WEIRD WOMAN (1944)

 

THE CREEPING BRIDE: Monroe College sociology professor Norman Reed (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is jinxed. A "mental giant" and a rising star, Reed has just returned from a jaunt somewhere in the tropical isles of the South Seas; he has brought back with him new research for a groundbreaking study on religion called Superstition vs. Science and Fact and a new wife, a lovely woman-child native priestess named Paula (Anne Gwynne). He seemed to be on the fast-track to becoming department chair, but that's when things spiraled out of control: his colleague Professor Millard Sawtelle (Ralph Morgan) shot himself to avoid a possible plagiarism scandal; Sawtelle's Lady Macbethian wife Evelyn (Elizabeth Russell) accuses Reed and his "witch" of engineering the scandal; and nasty rumors that Reed "has taken advantage of" his pretty undergraduate research assistant (Lois Collier, who may have been recognized by some SHOCK! viewers for her recurring appearances between 1951 and 1953 on Ziv's "Boston Blackie" TV show) dog him all over campus-- in fact, Reed is said to have beaten up his assistant's boyfriend when the latter tried to defend her honor. Then, while Paula continues to be the target of terrorizing harassment by Reed's bitter ex-lover Ilona (Evelyn Ankers), there is shooting on campus and the blame falls on Reed.

Ad for KUTV-Channel 2's "Shock Theater" with horror-host Roderick in Salt Lake [UT] Tribune, February 27, 1960. COUNTER-ESPIONAGE (1942) was one of the "Lone Wolf" mystery-thrillers

As I've said previously when I've written about the Inner Sanctum series in the SHOCK! collection, these were popular with audiences when they were first released and when theatrically re-released (WEIRD WOMAN made the rounds again starting in 1952). I've also seen a few of them turn up as special midnight spook shows, so Screen Gems' inclusion of these titles in SHOCK! was probably viewed as a selling point for the package.

San Antonio [TX] Light, June 6, 1957. What a Universal horror drive-in line-up! WEIRD WOMAN (the typo that pluralizes the title is actually more accurate considering what happens in the movie) is shown here on Monday night with NIGHT MONSTER.

The Daily Republic, Mitchell, SD, February 24, 1961

Many fans seem to like WEIRD WOMAN best; I prefer it because there is at least a not-easily-explained-away supernatural thread that runs through this picture that you don't find in the other five films of the series. But I also like it because of the almost campy level of neurotic hysteria that energizes everything here, particularly Paula, Ilona, and Evelyn (when all is said and done, who is the titular weird woman, anyway?).

Ordinarily, watching WEIRD WOMAN elicits a few harsh hoots of derisive laughter from me, but I made a very conscientious effort to watch it in good faith this time for the SHOCK! Viewing Project. Lon Chaney, Jr. still seems miscast as the brilliant and desirable intellectual, and his acting cannot keep up with the work done here by Gwynne, Ankers, and Russell, but I wanted to avoid thinking about that and just try to focus on the persistence of supernatural elements in an effort to recreate the horror-movie-on-TV experience as best as I could. And I feel that I largely succeeded-- I think that I could see WEIRD WOMAN's horror movie appeal for the first time.

A big stumbling block for me, though, was the handling of the dance and prayer ceremony on Paula's island. In Drums o' Terror: Voodoo in the Cinema (1998), Bryan Senn describes this more as "a genteel luau" than a "frenzied rite": "Though Paula ominously labels it the 'Dance of Death,' sarong-wearing native girls pathetically stomp their feet and clap and wave their hands in an innocuously choreographed motion, making this weird pagan ritual look like low-rent nightclub filler." I have to wonder if the ceremony could have had a more disturbing edge in the hands of a director other than Reginald LeBorg (John Fulton's shooting star that crosses the sky at the climax of the Dance of Death looked good, though).

The Dunkirk Evening Observer, Dunkirk-Fredonia, NY, January 14, 1958

I enjoy seeing some of the names that television stations used for their late-night movies-on-TV showcases. "Operation: Swing Shift" on WGR-Channel 2 in Buffalo, NY is one of the most unusual names. "Operation: Swing Shift" featured a variety of film genres in their offerings and very few of them seemed to have been horror films.

 

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 Trailer:

Newspaper Ads:

Palladium Item, May 5, 1944

The Courier Sun, April 28, 1946

CHINATOWN SQUAD (1935)

THE CREEPING BRIDE: Shady importer/exporter and "high-class con man" Albert Raybold is stabbed in the heart with a fork (!!) one night in a private booth at the Peking Café in San Francisco's Chinatown. A number of the restaurant patrons are suspects: Raybold's secretary George Mason (Andy Devine), international tea dealer William Ward, businessman Claude Palmer, restaurant manager Quong Su, and restaurant owner (and presumably tong elder) John Yee. Details surrounding Raybold's dirty dealings complicate things as it is learned that he was in the midst of a transaction to sell fighter planes to Communist rebels in Fuzhou at the time of his death-- $70,000 of the rebels' money held by Raybold has gone missing, as has a packet of incriminating letters written to him by a mysterious Woman in Black (Valerie Hobson) and a valuable jade ring.

(Whoever wrote up the synopsis for this movie on TCM's website describes "a mystical jade ring" which "gives its wearer the power to do irreparable harm to his enemies," but this makes it sound like a prequel to THE LORD OF THE RINGS or something. Actually, the ring is like a letter of introduction or a password or a secret handshake that can give its enterprising wearer entry into the darkest and most lucrative corners of the Chinese criminal and political underworlds. After all, if the ring was so powerful, how come it didn't protect Raybold from being forked to death?)

Another diner at the Peking Café at the time of Raybold's murder is ex-cop Ted Lacey (Lyle Talbot), formerly of the SFPD's elite Chinatown Squad but presently a neighborhood tour-bus guide (Jake Gittes, he ain't). Lacey's accidental involvement in the Raybold case reminds him of how much he enjoyed being part of the Chinatown Squad despite his conflicts with his sergeant, McLeash. Before long, Lacey joins forces with the Woman in Black and works with the squad to put all the clues together to solve Raybold's killing; he also squeezes a confession out of the killer and personally drives him to SFPD headquarters in a stolen police patrol van where the chief offers him his old job back with a promotion.

CHINATOWN SQUAD is one of those utterly monster-less, non-horror movies that Screen Gems tucked into the SHOCK! bundle. It's a fast-paced B-movie whodunit (written by Dore Schary) brimming with light banter and humorous touches (a reviewer on IMDb likened it to a "Thin Man" movie, but that's going way too far). Lyle Talbot's Lacey spends much of his time making wisecracks, needling Sgt. McLeash, and chuckling and grinning... in the still shown below, he has just slammed the door of the Chinatown Squad office and shattered the glass; he smiles and makes some dumb joke before running off and leaving McLeash impotently fuming. Such jackassery is typical of Lacey in this movie and it gets tedious quickly.

The Chinatown Squad was a special unit of the San Francisco police organized in the late 1870s that was re-activated in 1921 in the midst of concern with the alarming number of homicides in that neighborhood linked to tong control of prostitution, narcotics, smuggling, gambling, illegal immigration, extortion, and municipal political corruption. But in this movie the squad comes across like a bunch of inept clowns, a day late and a dollar short for whatever is going on. McLeash's mugging is especially grating; at one point, he takes a pratfall off of the Sausalito ferry pier while tailing Lacey and Yee. A darker murder-mystery melodrama about Chinatown's crime world would've been a better fit for SHOCK!-- CHINATOWN SQUAD is very light-weight.

(Oddly, the publicity photo of Talbot that Screen Gems uses for CHINATOWN SQUAD in the SHOCK! booklet is older, heavier, and has grayer hair than the guy in this movie. Actually, it looks more like the Talbot of GLEN OR GLENDA? [1953] and JAIL BAIT [1954].

January 7th EDIT: Thanks to doctor kiss for emailing me the following shots of Lyle Talbot from JAIL BAIT, confirming for me that this was the source for Screen Gems publicity photo.)

Lyle Talbot as Inspector Johns in Ed Wood, Jr.'s JAIL BAIT (1954)

Probably the only saving grace here for Universal horror-movie lovers is Valerie Hobson as Janet Baker, the black-clad mystery woman. Hobson was supposed to be all of 18 years-old in 1935; immediately previous to CHINATOWN SQUAD, Hobson had appeared in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and WEREWOLF OF LONDON.

She's cool and lovely in this movie; surprisingly, she spends the last reel in a yellowface disguise meant to elude the Chinatown Squad (Lacey jokingly calls her "Ming Toy," a reference to Lupe Velez's character in Universal's EAST IS WEST [1930]). There are supposed to be romantic sparks between Hobson's character and Talbot's in this movie, but I didn't see them. Still, this film is worth watching just to see Hobson-- she's simply radiant (as usual) here.

Daily Review, Hayward, CA, March 11, 1960

After its syndicated release through SHOCK! and right up until 1979, CHINATOWN SQUAD appeared on television mostly in the morning and late afternoon time-slots. When it did show up at night, it was often as just a late show movie rather than part of a named "Shock Theater" or "Creature Feature" program. But it did make it into those showcases every once in a while. In an essay called "'Shock Theater' Memories," writer Rich Scrivani (I recommend his 2006 book Goodnight, Whatever You Are! My Journey with Zacherley, the Cool Ghoul) recalls: "Occasionally the supernatural aura of 1958 would be dispelled when some questionable entries would run. Titles like CHINATOWN SQUAD […] padded out the series. While we can enjoy them for their place in Universal history now, they were unwanted intruders at the time, tepid 'B' mysteries, holding no interest whatsoever for kids who wanted monsters."

 

For fans of zippy B-movie mysteries of the 1930s, there are worse ways to spend an hour than CHINATOWN SQUAD. But, as Scrivani says, for monster-crazy kids who waited all week to stay up late for SHOCK!, this movie must have been an aggravating and unsatisfactory viewing experience.

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Added Commentary, Newspaper Ads, etc.

MIREK: I enjoyed this film a bit more than CREEPING BRIDE regarding the constant ribbing and puns of the Talbot character. (Interesting last name, too!) But I was also interested in a minor player who doesn't get mentioned in the credits: Toshia Mori, who worked in smaller roles, but managed to take over the legendary Anna May Wong in THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN. She had already worked on two films with Wong, though in minor roles. Since she was born in Japan, one wonders if the Pearl Harbor attack and subsequent war with Japan had any negative repercussions for her. In CHINATOWN SQUAD she plays a telephone operator in Chinatown who has several speaking lines to Talbot and is one of the more memorable people in this film. Also on hand is James B. Leong, an actor who has a very lengthy list of very small parts in Hollywood. This after trying to get a Chinese-American production company started on the West Coast.

Spokane Chronicle, Jun 7, 1935

Honolulu Star Bulletin, Oct 19, 1935

Honolulu Star Bulletin, Oct 19, 1935

Original SHOCK Photo

Here an original unretouched SHOCK photo. These type of photos were given to television stations to promote their showing of a SHOCK picture, in this case THE CAT CREEPS.

At the bottom is an explanation of what is pictured, and below a copyright notice, 1958, and that the photo is the property of Screen Gems. Note that the umbrella show is just SHOCK, not SHOCK THEATRE.

THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)

THE CREEPING BRIDE: Probably as a result of the popularity of SHOCK!, rumors began to spread in 1958 that a number of horror and sci-fi shows were being planned for the new Fall season. When autumn came, some TV writers mentioned how surprised they were that so few of these programs actually turned up on the small screen. One of those that did was a half-hour British television series that had been picked up by CBS called "The Invisible Man." CBS first began airing it in early November 1958, not too long after Universal's THE INVISIBLE MAN first appeared on TV as part of SHOCK! films.

Indiana [PA] Evening Gazette, Wednesday December 3, 1958

Directly below that listing, this movie theater double-feature ad appeared:

What a fun couple of days that must have been in Indiana, PA!

Unlike Universal's remarkable horror film of the same name, the TV series "The Invisible Man" was a fantasy-spy show. Rather than a crazed chemist going on a murderous rampage, the scientist in the television series is a respectable, trusted, and stable chap who agrees to do Cold War missions for British intelligence after he has been irreversibly rendered transparent in a lab accident involving radioactive materials. Originally, CBS had intended to follow "The Invisible Man" on Wednesday nights with a second fantasy-spy series called "World of Giants"; produced by Ziv, "World of Giants" featured a secret agent who had been miniaturized down to six inches following his exposure to experimental missile fuel while behind the Iron Curtain, an obvious take-off on THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957). The pairing of "The Invisible Man" and "World of Giants" on CBS never happened because of the programming emergency that erupted in 1958 when a series of corruption scandals connected to TV quiz shows forced abrupt cancellations that had networks scrambling to fill slots. ("World of Giants" ended up being first-run in syndication in Fall 1959 rather than on network telecast.)

"The Invisible Man" show was the creation of Ralph Smart, who later went on to make the great "Danger Man" ("Secret Agent" in the US) series with Patrick McGoohan. A young Brian Clemens worked as a writer on "The Invisible Man," as well; Clemens is responsible for a number of classic action-adventure British TV series of the 1960s and 1970s, such as "The Avengers," "The Protectors," "The Professionals," and "The Persuaders." Despite such an impressive pedigree, however, "The Invisible Man" didn't impress: one syndicated TV columnist dismissed it out of hand as "juvenile" fare, while another writer for UPI called it "really more of a short-circuit" than "a shocker." The critic goes on to say that "it's not that there isn't a kernel of an idea in the Invisible Man bit. Witness the crackly old Claude Rains movie." The TV series, however, is "completely uncrackly" because the writing "is simply absurd-- heavy-footed and clodpated."

I admit that I wasn't too sure what was meant by "crackly" in this context, but after looking it up (I also had to look up "clodpated," which I first read as "coldplated," for some reason), I think that it is a good adjective to describe Uni's THE INVISIBLE MAN: the writing of the dialogue and the action is crisp, sharp, sprightly, neat, and clever. Even on television and interrupted with commercials, the movie clips along nicely and keeps you engaged. The same can't be said of the episodes of "The Invisible Man" that I watched on-line-- television, of course, has always been (and still is) a stiflingly conservative medium, so it's probably unfair in the first place to even think that a TV show about a heroic British spy could compete with the late-night movie lunacy of this James Whale motion picture.

In addition to the crackly writing, you also have to marvel at some of the performances that Whale drew from his cast. Claude Rains' Jack Griffin dominates the proceedings with his manic mood swings from growling threats to hysterically over-the-top proclamations ("Even the Moon is frightened of me!"), all of which is punctuated by his tittering cackles and megalomaniacal braying. I find these outbursts to be equally unnerving and funny during his freak-outs, and it's hard to keep your eyes off of this see-through terrorist. But I also really like William Harrigan's performance as Kemp in the almost totally wordless scenes when he first encounters the unseen naked maniac. Harrigan's physical reactions as he interacts with another actor that is not actually in his study (as well as the later scene where he walks from the car to the Lion's Head to retrieve Griffin's notebooks) is a very convincing performance (Harrigan's later hysterical scenes with the police aren't at all as interesting).

Whale's film is dense with these kinds of fabulous things, all of which add up to make THE INVISIBLE MAN so compellingly watchable. Watering all that down into a half-hour spy show is just a bad idea all around since comparisons would be inevitable, and one needed only turn in to SHOCK! to see the superior original.

Gazette-Mail, Charleston WV, November 15, 1959

A final note: the other day I saw TCM's annual musical memorial montage listing many of the prominent film folks who have passed away during the previous year. Naturally, TCM editors chose something from TITANIC to commemorate Gloria Stuart (who died in late September at the age of 100) and that's a completely understandable decision. But wouldn't it have been great to show her in THE OLD DARK HOUSE, SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM or THE INVISIBLE MAN? Whale doesn't give her much to do in THE INVISIBLE MAN except look luminescent and outrageously desirable, but she does that so well...

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Trailer and Ads

A fan produced trailer by Jeff Hollis and Eric Stormoen.

 The Star Press, March 11, 1934

The Akron Beacon Journal, Dec 15, 1933

MYSTERY OF THE WHITE ROOM (1939)

THE CREEPING BRIDE: The "white room" of the title is the operating room where Dr. Finley Morton is stabbed in the back with a scalpel during surgery on a rich society woman. By the time the operation is over, hard-boiled big city police Sergeant MacIntosh Spencer has arrived and is untangling the various relationships of the doctors and nurses in the operating room in order to find a motive. It is the usual soap opera-- some of doctors and nurses are romantically involved with one another; two rival doctors are competing for the big promotion that Morton is helping to decide; there are senior medicos with a complicated professional relationship involving medical ethics, jealousy, and a five year-old botched surgery; and there's even a skulking senior medical staff superintendent thrown in for good measure. One of the most likely suspects is the dashing Dr. Bob Clayton (Bruce Cabot), but he confounds Sgt. Spencer by trying to solve the case on his own with the help of his lover, Nurse Carole Dale (Helen Mack). There is also an irritating comedy relief couple consisting of a meddlesome half-witted ambulance attendant (Tom Dugan) and a braying, grating nurse (Mabel Todd), but the less said about these two, the better.

The Daily Times-News, Burlington NC, October 28, 1939, seven months after MYSTERY OF THE WHITE ROOM was released theatrically

The only witness that can help solve the Morton murder is Tony the deaf janitor; the killer tries to do away with Tony by viciously smashing a bottle of acid into his face, an attack that leaves Tony blind, unable to speak, and paralyzed. This surprising bit of nastiness is one of the fleeting grotesque touches in MYSTERY OF THE WHITE ROOM that makes this whodunit into something different from the usual fare. The other bit of pulp wackiness is the lurking scalpel-wielding murderer; on the eve of an corneal transplant operation (using Morton's dead man's eyes) that will hopefully restore Tony's sight and allow him to recognize his attacker, the shadowy, surgical-glove-wearing killer appears in the middle of the night on the fire escape outside of Tony's room and hurls a scalpel at him through some venetian blinds.

But none of these almost-horror tweaks is enough to make MYSTERY OF THE WHITE ROOM into anything other than a B-movie murder-mystery of the 1930s. The cast is interesting one that connects MYSTERY OF THE WHITE ROOM to KING OF THE ZOMBIES, KING KONG, SON OF KONG, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, DR. X, HOUSE OF FEAR, MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUMMY'S CURSE, MAN MADE MONSTER, VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES, and some of other things, but there's really not a whiff of horror to be had despite the best efforts of some TV horror hosts over the years.

San Antonio [TX] Express, May 2, 1958
The copy in this oddly-shaped ad reads in part: "A mystery 'Shock' thriller about the terror that stalks the corridors of a hospital. To bed before the Witching Hour"


Daily Review Hayward, CA, April 9, 1960

The Capital, Annapolis, MD, December 22, 1973

MYSTERY OF THE WHITE ROOM was one of three "Crime Club" movies that Screen Gems had bundled into the SHOCK! assortment for TV (Universal made eight all together between 1937-39 and MYSTERY OF THE WHITE ROOM was the second to last). Mirek mentioned the "Crime Club" series in a post here two and a half years ago; the helpful "Crime Club" blog sketches out the history of Doubleday's series and includes mention of both the Universal film series and the radio show (CBS 1931-32; Mutual 1946-47). According to that blog, Universal subcontracted Irving Starr Productions to make the films and retained control over only half of them later on, with the last three being sold off to Screen Gems in 1957. I know nothing about the history of the book series' sales figures or its popularity in the late 1950s-- would knowing that this was a "Crime Club" movie draw in viewers to the SHOCK! telecast? I didn't see any promotion of that angle in the television listings, so maybe not...

From the perspective of 2011, the copyright business seems tangled enough to doom MYSTERY OF THE WHITE ROOM to never appear on legitimately-licensed DVD. There's not a big market for obscure B-movie thrillers these days, particularly those that would require some expensive legal wrangling to secure the rights. That's unfortunate, because this might be the best of the "Crime Club" bunch-- once the relationships between all the characters are established in the first reel, this 58-minute film plugs right along and does its damnedest to cover up some of its flaws in narrative logic. And the sprinkles of weirdness help this one go down easy on late-night viewing.

(As a footnote to this, let me add that any viewer interested in seeing a murder-mystery set in a hospital ought to check out the well-made British film GREEN FOR DANGER [1946].)

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Trailer, Ads

 The Jackson Sun, Oct 29, 1939

The News Leader, May 11, 1939