fall may kill him. He does seem rather too elderly to be Jean Rogers’s father though; perhaps they should have written her as his granddaughter. Was Mallory the first screen mad scientist to have a pretty daughter? The music score, made up entirely of second hand cues, opens oddly with a very out of place sounding piece evoking charm and sophistication, a strange choice indeed. The others, one of which will be very familiar to Universal horror lovers, work okay. Night Key is a very minor work, certainly interesting enough to keep one involved if never raising to another level, but is a fine showcase for its star. In that respect, Eureka were right to include it.

Rating:

SPECIAL FEATURES

1080p presentation from a 2K scan of fine grain film elements
How great this restoration looks considering the age of the film. Eureka have probably used Scream Factory’s version and given it a new encode. Some shots in the final third are grainier than the rest of the film, yet it’s still well managed with no clustering. Black levels are strong and there’s only extremely minor print damage.

Brand new audio commentary with Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby
These terrific audio commentaries are becoming as important a part of the fun of these releases as the films. Lyons and Rigby clearly like the film much more than I do, even the humour. I appreciated it a bit more by the end and we get a lot of production into too; this was a much delayed project which had constant rewrites even during shooting. We also learn that it was based on a real company, though Rigby understandably finds it odd that it shows the inner workings of an alarm system, while Lyons says how inaccurate it was that Karloff was associated with heavy makeup. The story is placed into its Depression contest and we even get some reviews of the time read out. Bristle when one snobby writeup says the film will be good for the “industrial element”. Such vile snobbery was sadly commonplace in reviews back in the day.

Trailer

Stills Galleries

THE CLIMAX [1944]

RUNNING TIME: 81 mins

Ten years ago, Dr. Hohner was in love with opera star Marcellina but was jealous of her voice, which he saw as coming between them. When she rejected his love, he killed her. Now, Hohner is the resident doctor at the opera house. He hears the voice of promising singer Angela which is almost identical to Marcellina’s. Impresario Count Seebruck hears her and plans to present her in the theater much to the dismay of resident soprano Jarmila Vadek. The lady is an instant success, but Hohner has other plans for her….

The Climax was probably the film I wanted to see most out of the three in this set, largely because I adore The Phantom Of The Opera – and yes, that includes the musical. It began life as a sequel to Universal’s 1943 adaptation which starred Claude Rains. While certainly nowhere near as good as the very first version, also made by Universal, from1926 with Lon Chaney, it was still a decent picture that went down some different pathways, including presenting a Phantom who was originally a normal-looking guy who had his music stolen and used, a premise that was employed in several later versions. It was also a rare Universal horror which was in colour, not to mention a huge commercial success. So Universal decided to reuse some of its sets [the main opera house interior of which was recycled from the 1926 version] and make a sequel, though only Susanna Foster and Jane Farrar came on board, and eventually it metamorphised into a standalone tale which is basically a variation of The Phantom Of The Opera melded with Svengali in reverse. That’s fair enough, but what’s truly odd is the approach. The 1943 film was often criticised for having too much opera and not enough phantom, yet The Climax is much the same. Yes, Karloff is often present on screen in his first colour appearance, but he does very little, and the film seems to go out of its way to avoid becoming horror. The result is a rather stuffy, static piece, where even the romantic side of things is very muted and the important music aspect is generally mediocre, everything dwarfed by the lavish sets and costumes. Yet it’s a beautiful film to look at, the premise does compel and Karloff as always is compulsively watchable, even if he doesn’t seem to be as committed as usual for some of the time.

The titles take place over a fantastic [if reused] town set – it looks so artificial, we know it’s a set, yet it doesn’t matter. A shadowy figure leaves his house, walks down a street and enters a theatre, in what is a great opening scene for Karloff as well as setting a dark Gothic mood, though already it gives a somewhat false impression of what we’ll be seeing. As he passes two people in the ticket office they fill us in on some supposed background before Hohner goes into a room full of covered furniture and experiences a flashback that gives us the real truth on what happened to Marcellina, and maybe screenwriters Curt Siodmak, Lynn Starling and George Waggner, working supposedly from a play of the same title by Edward Locke but seemingly taking very little from it, would have done better by placing this flashback later. This would have given it more power because up to that point we would have believed, like everyone else, that Marcellina just disappeared. But the scene is very well done, especially the transition to the flashback where the camera begins to pan around the room and we dissolve into the past and the camera continues the pan but now the room is very different. Such scenes often have blurry edges but these ones are of different colours. We see Hohner expressing his love for Marcellina but she doesn’t love him, and it’s a hugely possessive love anyway. Eventually he strangles her, and we return to the present where he’s found by a cleaner who mistakes him for dead. The current star Jarmilla is whinging about her male co-star Amato handling her and he retorts that she can’t sing, though she’s even more annoyed when, after her understudy has fainted,  Angela comes in and sings so well that she replaces Jarmilla as the lead. So is Hohner, because it’s music that he last heard Marcellina singing, an operetta entitled The Magic Voice, though he’s bewitched by the somewhat familiar-sounding voice.

All this is certainly involving enough even when it’s predictable. Angela becomes a star overnight, her admirer/boyfriend Franz Munzer being so enraptured by both her performance and her that he devours part of his programme, though I’m vague about the status of these two because it’s not clear; they seem very friendly as soon as we meet them, but one can’t tell if they’re already actually a couple or not, yet there’s no sense of progression either. Of course one is meant to imagine what Hohner gets up to when it’s revealed that he’s preserved Marcellina’s body and keeps it in a sealed room in his home. After luring her into his room with the words, “It’s the rule of the theatre to have your throat examined after each performance,” he’s also able to hypnotise Angela, but not into becoming a hit on stage; no, he’s doing this to sabotage that career she was so promisingly forging. According to him, nobody should sing the ironically titled The Magic Voice. But Franz decides to take action, and bizarrely gets the King, who’s a small boy, to intervene in a strange plot element. The story crawls forward with little in the way of action or dramatic conflict, much of the running time taken up with operetta rehearsal and performance footage. Hohner may be living in the opera house, but he tends to remian in two rooms, so we don’t get any Phantom-style creeping around and scaring. Even Hohner’s hypnotic powers aren’t made much out of; I was actually waiting for him to kill using this gift. One can understand the writers not wanting to make him into a murderer until one moment near the end, but the script, following in the footsteps off Rains’s Phantom, fails to make him sexually and/or romantically interested in Angela either. It just doesn’t know what do do with the character, and, even though we have a slightly exciting final reel, Hohner perishes rather quickly – though we do get a rather nasty death shot for the time.

It’s peculiar how restrained and civilised The Climax is. There’s a fine scene where Hohner’s mania really takes hold of him and he hears Angela’s voice coming from everywhere and can’t shut it out, but that’s about as excessive things get until the last ten minutes unless you include an elaborate hypnotism scene involving a circular device, white circles appearing all over Foster and genuinely unnerving closeups of Karloff which is another visual delight. Gale Sondergaard, the “Spider Woman” herself, lurks around as Hohner’s servant, looking both gloomy and sinister, but she also doesn’t have much to do except essentially fill a very predicable role towards the end. Yet one is never quite bored, partly because of how sumptuous the production is. There’s a huge lobby where more and more extras come in and swan around which is a real “showing off” scene, while plush colours are everywhere, except for the black and purple curtains that surround the room where Marcellina is kept in; the contrast is striking and we get a bit of properly morbid Gothic atmosphere for a minute or two, though we could have done with more of this. Still, humour is mostly kept to bickering between Jamilla, in the Biancarolli role, and George Dolenz as her co-star Amato Roselli. The music, mostly by Edward Bond, is decent without ever really rising to the occasion. Themes from the operetta, which is in a familiar Romantic mode, are nicely interpreted into the score proper, but the tone for Angela is a boring waltz that just repeats the same phase. The music which accompanies her entrance on stage in The Magic Voice is Frederick Chopin’s The Minute Waltz with just a few notes changed, and one of Franz Schubert’s Minuet Marches is another theme in the operetta. Some decent dramatic stuff accompanies Hohner at times, but the writers seem to think that turn-of-the-century operettas looked like MGM musicals – though admittedly we’re never given a time and place!

Karloff veers from being typically very good to just average. There are times where, despite the script’s hesitance in such matters, he really evokes his character’s anguish, if still in a quite restrained fashion which is fine. Going for pity rather than fear definitely helps in providing us with sympathy for the character, and but he’s working against a script which fails to even slightly clarify his issues, not to mention a director who doesn’t seem to want to provide much in the way of urgency to the proceedings. Foster is again slightly beguiling and can belt out the notes incredibly, while Turhan Bey, usually cast in exotic roles, is both extremely likeable and interestingly unusual as a rare romantic lead, displaying much boyish enthusiasm and even worship. The Climax, with so much working against it, still manages to just about entertain.

Rating:

1080p presentation from a 2K scan of the interpositive
Oh no god this film looks magnificent, even if this restoration isn’t taken from an original print. The colours glow vividly, so much so that it’s often over the top but that’s probably the major joy of this film, while there’s considerable detail everywhere you look to. Grain is evenly balanced throughout and blacks certainly haven’t been forgotten, lacking any crush whatsoever. Magnificent.

Brand new audio commentary with Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby
The duo present another quite wonderful audio commentary, even if I respectfully disagree with them when they claim this film to be superior to the 1943 The Phantom Of The Opera; I agree that the humour in the latter is intrusive, but I believe it to have other considerable qualities. They discuss the original play which had a previous and more faithful film version in 1930, the novelisation which specifies the setting, and Lyons was able to dig out even more reviews of the time, one of which bizarrely thinks that Karloff was ill suited for villainous and scary partsm as well as express his personal annoyance at how hypnotism is usually depicted in films. The two are even able to make potted biographies, one of my audio commentary annoyances, interesting. This is the only commentary track which is also on the Scream Factory release; the other two films originally had ones by Tom Weaver.

Trailer

Stills Galleries